Consequences Motivate. There are consequences that occur naturally, and there are consequences that are imposed or enforced by others. People make decisions to act based on the consequences they anticipate. As a result, motivation is personal because people see and anticipate different consequences.
Life is meant to be a test to see if we will keep the commandments of God. (See 2 Ne. 2:5.) We are free to obey or to ignore the spirit and the letter of the law. But the agency granted to man is a moral agency. (See D&C 101:78.) We are not free to break our covenants and escape the consequences.
The laws of God are ordained to make us happy. Happiness cannot coexist with immorality: the prophet Alma told us in profound simplicity that “wickedness never was happiness.” (Alma 41:10.)
Always when these destructive life-styles are debated, “individual right of choice” is invoked as though it were the one sovereign virtue. That could be true only if there were but one of us. The rights of any individual bump up against the rights of another. And the simple truth is that we cannot be happy, nor saved, nor exalted, without one another.
A virtue when pressed to the extreme may turn into a vice. Unreasonable devotion to an ideal, without considering the practical application of it, ruins the ideal itself.
Nowhere is the right of choice defended with more vigor than with abortion. Having chosen to act, and a conception having occurred, it cannot then be unchosen. But there are still choices; always a best one. Sometimes the covenant of marriage has been broken; more often none was made. In or out of marriage, abortion is not an individual choice. At a minimum, three lives are involved.
Except where the wicked crime of incest or rape was involved, or where competent medical authorities certify that the life of the mother is in jeopardy, or that a severely defective fetus cannot survive birth, abortion is clearly a “thou shalt not.” Even in these very exceptional cases, much sober prayer is required to make the right choice. We face such sobering choices because we are the children of God.
The word tolerance is also invoked as though it overrules everything else. Tolerance may be a virtue, but it is not the commanding one.
Bad behavior arises when you abstract people away from the consequences of their actions.