Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Politics and Religion
Who are the real pro-lifers?

Who are the real pro-lifers?

Last updated on: May 17, 2019 at 9:41 am by Jane the Actuary

Who are the real pro-lifers? 2019-05-17T09:41:31-06:00 Jane the Actuary

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

One reads a lot, these days, about what it means to be “pro-life” — and it usually goes something like this:

People who merely believe abortion should be illegal, or that it is gravely morally wrong to obtain, perform, or advocate for abortion, are not “really pro-life.” No, to be a “true pro-lifer” means to object to any sort of intentional killing, especially State-approved killing such as euthanasia/assisted suicide as well as the death penalty. Oh, and it means supporting not just private charities which help pregnant women but also government programs including (but not limited to) free healthcare, paid parental leave, and free childcare. Plus, to be pro-life requires caring about the well-being of, well, all people everywhere, but more specifically believing that any child appearing at the southern border should be granted residency in the United States.

It’s getting tiresome.

Yes, much of the time, these demands come from people who do not identify as “pro-life” in the first place, but simply want to use this rhetorical device as a means of shaming social conservatives. It’s the playbook of “make them live by their own rules.”

But this is also coming from Catholics who do call themselves pro-life, but have adopted this “real pro-life” position as a way of avoiding saying anything that will upset anyone, because they know that “extensively ramp-up social welfare benefits” is going to make progressives happy regardless of whether they believe that there’s anything wrong with abortion or not.

It goes like this:

People only ever have abortions if they are in deep distress. We therefore need to remedy that distress, to end abortion. And if we simply outlaw abortion without remedying the conditions which drive women to abortion, well . . .

And what comes after the “well . . . “? Sometimes it’s, “they’ll get abortions illegally, or in another state.” And maybe that’s a reasonable concern. But sometimes, in the end, it’s “deprived of abortion, they’ll suffer financially” or “the children will have tragic lives.”

Now, I don’t mean to say that I am indifferent to the financial well-being of women, but this point of view is a path towards “abortion isn’t a sin if the mother had no other way to avoid hardship in her life” — and ultimately the “hardship” widens from “mired in poverty” to “unable to fulfill her career dreams” and from “trapped in a relationship with an abusive man” to “unable to start a new life in a new city because the man who looks at her with puppy-dog eyes wants a relationship with his child.”

And, again, there are far too many people “shouting their abortions” for me to be comfortable with the idea that women have abortions because they are poor, so that the “fix” for abortion is to end poverty.

In fact, in an old blog post from 2015, I came across some information on abortion prevalence by economic class. In a paper which purported to “prove” that poor women had insufficient access to abortion and therefore abortion should be free as a matter of equity, the Brookings Institute provided data on pregnancy rates, and on abortion rates, among pregnant women.

Here’s that data (in a new-and-improved format):

Now, when I originally wrote this, and again now, I found this 16.2% rate for women in the middle group to be a very peculiar outlier — even if there is a point at which women’s economic anxiety (as opposed to degree of economic hardship) is at its peak, it seems peculiar for it to make so much of a difference. But if poor women are not more likely to get abortions than all other women, then it makes this claim a bit suspect, to say the least. (I am curious, incidentally, about what these statistics look like now, given that the birth rate has been dropping year after year.)

So if, when it comes down to it, you simply don’t believe that there are any circumstances in which having an abortion should be a criminal act, or even that real-world circumstances exist in which it is immoral, you don’t get to call yourself pro-life.

(And, incidentally, I am not speaking merely in the abstract and building a strawman. A woman who was once a close friend of mine in grad school went down this path from “love them both” to “a woman isn’t culpable if she felt compelled to get an abortion” to “abortion isn’t really a sin.”)

Having said all that, for those of you waiting with bated breath see what my take is on the new anti-abortion legislation in Georgia and Alabama:

I don’t know.

Here’s a smart article on why pushing these laws, and losing the support of the public which was increasingly supporting milder abortion restrictions, is a mistake. Here’s another article on why it’s the right thing to do. Each of these are written by authors whose work is generally intelligent.

What’s the right thing to do, strategically?

Lastly, I know that, despite this being the Catholic channel, there are likely readers who don’t believe there is truly anything wrong with abortion in the first place and simply can’t engage with the fundamental premise of the article. Try substituting “child abuse” and “root causes of child abuse” and “criminalizing it will do more harm than good because parents will simply lock their children up to avoid being discovered.”

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_for_Life_(Washington,_D.C.)#/media/File:March_for_Life,_Washington,_D.C._(2013).JPG; By Miss.Monica.Elizabeth – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25829162

Uncategorized

abortion

pro-life

Previous Post

May 14, 2019

Pfleger, Farrakhan, and Trains-Run-On-Time-Ism

Next Post

May 17, 2019 The statistics on abortion and social class

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Actuarial/Retirement Issues Politics Uncategorized

Select a Month September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 December 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 August 2021 June 2021 April 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Where did David hide from Saul for many years?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Jerusalem Philistine camp Jericho The wilderness