Although I wrote it almost a year ago, my post on abortion recently got a bit of attention and critical responses from a few pro-choice partisans (one of whom commented). The general critique was that I was repeating false arguments by the pro-life side, particularly around the circumstances of abortions late in pregnancy. I made no specific claims about this. I did however affirm the values of sincere pro-lifers by stipulating that fetuses are human lives, and that therefore a procedure that ends this life, even in early stages of development, is something to take seriously. I also argued that the moral difficulties become more pronounced later in pregnancy, which the commenter seemed to see as a claim that late abortions (say, in the third trimester) of viable pregnancies are a thing that happens with some regularity. I didn’t actually say this, and even cited a statistic that indicated that 99% of abortions happen in the first half of pregnancy, but it’s true that I’ve assumed that in states without restrictions on such late abortions, they would sometimes happen for reasons I’d consider immoral.
So, I tried to find out if this was true and must admit that I haven’t been able to find examples of such abortions. As far as I can tell, third trimester abortions virtually always happen when the pregnancy is in crisis. This would suggest that doctors’ and individuals’ own moral codes are generally sufficient to prevent “discretionary” late abortions. I’m happy to concede this. But this focus misses a larger point, which is how such arguments come across. If your response to someone making a moral argument about the rights of a third trimester unborn child is to dismiss them on the grounds that nobody actually aborts such children, you don’t come across as someone who actually agrees with the premise. Rather, it sounds like you’re making excuses to not address the moral point, which reinforces the pro-life belief that pro-choice advocates don’t have a problem with abortion at any point in pregnancy. I believe this to be an unfair characterization of most advocates for abortion legalization, but I also don’t think the pro-lifer is wrong to want to outlaw an act they consider to be murder regardless of how common it is.
That said, in the year since I wrote that post I have come to have more respect for the practical argument in favor of more permissive laws which rely on women and doctors to decide when an abortion is justified, even after the ~15 weeks where most people think the state has a role in restricting the procedure. Since Dobbs we have seen that abortion bans with narrow exceptions lead to unintended danger for women because doctors wait too long to provide necessary medical intervention out of fear that they will run afoul of the law. This poses serious and unnecessary risk to women in medical crisis.
Such consequences, particularly resulting from poorly written laws that fail to provide clear criteria for exceptions, paint a profoundly unflattering picture of the pro-life movement. I get frustrated when abortion advocates argue that pro-lifers just want to control women, because I know that many of the most ardent opponents of abortion are motivated by a genuine concern for the life of the baby. But when you see the pro-life movement take so little care in the creation of laws restricting abortion and ignore the very real dangers they pose to women, you start to wonder if their motives are really driven by a consistent concern for all life, or more by a desire to score political wins.
David French recently wrote an excellent (as usual) column on this subject in which he acknowledges this hypocrisy, but also gives multiple examples of how the pro-life movement has further fueled skepticism about their true motives by being guilty of the opposite hypocrisy - abandoning or weakening their pro-life positions as soon as it becomes politically untenable. A truly consistent application of the belief that personhood begins at conception would have to oppose IVF because of the significant number of fertilized embryos that get destroyed in the process. Yet when the Alabama Supreme Court drew the logically consistent conclusion that the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor law (which had been held to cover unborn children) applied to the accidental destruction of embryos used in IVF treatments, conservative lawmakers quickly passed a law making an exception.
In other words, pro-life lawmakers seem selective in their application of the core argument of the pro-life cause. Honestly, I can understand the cynicism of those on the left when this is what they see. Unless pro-life advocates adopt a more consistent life ethic and actually practice what they preach not only when it comes to abortion but to life at all other stages and circumstances, it’s understandable that their opponents would doubt the seriousness of their convictions. It’s also understandable that their cause would lose popular support as a result.
There’s a more fundamental failing here, though, which is that not only have many supposedly pro-life leaders shown themselves to be hypocrites, but they have betrayed those that truly held those views and thought they shared them. And this is part of a much larger theme.
Much of what I once thought Republicans stood for - loyalty to allies, personal virtue, free trade, respect for the military, balanced budgets, personal responsibility, etc. - apparently do not really matter to most of its voters or leaders. Their continued support for a populist demagogue who made a mockery of these values is the evidence. And now it seems we can add abortion (and border security) to that list.
I have not abandoned the Republican party because I have abandoned many of these “conservative” values, but because the Republican party has (and because I also care about issues associated more with Democrats such as justice, anti-authoritarianism, climate change, a stronger social safety net, humane treatment of immigrants, etc.). My tendency on this Substack to critique the right with more fervor than the left is motivated in part by the fact that I was once one of them and feel betrayed. Despite this, however, I still believe that for many this is more a consequence of information siloes and bad information than a true abandonment of those core values.
Speaker Mike Johnson’s change of heart on supporting Ukraine is a hopeful example. After months of dithering, he finally found the bravery and conviction to do the right thing. This apparently resulted from seeing and hearing the evidence, long clear to leaders like Biden and McConnell, that shows this to be vital to Ukraine’s survival and our national interest. Supporting Ukraine gives us an opportunity to deter Putin from threatening NATO without putting our own soldiers in harm’s way, not to mention support a brave people in their fight against a cruel invader. His values weren’t the problem, it was his ignorance of the truth, thanks (I assume) to a highly partisan information diet. I remain optimistic that more voters are like Johnson in this regard than, say, Matt Gaetz. And as such, I remain committed to the idea that the best approach to engagement is to assume good intentions and try to break through with fair representations of both sides’ best arguments.