Trump and the Politics of Abortion
The GOP caught the car and now doesn't know what to do.
I found this David French column in the NYT to be largely spot-on: The Great Hypocrisy of the Pro-Life Movement.
The traditional pro-life argument comes from different religious and secular sources, but they all rest on a common belief: From the moment of conception, an unborn child is a separate human life. Yes, the baby is completely dependent on the mother, but it is still a separate human life. The baby’s life isn’t more important than the mother’s — which is why the best-drafted pro-life laws protect the life and physical health of the mother — but it possesses incalculable worth nonetheless. Absent extreme circumstances, the unborn child must not be intentionally killed.
[…]
From that standpoint, the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision in February holding that the state’s wrongful death statute applied to embryos frozen and preserved as part of the in vitro fertilization process should not have been surprising at all. If state law can declare an unborn child to be a separate human life, then of course that would apply to all unborn children, including those conceived as part of fertility treatments. Even though the embryos are frozen and exist outside the womb, they are still human — no less human than those created through conventional means.
But I have many pro-choice friends who would read the paragraphs above and scoff. They have good-faith disagreements about when an embryo or fetus becomes a “person” entitled to legal protection, and they disagree about the intentions of the pro-life movement. They argue that the pro-life movement is about power and control. It’s about seeking to constrain the choices women can make, to keep women in the home, and to maintain male dominance. The rhetoric about the value of all life and the rhetoric of self-sacrifice is a ruse. At the end of the day, the pro-life argument is a weapon to be wielded against people Republicans don’t like.
Without any doubt, the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision was absolutely the logical conclusion of the basic pro-life stance. Indeed, the IVF process itself is antithetical to the core of the pro-life position since the embryos do not all lead to births.
And yet, how did a lot of pro-life Republicans, including the governor and many legislators in my state of residence react?
Let’s review the events since the Alabama court’s decision. First, Alabama Republicans panicked. The Republican-dominated Legislature raced to pass a law that granted I.V.F. clinics sweeping immunity from the state’s wrongful death statute. Alabama also has one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country. As my newsroom colleague Emily Cochrane politely put it, the vote “demonstrated the intense urgency among Republicans to protect I.V.F. treatments, even if that meant sidestepping the thorny contradictions between their pledge to protect unborn life and fertility treatment practices.” At the conclusion of I.V.F. treatments, unused embryos are often discarded and destroyed.
Moreover,
On Wednesday, Trump reversed his previous position supporting a 20-week ban on abortion; he announced that he would not support a national abortion ban if he wins the presidency, and he said the policy should instead be left up to the states. This is a traditional pro-life position, but only if you also urge states to use their autonomy to pass pro-life bills. Instead, Trump’s advice to voters was to “follow your heart” and “do what’s right for your family, and do what’s right for yourself.” It’s “all about the will of the people,” he said.
This is the most pro-choice position a Republican presidential candidate has taken since at least Gerald Ford.
This is 100% correct. If abortion is murder, which is the essential pro-life position, this cannot be about following one’s heart or just leaving it up to the states. As French notes, the only reason pro-lifers have been pro-states’ rights on this issue is that strategically they wanted Roe gone so that they could first get their way in conservative states and then do all that they could to make abortion illegal nationally. The argument that we should get rid of Roe to return the choice to the state legislatures was always (from an anti-abortion POV) a tactical move meant as part of a broader strategic goal of a national ban. If that national band could come about via a SCOTUS ruling or a federal law, then states’ rights be damned.*
As French notes:
So where is the Republican pro-life consensus today? Philosophically, the movement is breaking. There is no coherent pro-life argument for why a state should prevent women who become pregnant through natural means from destroying an embryo while protecting the ability of families who create an embryo through I.V.F. to either destroy it or keep it frozen indefinitely.
At the same time, poorly drafted abortion regulations have placed a terrible spotlight on conservative states, with many examples of punitive laws placing women who are suffering miscarriages and other pregnancy complications in profound danger. This harsh approach undermines pro-life arguments that the movement does, in fact, love both mother and child.
This also brings us back to something I quoted from French above,
I have many pro-choice friends who would read the paragraphs above and scoff. They have good-faith disagreements about when an embryo or fetus becomes a “person” entitled to legal protection, and they disagree about the intentions of the pro-life movement. They argue that the pro-life movement is about power and control. It’s about seeking to constrain the choices women can make, to keep women in the home, and to maintain male dominance. The rhetoric about the value of all life and the rhetoric of self-sacrifice is a ruse. At the end of the day, the pro-life argument is a weapon to be wielded against people Republicans don’t like.
I think that there is actually a great bit of truth to these critiques. I don’t think they tell the entire story, but it is very, very hard to look at what is unfolding before us and not see this as at least part of an overall truth.
I will pause here and note, as I have before at various times, that I used to be profoundly conservative in my religiosity. Indeed, there is some alternative universe in which present me would be more like David French in my intellectual and religious outlook than I currently am. Indeed, French and I are the same age and I have a pretty strong sense that we would have had similar views back in our youth. Weirdly, one of the main things that have profoundly affected my viewpoints is moving to Alabama and living here for almost 26 years but I just found out that French was born in Opelika, AL, which is less than an hour from where I sit typing these words.
I suppose I am one of the odd Americans who has changed my mind on a number of key topics, and abortion is one of them. Some time ago I came to the conclusion that individuals should be able to make this choice for themselves. Moreover, the profoundly horrifying stories of women who have had to endure terrible medical circumstances post-Dobbs have only confirmed this position.**
Indeed, as I look retrospectively I remember a me who thought it was all pretty straightforward. But that is simply not the case. And while I can hear any number of people say things like it is all so easy: simply don’t have sex outside of marriage! I know that reality is not that simple. Not by a long shot.
French’s column reminded me that I realized a long time ago that there was an internal contradiction in the notion that there was any room in a pro-life position for supporting exceptions for incest or for allowing room for IVF. If a fertilized egg is equivalent to a human being in the fullness of that notion then there is no room for a saying that an egg fertilized from rape or incest is morally different than an egg fertilized by any other means. The only morally acceptable exception, if one truly believes that a zygote is a human being with full rights is when the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother because then you have to make a decision between the two (or, more likely, if the mother dies the zygote/embryo dies, too).
Beyond any of that, as sad as a miscarriage is, most people simply do not treat them the same way they treat the death of an infant. To be clear: I am not trying to minimize the pain of a miscarriage. But from a personal point of view, and based on personal experience, I would note that one of our children was originally a twin, but that one twin didn’t make it past a very early stage. My wife and I (and especially my wife) found this to be hard news. But I also can say that what grief we felt about that fact, was nothing compared to what grief we would have felt had that child been born and then died. I just know that to me it would not have been the same thing. Again, I say that fully acknowledging that many people suffer great grief over miscarriages and I am not trying to minimize it. I am simply noting that societally we do not treat miscarriages the way we treat the death of children after they have been born and that my own personal experience mirrors this fact.
From a theological point of view, I was always struck, too, that if the fetus is innocent, and yet has a soul, it goes to heaven, yes? Of course, if one is a Calvinist,*** some do and some don’t but that’s up to God, anyway (and in that case, it isn’t even about giving a specific person the chance to choose salvation or not). It is all, to me at least, a dog’s breakfast of weird contradictory, if not blatantly unjust, notions.****
At any rate, the point of all of this is to agree with French on a couple of levels.
The first is that yes, the pro-life position in the United States is rife with contradictions. Even French, whom I think to be principled on this issue, inadvertently admits he holds some contradictions:
I’m grateful for I.V.F. I have very close friends who conceived their children that way, but the law should not treat I.V.F. embryos substantially differently and worse than embryos conceived through natural means. But that’s exactly what the Alabama Legislature chose to do.
Again, if all embryos are human beings, IVF destroys some human beings. I am not sure how one can be deeply pro-life and be “grateful” for IVF. IVF and the pro-life position as defined by French himself strikes me as being clearly at odds with one another.
Ultimately I think that there are people who deeply believe that abortion is wrong. I also think that a lot of people who are opposed to legal abortion are actually more focused on stopping certain sexual behaviors than they are worried about pregnancies (let alone truly concerned about babies post-birth). I think, too, there is a clear patriarchal motivation behind quite a bit of this. Female autonomy is clearly feared by many. This is true whether they admit that to themselves or not.
Ultimately, we are also seeing here at least two clear political facts.
First, a lot of people do not think deeply about even their allegedly deeply-held “beliefs.” Instead, they are more malleable than they realize and often hold contradictory views when push comes to shove. Along these same lines, holding a specific view is often more a signifier about one’s partisan team than it is about really having reached those beliefs first and then choosing a team.
Second, elite behavior affects mass behavior. Trump’s foray into a pro-choice position (whilst couching in the magic words of “states’ rights”) is leading to supporters doing the exact same thing.
This reminds me of a niche meme some political science acquaintances like to share on Twitter:
This refers to the work of political scientist Philip Converse. A summary of one of his articles can be found here.
I would note the following as it pertains to this discussion (especially varying portions of 3-5):
Converse classifies voters into the following categories based on their understanding of basic ideological differentiation between ideas:
- Ideologues: These respondents relied on “a relatively abstract and far reaching conceptual dimension as a yardstick against which political objects and their shifting political significance over time were evaluated” (p.216).
- Near Ideologues: These respondents mentioned the liberal-conservative dimension peripherally, but did not appear to place much emphasis on it, or used it in a way that led the researchers to question their understanding of the issues.
- Group Interest: This group did not demonstrate an understanding of the ideological spectrum, but made choices based on which groups they saw the parties representing (e.g. Democrats supporting blacks, Republicans supporting big business or the rich). These people tended to not understand issues that did not clearly benefit the groups they referred to.
- Nature of the Times: The members of this group exhibited no understanding of the ideological differences between parties, but made their decisions on the “nature of the times.” Thus, they did not like Republicans because of the Depression, or they didn’t like the Democrats because of the Korean war.
- No issue content: This group included the respondents whose evaluation of the political scene had “no shred of policy significance whatever” (p. 217). These people included respondents who identified a party affiliation, but had no idea what the party stood for, as well as people who based their decisions on personal qualities of candidates.
And, therefore,
Converse also found that the mass public does not seem to share beliefs in any predictable way with elites or that the voting patterns of the people at the lower end of the scale are following the patterns of the ideologues and near ideologues who have a firm grasp of the issues.
So, to use those classifications, most voters will just roll with these changes rather than reassess their partisan allegiance. At a minimum people, in the main, do not choose parties based on policies. Instead, they end up following their parties even as those parties change on specific policies (among other implications).
Of course, Trump can still claim the mantle of the Roe slayer, which helps him with the hardcore pro-lifers, but it doesn’t help him with a huge swath of the population, as French notes:
It’s no wonder, then, that the pro-life cause is in a state of emergency so soon after its greatest legal triumph, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. It has lost every referendum since the Supreme Court decided Dobbs, including ballot measures in red states like Kentucky, Kansas, Montana and Ohio. Early polling indicates that Florida’s proposed pro-choice referendum may well cross the 60 percent threshold needed to pass and overturn the state’s six-week abortion ban. In fact, a majority of Republican voters appear to support the referendum.
Not to mention the lack of policy efficacy:
Even more ominously from a pro-life perspective, the abortion rate rose under Trump, and the total number of abortions has actually increased since the Dobbs decision.
I cannot think of a bigger “dog caught the car” moment than the GOP’s current dilemma with abortion.
*Just like with slavery, states’ rights in the abstract are not the issue. The slave states were pro-central government when it came to the Fugitive Slave Act, for example. Dred Scott was an anti-states’ right decision, for that matter.
**A few examples:
- Via the BBC: She was denied an abortion in Texas – then she almost died.
- Via NPR: New abortion laws changed their lives. 8 very personal stories.
- Via ABC News: Delayed and denied: Women pushed to death’s door for abortion care in post-Roe America.
***If I could pick one (and it is certainly more complicated than that) theological notion that utterly broke my brain in terms of my own theological views, it was Calvinism. Not only do I find key components of it, well, abhorrent, but if God has already determined who is saved and who isn’t, then what does any of this even matter?
****This paragraph probably only makes sense if you understand various aspects and variations of evangelical Christianity.
When political scientists look back on the current moment in the abortion rights debate, the cruelty and misogyny of the anti-abortion right in the drafting of laws limiting abortion, will be a significant reason for the increase in pro-choice views.
edit: Clinton got it right, abortion should be safe, legal and rare.
What a great post! Thank you, Dr. Taylor, for sharing your evolution.
If the state us going to force a woman to give birth to a child, particularly if the baby is the product of rape or incest or is horribly deformed, then the state can damned well pay 100% of that baby’s expenses till age 18, or 22 if he or she decides to go to college. And the mother should be paid a lavish stipend for the care of the child, since she may well have sacrificed her own career.
Not all, the Talmud is very clear and explicit that a fetus becomes a person at birth, not before.
This does not bother the “pro-life” religious people, they understand he is just saying that to get elected, he will do as they want later.
@charontwo:
Not just the Talmud, the Bible itself! There’s a passage that says that if a man strikes a woman and causes a miscarriage, he pays a fine. But the Bible is also very clear: blood money is not allowed. Murder is punished with execution. Even accidental killing is punished with exile. This is why most conservative Jewish scholars forbid elective abortion as an injury to the woman but stop short of calling it murder.
Ironically, French has stumbled on the reason why I am pro-choice, despite my personal dislike for abortion. The issue is too complex for blundering government to wade in on. How do you balance IVF and abortion? When is the life of the mother really in peril? Do you allow aborting of non-viable fetuses? These issues are too complex and too personal for government.
Good post!
The notion of the pro-life movement and the GoP being the dog that caught the car is entirely accurate.
And when French says:
I think it goes beyond that. So much dissonance and contradiction were subsumed in opposition to Roe that I think the pro-life movement, as we’ve known it, is pretty much at its end.
@charontwo:
The church of my youth, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, I believe still holds that “life” begins at birth and officially (if you asked my late brother, the Reverend, he’d say they’re not big on having official opinions) find abortion unfortunate, but allowable. I’ve read that Jerry Falwell’s brand of Baptists held similar beliefs, back before, as one wit quipped, Falwell learned how to spell abortion. They rewrote their theology to conform to their anti-choice fundraising. Can you spell Pharisee?
Isn’t this the same French column Marked Man, IIRC, brought up in the Forum a day or three ago? I commented there that French seemed to resolve the contradiction between liberal assertions it’s all about controlling women and his anti-choice acquaintances lack of any expressed desire to do so. He came around to realizing it’s not a matter of individuals wanting to control individual women, but a cultural thing. Christian’s want to believe this is a Christian nation/culture and impose their rules.
My own take is that a) all this talk of “life at conception” is a matter of religious belief, largely revolving around souls, b) this is clearly still on the wrong side of church/state which the Federalist Society has not yet torn down, and c) there is clearly no consensus on the issue. Everyone wants to argue on the basis of moral right/wrong. The real question should be how do we deal with this in the absence of consensus.
I said for years abortion was way more valuable to Republicans as an issue than it would be as an accomplishment. But, it’s a collective action problem, the decision was made by the Federalists on the Court, not by the campaign strategists.
Like you, Dr. Taylor, my religiosity was once much more conservative. Many things contributed to my change, but a big factor was my pregnancy. I had a wanted but very difficult, high-risk pregnancy, and after everything I went through to bring my daughter into the world, I was sure of two things: I could not imagine a woman going through all that if they did not profoundly want their child, and I would never, to the extent it depended on me, get pregnant again.
Just want to say that my mother had a miscarriage and she also had a child die soon after birth. The former was no big deal for her. It happened and fortunately the doctors were wrong about the possibilities of her ever having more children. Bring up my little brother James Matthew… And she would shut that shit down immediately. refused to talk about it at all.
One more thing: If 65 years on this planet has taught me anything it is that god, should she exist, does not give a tinker’s damn about anything we do. We are on our own.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I remember an aunt of mine saying that exact same thing when I was about nine, not to me personally, but I was listening to the grown-ups.
Nice job.
I was always pro-choice, but I didn’t dismiss all of the other side’s arguments. When does life begin? No one knows because it’s not a scientific, empirical question. It’s a choice. (Heh.) Since I don’t have a logical answer to the definition of life thing, it’s not my business, it’s the business of the woman. The fact that no one else has an answer based on sound reasoning tells me that it’s also no one else’s business. This country could use a heaping helping of MYOFB.
@charontwo:
@Hal_10000:
@gVOR10:
As I’ve mentioned before, medieval Catholic theology and law was that before c.18 weeks and “quickening” there was no “life” in their (then current) interpretation of a soul/body linkage.
Quite simply, life did NOT begin at conception.
Contemporary “fundamentalist” Catholics might like to argue the case with Thomas Aquinas; or Protestants with Augustine; or Evangelical “Old Testamenters” with rabbinical tradition.
The whole concept of “life at conception” is wholly at odds with almost 2000 years of Christian law and theology.
In both the Catholic and Protestant variants, the reason for the shift is primarily political, not theological (albeit on different bases, one relating to international Catholic reaction, the other to US evangelicals domestic causes).
Which is why most Anglicans tend to think that it’s nutcase fundamentalists at it again, and that UK statute law is in accordance with theological principles.
Not that I personally think Anglican theology is decisive re civil rights and female autonomy.
Just that the US framing of the debate is misleading: not all Christians share the fundis assumptions on this.
@Michael Reynolds:
Seems to me we had a thread some months ago about most arguments coming down to definitions of words. I’ve been putting “life” in scare quotes just as I often do with “conservative”. If someone starts talking about “life” without defining what they mean by the word, I tune out. As I said above, there’s no consensus. I don’t want to impose my views on anyone. And I sure as hell don’t want the holy rollers imposing theirs.
@JohnSF:
Not that it matters too much, but this appears a bit misleading.
Abortion was always considered a serious sin, but fell short of “true homicide” if performed prior to ensoulment – which occurred (according to Aristotle) after 40 days in the case of male fetuses and 90 days when the fetus is female.
Catholic doctrine only changed in the second half of the 19th century.
@charontwo:
Which is – biologically speaking – a nonsensical standard, too. Maybe religious traditions aren’t the best at determining these things.
@Hal_10000:
This is how I come down as well. I’d only add that I also believe a neglected, unloved child is its own kind of horrible misfortune and a child born of a forced pregnancy has a non-zero chance of such a sad upbringing. The complexity and personal impact that the government would wade into has ramifications well beyond the term of the woman’s pregnancy.
@JohnSF:
Without religion there is no reason for this to be an issue. Without an absence of church/state separation there is no reason for government involvement.
Let me try something out…
Veronica believes that abortion takes the life of a child. And that is gravely wrong. Immoral. If she were in charge, she would enact a total ban on abortions, no exceptions.
Veronica realizes that she is not in charge. And that most people do not hold her position. Rather, most people are uncomfortable with abortion, want some limits on it, but otherwise want it to be an available option.
Veronica’s #1 goal is to reduce abortions, because in her mind, that reduces the number of children who had their lives taken. Veronica considers the political landscape and comes to this conclusion:
If I advocate for my true position – a total ban – it will elicit a backlash, resulting in laws (as voted on by my fellow citizens) that place even fewer restrictions on abortion. End result: more abortions.
As such, I will hold my nose (clutch my pearls, rosary, misbahahs, japamala, etc) and advocate for laws that permit abortion only in cases of of rape, incest, and maternal health. Despite my sincere displeasure with this position, the end result will be: fewer abortions.
Veronica’s calculus seems morally defensible on utilitarian grounds, does it not? Now, of course, one might find utilitarianism to be indefensible. An abomination. But I don’t think that is what people are arguing when they (you) make the point about morality here.
@Mimai: I take your point. I am not saying that such reasoning never happens. For some I am sure it does.
But I also am curious, and this is an honest, non-snarky question: do you know any pro-life evangelicals? Many of them claim that abortion is the New Holocaust. And I would argue that it is hard to have a utilitarian compromise with the holocaust.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I appreciate the disclaimer (“honest, non-snarky”), but it is unnecessary — you’ve always been an honest chap with me. At least, that is my perception… based on irregular commenting. Always subject to change of course 😉
To answer your question, yes… yes I do. Like you, I’ve lived amongst them more and less throughout different times in my life. Family, friends, neighbors, etc. And also in a professional capacity.
And I too have heard claims similar to the “New Holocaust.” Nary a utilitarian argument (or even gesture at one) in these conversations.
In other conversations… with other Evangelicals (and similarly strident, devout believers)… I’ve witnessed some deep philosophical struggles being expressed. Shallow gripes too.
When I’m at my best, I try to be a bit more accommodating of contradictions in others. It’s damn tough though, especially when they are aggressively advocating for things I am opposed to. And when such advocacy hurts people.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Many of them claim that abortion is the New Holocaust.
Real question–do people who say this believe that a child died if a woman gets pregnant and then loses her pregnancy without even knowing it? Or do they simply not acknowledge or account for this part of life?
I think abortion could be a sin, but it can't be what the pro-life extremists turned it out to be. And French is one of them, and he must have deluded himself for a long time because he is not dumb. My other take is that white Evangelical and Southern Baptist guilt over their churches being on the pro-Nazi side in the Jim Crow south amplified the pro-life movement and made it into this extreme issue intended to mirror the moral cause they were on the wrong side of. Creating a righteous cause when everyone in your cause had failed in a clear and obvious away was a road for delusion.
@charontwo:
“Without religion there is no reason for this to be an issue.”
Not necessarily.
Religion is not the sole reason for desiring a definition of viable life, and related issues.
A good deal of early Christian law related to reaction against Classical acceptance of infanticide by exposure.
Thanks for a comprehensive exposition of an argument I have made myself many times. I’d like to say to a pro-lifer who argues for exceptions “See that three year-old child? Her mother was raped. She hates the child. Would it therefore be morally permissible to kill her? And if not, why do you say it would have been OK to do it before she was born?”
Like Steven, I ended up concluding that the only rational position is to leave decisions about terminating pregnancies to pregnant women, hopefully in consultation with their medical advisers (and partners where appropriate). I’m sure this will result in many decisions which I would not personally have made, but I have no moral right to impose my opinions on others. However I can also understand and respect that for people like Roman Catholics, for whom taking a life is a mortal sin, abortion is always wrong, no exceptions. I don’t, however, accept that they have any better right than I do to compel others to follow their moral convictions.
“Safe, legal and rare” always struck me as a good political position for Democrats to take on abortion. They should stick to it.
@drj:
I thought that is what I was saying, more or less.
The usual medieval understanding was: termination prior to c.18 weeks = “abortion”.
Generally regarded as a possible canonical offense, but not one subject to civil, or criminal penalties.
Termination after c.18 to 20 weeks, possible infanticide.
Not enormously different to a lot of modern European law: there is, usually, not a “right” to abortion, nor a prohibition of it.
In UK law, which is entirely statutory, not “rights” based one way or the other, abortion is legal with a fairly perfunctory medical authorisation up to 24 weeks.
Past that, it’s usually only legal in exceptional circumstance (non-viable pregnancy and/or severe maternal risk)
It is very, very difficult to get medical authority past 24 weeks.
It is a criminal offense to try to cause abortion without medical authorisation.
My point being: the US argumentation over abortion is rather US specific.
Other countries have often found bases for workable legal frameworks that don’t require absolute stances on life status.
@Ken_L:
“Safe, legal and rare” always struck me as a good political position for Democrats to take on abortion. They should stick to it.
Abortion is rare, though. What people meant by rare was more along the lines of shameful and that is what has changed. It’s no longer shameful in mainstream culture to get an abortion.
Evangelicals lie. If they actually believed abortion is murder they couldn’t work alongside pro-choice people, and definitely not next to a woman who’d had an abortion. But they do. So they don’t actually believe what they say, they’re just invested in finding the cruelest possible thing to a pregnant woman. Bullies.
As others have noted (today and yesterday), there aren’t really any secular sources arguing for “life begins at conception”. Pragmatic arguments look for bright lines; when I was young, the most common was “viability” but advances in medical technology have rendered that one much fuzzier.
I’d really like to ask some of these people whether they genuinely believe that most of the denizens of heaven are the souls of fetuses who were never born. Spontaneous abortion is waaaaay more common than they realize.
@Michael Reynolds: Or, maybe, just maybe, humans are complicated.
@Mimai: I thought a bit more about your question. Here’s a better, more complete answer.
There are certainly people like Veronica. Indeed, there may be a lot of them. However, the core of the pro-life movement leads to things like the Alabama IVF decision.
In general, the pro-life movement is not pragmatic. If it was pragmatic, and if it really wanted to decrease abortions, they would support sex education and contraception. Instead, they often are also the “abstinence only” types” and many of them are stating to become anti-birth control pill.
The moral imperative at the heart of all of this is deeply influenced by specific views on sex and the family.
And now it is going to get more extreme with people who think that the population needs to grow (a la Orban and such).
If we people were more utilitarian, then Veronica might be leading the charge. Instead, we have people protecting the AZ law from the 1860s.
@Steven L. Taylor:
People are complicated because they lie. Which is the less complicated choice, to tell the easily-remembered truth? Or to tell lies you have to work to keep straight? If you stick to the truth you never have to stop digging, because you never started digging.
Professions of faith are like stolen glory, it’s people taking credit for what they cannot actually do. They lie and pat themselves on the back for lying. They lie and use their lies to oppress other people, because weaponizing a lie makes it seem even more convincing – to the liar. I must believe in God, I just burned six heretics!
It’s not just religion. Here’s a secular lie: we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. Nah. No one actually believes that. The guys who signed that document were blatantly lying about what they really believed, but it sounded good and made them feel righteous. As they ordered a slave to be whipped.
It’s a subject I’ve given some thought to, having been a fantastic liar for a very long time. When you stop lying it is such a load off your mind. It’s liberating. It’s like you dropped 50 pounds without even having to use Ozempic. As Jesus, or some random medieval monk said, “. . .the truth will set you free.” Of course the full quote is a lie: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” And by using the shortened version, I was lying. To which I now confess. Truthfully.
Most people don’t think very often or very deeply about abortion (or any political issue), until some event happens to cause them to focus on it.
As in, you or a loved one having an unplanned pregnancy or one with complications. Then suddenly all those blithe, neat and tidy abstractions suddenly fly out the window.
I’ll throw my 2 cents in here:
IMHO, James and Steven are making an odd mistake here, ignoring what the Right does. The Right is against abortion, pure and simple. They have problems just saying this, because they (rightly, IMHO) fear the electoral backlash.
Instead, they want to keep things quiet until they have power.
Additionally, the Right opposes birth control. Not all of the people, but the people who are driving things do. Somebody joked that half of the Right is accusing Dems of being liars for pointing out what the half of the Right is openly saying.
@Steven L. Taylor:
This. It’s all about preventing sex (and punishing sex, at least for other people’s kids). The horror movie trope in which it’s the naughty girls who get slashed is playing directly to this mindset.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I appreciate the follow up. Is the Evangelical pro-life movement pragmatic? Depends.
If one is singularly focused on reducing abortion, then your point about sex ed and contraception is well-taken.
However, people (and movements) often have multiple foci. And because life is complicated (human too, or so I’ve read recently), real-world pragmatism ain’t as clean as theoretical pragmatism.
As you well know, many/most/all Evangelicals view premarital sex as, um, not so good. Similarly for contraception, though perhaps this is a bit lower on the moral abomination scale.
Given this, the “pragmatic” play isn’t so straightforward… especially when viewed from the outside by folks who are not part of the movement. Even more so when viewed by folks who are hostile to the movement.
Is it pragmatic to focus only on abortion laws? To hell with sex ed and contraception.
Is it pragmatic to [almost wrote “split the baby”] spread one’s focus across the three? Accepting less progress on any one in order to make gains across the board.
I think either could be considered “pragmatic.”
To be clear, I’m not arguing with you (Andy has that lane occupied for the weekend). I agree that the loudest Evangelical voices are frustratingly, dangerously inconsistent, incoherent, and [some other i-word]. I’m just trying stand in for the quieter voices. And also checking the consistency, moral/ethical coherence, etc of my own positions.
@Barry:
And honest perplexed question: I thought this post, and subsequent comments, were about what the right does. What makes you say otherwise?
@Mimai: To risk crossing the streams of different posts: I think that increased polarization makes pragmatic politics all the harder.
And, I also think that the dog catching the car has clearly exposed some contradictions that could be papered over as long as Roe was in place.
@Mimai:
No, these are the same thing. Evangelicals nearly all favor birth control for married couples. They oppose making birth control easily available because access to birth control removes the most important deterrent to teen sex — namely, the fear of pregnancy. It’s still all and only about preventing teen sex, and (both as deterrent and for its own sake) punishing fornicators.
(Aside: this makes the “rape or incest” exceptions easy to understand. Punishing the victim is wrong; even Evangelicals tend to get that. More evidence that it ain’t about the fetuses.)
When I was growing up, it was always the Catholics who had weird policies against birth control, and Evangelicals made fun of them for it.