A CRUEL PRO-LIFE STANCE: So coming home from the pregnancy center last night I was thinking about something you’ll hear at times from the mouths of people who oppose abortion. (Almost always, but not quite always, these people are men.) “If you aren’t prepared to do the time, don’t do the crime”–in other words, you chose to have sex, so now you have to live with the consequences, i.e. pregnancy, giving birth, and either raising the child or seeing her placed for adoption. Maggie Gallagher rallied some righteous fury against this stance in the chapter on abortion in Enemies of Eros (and you should absolutely read this chapter–it was a catalyst in turning my friend the Rat pro-life). She identified a Naomi Wolf-esque argument for abortion as “morality as sadism”–women can have abortions as long as they feel really bad, conflicted, and mournful about it–but I think that description could just as well summarize this argument against abortion.

There are (at least!) two other huge problems with this kind of thinking: First, any stance that treats children as punishment is anti-family, anti-life, and deeply anti-Christian.

Second–and this is why I was thinking about this last night–many women with crisis pregnancies view the abortion as their punishment. They know abortion hurts. They know it’s taking a life. They have friends who have had abortions. They know. And if you tell them, “You do the crime, you do the time,” they think, “That’s right. I have to take responsibility for my mistakes–by not inflicting those mistakes on a child. So I’ll get rid of it.” To quote the famous Frederica Mathewes-Green line, “There is tremendous sadness, loneliness in the cry, ‘A woman’s right to choose.’ No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg.” Casting her as a Jezebel deserving of punishment only plays into the view many women already have of their situations–and that will push them right onto the abortionist’s table.

If you hear someone saying this kind of thing, please speak up, let him or her know that this stance hurts women and denigrates children. It is not pro-life.