{"id":13979,"date":"2019-05-17T09:41:31","date_gmt":"2019-05-17T15:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=13979"},"modified":"2019-05-17T09:41:31","modified_gmt":"2019-05-17T15:41:31","slug":"who-are-the-real-pro-lifers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2019\/05\/who-are-the-real-pro-lifers.html","title":{"rendered":"Who are the real pro-lifers?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

One reads a lot, these days, about what it means to be \u201cpro-life\u201d \u2014 and it usually goes something like this:<\/p>\n

People who merely believe abortion should be illegal, or that it is gravely morally wrong to obtain, perform, or advocate for abortion, are not \u201creally pro-life.\u201d\u00a0 No, to be a \u201ctrue pro-lifer\u201d means to object to any sort of intentional killing, especially State-approved killing such as euthanasia\/assisted suicide as well as the death penalty.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s getting tiresome.<\/p>\n

Yes, much of the time, these demands come from people who do not identify as \u201cpro-life\u201d in the first place, but simply want to use this rhetorical device as a means of shaming social conservatives.\u00a0 It\u2019s the playbook of \u201cmake them live by their own rules.\u201d<\/p>\n

But this is also coming from Catholics who do call themselves pro-life, but have adopted this \u201creal pro-life\u201d position as a way of avoiding saying anything that will upset anyone, because they know that \u201cextensively ramp-up social welfare benefits\u201d is going to make progressives happy regardless of whether they believe that there\u2019s anything wrong with abortion or not.<\/p>\n

It goes like this:<\/p>\n

People only ever have abortions if they are in deep distress.\u00a0 We therefore need to remedy that distress, to end abortion.\u00a0 And if we simply outlaw abortion without remedying the conditions which drive women to abortion, well . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And what comes after the \u201cwell . . . \u201c?\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s, \u201cthey\u2019ll get abortions illegally, or in another state.\u201d\u00a0 And maybe that\u2019s a reasonable concern.\u00a0 But sometimes, in the end, it\u2019s \u201cdeprived of abortion, they\u2019ll suffer financially\u201d or \u201cthe children will have tragic lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, I don\u2019t mean to say that I am indifferent to the financial well-being of women, but this point of view is a path towards \u201cabortion isn\u2019t a sin if the mother had no other way to avoid hardship in her life\u201d \u2014 and ultimately the \u201chardship\u201d widens from \u201cmired in poverty\u201d to \u201cunable to fulfill her career dreams\u201d and from \u201ctrapped in a relationship with an abusive man\u201d to \u201cunable 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, again, there are far too many people \u201cshouting their abortions\u201d for me to be comfortable with the idea that women have abortions because they are poor, so that the \u201cfix\u201d for abortion is to end poverty.<\/p>\n

In fact, in an old blog post from 2015<\/a>, I came across some information on abortion prevalence by economic class.\u00a0 In a paper which purported to \u201cprove\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s that data (in a new-and-improved format):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 even if there is a point at which women\u2019s 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 (I am curious, incidentally, about what these statistics look like now, given that the birth rate has been dropping year after year.)<\/p>\n

So if, when it comes down to it, you simply don\u2019t 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\u2019t get to call yourself pro-life.<\/p>\n

(And, incidentally, I am not speaking merely in the abstract and building a strawman.\u00a0 A woman who was once a close friend of mine in grad school went down this path from \u201clove them both\u201d to \u201ca woman isn\u2019t culpable if she felt compelled to get an abortion\u201d to \u201cabortion isn\u2019t really a sin.\u201d)<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a smart article<\/a> on why pushing these laws, and losing the support of the public which was increasingly supporting milder abortion restrictions, is a mistake.\u00a0 Here\u2019s another article on why it\u2019s the right thing<\/a> to do.\u00a0 Each of these are written by authors whose work is generally intelligent.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the right thing to do, strategically?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lastly, I know that, despite this being the Catholic channel, there are likely readers who don\u2019t believe there is truly anything wrong with abortion in the first place and simply can\u2019t engage with the fundamental premise of the article.\u00a0 Try substituting \u201cchild abuse\u201d and \u201croot causes of child abuse\u201d and \u201ccriminalizing it will do more harm than good because parents will simply lock their children up to avoid being discovered.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/March_for_Life_(Washington,_D.C.)#\/media\/File:March_for_Life,_Washington,_D.C._(2013).JPG; By Miss.Monica.Elizabeth \u2013 Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=25829162<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One reads a lot, these days, about what it means to be \u201cpro-life\u201d \u2014 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 \u201creally pro-life.\u201d\u00a0 No, to be a \u201ctrue pro-lifer\u201d means to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[198,529],"class_list":["post-13979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abortion","tag-pro-life"],"yoast_head":"\nWho are the real pro-lifers?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"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\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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