Why Pro-Lifers Should Vote Blue: The Catch

Intro; The Misters President; The Unsafety Net

So far we’ve taken a look at some different ways of approaching pro-life voting, some data about how Democratic administrations and policies lead to an actual decrease in abortion rates, and some reasons why that correlation seems to be the case. All that, taken together, leads me to the conclusion that voting blue is more pro-life than voting red, even if we (quite artificially) restrict our definition of “pro-life” to the unborn. In fact we should do no such thing: the current crisis has made it clear not only that universal access to health care is an urgent need, but that many people who style themselves pro-life are thoroughly scornful of the lives of the elderly and the disadvantaged. Moreover, both war and the death penalty are life issues, and while the Democratic Party is bad on both, the GOP is consistently worse.

But I said from the beginning that there was a catch, and it is time to discuss it. The catch is that the DNC has made pro-choice law a plank of its platform; and, as pragmatic as I’ve argued we ought to be, that does matter.

A system of law that declines to recognize certain categories of people as human is in serious trouble. Dehumanizing people on grounds of ethnicity or class or citizenship, or whatever else, is common in any system; but when such dehumanization is enshrined in law, that dehumanization has a tendency to accelerate and calcify. Cultures influence laws, to be sure, but laws also influence cultures—you don’t have to be an Integralist to recognize that. Even while arguing that Christians, and pro-lifers in general, would do better to vote for Democrats rather than Republicans, I don’t in the least want to discourage people from attempting to reform the Democratic Party on the specifically legal question of recognizing the unborn as people.

I’m more prepared to put law on the backburner for a few reasons, some of which I’ve already discussed. One reason I haven’t discussed so far is concern for the legal status and autonomy of women: I do think preserving a life is more important than preserving bodily autonomy, but it’s still important to protect bodily autonomy both culturally and legally, and laws against abortion have been and continue to be applied (or even deliberately formulated) in ways that endanger women’s independence. (This especially applies to women of color; personally, I don’t think it’s a coïncidence that this young Alabama woman outrageously charged with manslaughter for being shot and losing her baby in 2018 was black.) The pro-life movement as a whole has not grappled seriously with the concernes raised by many feminists, both pro-choice and pro-life, preferring to dismiss these issues as mere ideology. This bad-faith refusal to engage both makes pro-choice rhetoric about autonomy more credible, and exacerbates real misogyny among pro-life people.

I can’t truthfully claim to have a good solution here. And of course, our political system was not designed to fit neatly into Catholic Social Teaching, nor was either party. For that matter, while I hold to a pro-life ethic, I am less than impressed with the pro-life movement en masse; it helped elect one of the most dangerous, corrupt, incompetent presidents we’ve ever had, one who clearly has no problem killing people, letting sick people die for profit, and ripping families apart. I think there is a “best course of action under the circumstances,” and I’ve done my best to outline what I think it is and why I think so; but I won’t pretend to have dogmatic confidence in my conclusions—only prudential confidence. Or, more briefly: I hope and pray that I’m right about this.