Maybe We Should Call them ‘Pro-ban’

I just want you to watch something.

This video contains the portion of a speech that Michelle Obama gave today, were she addresses the men in her audience and pleads with them to care about what’s been happening to women’s healthcare in the wake of Dobbs. I don’t expect you to agree with every word.  I just want you to hear it and think about it.

I really, actually do believe that most people who call themselves pro-life honestly want to save babies.

I no longer think the career pro-life celebrities actually want to save babies. I think they want to make money and advance a dangerous right-wing agenda, and that they’ll gladly lie about babies to do it. But the rank and file pro-lifers who organize diaper drives and free baby layettes, the people who are so glad to help out when a pregnant woman in the community needs help, they actually really do want to save babies. And so do I.

But the pro-life movement doesn’t have an answer for any of these very real things that Michelle is naming.

All the pro-life movement has clamored for, for fifty years, was a ban. They didn’t think about how to write that ban so it somehow only prevented elective abortions; they just wanted their ban. And now we’ve got scattershot bans all over the country that are maiming and killing women even though their babies are already dead. We’ve got doctors terrified to save their patient’s life because they’re not sure she’s sick enough that a jury will agree they only acted to save the life of the mother. We’ve got hospitals going against mothers’ best interests and letting them miscarry alone. And the pro-life movement is responding by gaslighting and pretending this isn’t happening, rather than trying to fix it. I’m forced to believe that they don’t care.

The issue of deserts where people won’t be able to access obstetric services at all, is another thing the pro-life movement doesn’t care about, which is very real, and it’s going to kill unborn babies as well as their moms– not to mention discouraging people from starting families in the first place. And, of course, women actually do need gynecological healthcare when we’re not pregnant. If you care about women in general, this ought to matter to you.

Holding a diaper drive is laudable, but you can’t diaper drive your way out of this.

I know some incredible adoptive moms and dads, but you cannot adopt your way out.

Everyone who helps out a poor mom in a difficult situation is doing a wonderful thing, but you can’t mutual aid your way out either.

If you ever want to be a country that values life from womb to tomb, you’re going to have to re-think everything and come up with a very different game plan, because the pro-life movement has gotten us into a mess they can’t fix, and they don’t even want to fix it.

If all you want is a ban, well, you’ve got it. Abortion rates are going up. But at least you can punish people for those abortions.

I know which I’d rather have.

Maybe we should just stop calling it the pro-life movement, and call it “pro-ban.”

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.