Nobody Is Pro-Abortion

Here's the thing. Nobody is pro-abortion. Nobody's position on the issue is "We need more abortions in this country." Women are not out there thinking, "I hope I can get pregnant so that I can get an abortion again because that was super-awesome." 

In other words, at the heart of one of our most contentious issues is a pretty solid agreement that fewer abortions would be a good thing.

Just a couple of things get in our way.

Most obvious is a disagreement about methods. The thing is, we already know what works and what doesn't. Criminalizing abortion doesn't work. When abortions were illegal, all that meant was that women with resources could get safe abortions, women without resources would resort to back alleys and horrifying self-inflicted abortion attempts, and women facing serious complications (the kind of things that prompt people to say, "Well, surely it wouldn't be illegal in that situation" even though it would be) just died. 

What works is comprehensive sex education along with readily and easily available contraception and birth control. 

But for some reason, opponents of choice are largely opposed to these solutions as well. A report from The 74 shows that 13 states poised to criminalize abortion post-Roe also have no sex ed at all. It's reminiscent of the Rush Limbaugh flap; Sandra Fluke testified in favor of insurance coverage for contraceptives and Rush called her a slut and a prostitute and said that women getting this kind of contraceptive coverage should post videos of all the sex they were having so that "we can all watch."

It's one of the details of the debate that suggest something else is going on.

There is a sincere point of contention at the heart of debates about abortion, which is the question of when a human life begins. Birth? Conception? The truth is that we do not know. We may have really strong opinions, but we have zero evidence to back them up. Personally, I find the idea of a human soul taking seat at conception hard to accept (and it raises some serious questions about my twins, who were not twins until well after conception--so do they share a soul, did the soul sub-divide somehow, or do souls arrive sometime after the fetus hits a certain number of cells?)

But if you believe that life begins at conception, wouldn't taking steps to make sure conception didn't occur make sense?

That's another thing that gets in the way of this debate. All the ifs.

If you thought the tiny life was incredibly important, would you fight for a pre-natal and birthing level of spending and support that would rival our military spending (and all free to mothers)? If you believed that the tiny life were hugely important, wouldn't you be doing something about the fact that our nation has the worst laws for new parent leave? Why, if this tiny new life is so important, does legislation say that the need of a new parent to spend time parenting in those first critical months is less precious that an employers need to get their employees back to work ASAP? 

Put another way-- if abortion is murder, does that mean a society that fails to provide all necessary support for expectant and birthing mothers is guilty of murder? 

And why, if young humans are of such great importance, are we not moving heaven and earth to create the best education and support system in the history of the world?

There are a lot of calls of hypocrisy against the pro-life crowd, and honestly, some of them are disingenuous; the answer in many cases ("why should a woman's autonomy be sacrificed for a fetus") is "because we believe that a fetus is also an actual live human being." 

But there is also a lot of rhetoric that suggests that, for some people, abortion and contraception are just a way for women to escape consequences for having sex (particularly for having sex for reasons other than procreation), and this is about making sure those naughty women don't Get Away With Something. This appears to be yet another great American debate in which we don't talk about what we're really talking about. 

That's particularly troubling this time because of the implications in Justice Alito's leaked opinion, which suggest that LGBTQ marriage and Brown v. Board of Education are also in jeopardy under the same reasoning. It's impossible not to see the opinion as an attempt to roll the clock back--way, way back-- to days when white guys were in charge and women and minorities knew their place. For beleaguered public education, this opens up one more front for attack.

The short version of all this:

Making abortion illegal will not stop abortion. It will put the lives and health of many women (mostly poor ones) in jeopardy. There are other things we could do that would be far more effective at reducing the number of abortions, but first we have to decide whether we want to reduce abortions or punish women for behavior we don't approve of. 

The decision to have an abortion is rarely an easy one, and often a very rough one. Pete Buttigieg's response to a question about third trimester abortions remains one of the best statements on the subject-- it's a hugely difficult decision, but there is no way the choice would be improved, morally or medically, by having the government step in to dictate the choice. It's a sensible answer and, ironically, exactly then answer I would expect from a small-government conservative.