The Seductive Simplicity of Pro-Life Ideology

The Supreme Court's repeal of Roe has drastically changed the political discourse around abortion. While this is obviously far less important than its impact on women and pregnant people in particular, it is something worth understanding for the hard political fight ahead.

I grew up in an intensely anti-abortion milieu (conservative rural Great Plains Catholic) and anti-abortion protests were the first political activism I ever engaged in. My views have changed to supporting legal abortion, but it is still not easy to shake the feelings of guilt and shame around renouncing a belief that I once held deep and is still strongly held by many people I love. This was very different from my support of social democracy, which also went against my upbringing.

Much of that has to do with being immersed in pro-life ideology, a way of thinking that is actually not much understood by its opponents. If you aren't able to access any alternatives, the pro-life movement's ideology is seductively simple. The formulation goes as such: "Life begins at conception, therefore abortion is mass murder, and therefore abortion supercedes every other political issue until the slaughter is ended." 

It is seductive because it makes a very complex issue easy to apprehend. This is why conservatives have been freaking out so much over the story of the ten year old rape victim in Ohio who got an abortion in Indiana. Their worldview simply cannot account for such cases and refuses to hear them. In their minds sex is sinful and if you engage in it you must face the consequences of your actions. They try to handwave away rape and incest but when it's a ten year old they really just can't. They tried denying reality, and now are just trying to punish the doctor. 

It is also seductive because it allows people who are actively opposed to social justice feel as if they are the righteous ones. Support killer cops, wealth inequality, and opposed integration and universal health care? Well, the liberals on the other side support the mass murder of the unborn. What about that? Being "pro-life" means you can support forced birth but not subsidized childcare, birth control, well-funded schools, maternity leave, or universal healthcare and not see any problem because you have the correct belief on the one issue that trumps them all.

It's also a very hard position to argue against because it follows from the first, farcical proposition that a zygote is equivalent to a human life. That proposition, which is official doctrine in the church that raised me, is the linchpin of the whole ideology. If you are a devout American Catholic, for example, questioning that doctrine is equivalent to renouncing one's faith, which for the pious is unacceptable. It is incredibly hard to question the thing that gives your life meaning. As I mentioned, my break with this way of thinking still makes me feel as if I have done a terrible, terrible thing even though I am sure I am right and they are wrong. 

This is why I find the statements of pro-choice activists about the main motivation of the pro-life movement being controlling women's bodies to be incomplete and self-serving. The biggest anti-abortion advocates I know are all women. Controlling women's bodies is certainly the outcome, and many politicians appear to find this to be a reason to oppose reproductive rights, but for the average pro-lifer the motivations are very different and harder to address. 

The older I get, the more difficult I think it is to fight a powerful ideology. For example, despite the manifest failures our system a majority of Americans think that with hard work alone you can get ahead in life. A snaller but significant chunk think that trickle down economics works That's just complete bollocks but ideology is all about spinning bullshit into belief. If the pro-life ideology can be fought, it can happen through highlighting the ways that Roe's end has exposed the bullshit of the simple abortion narrative. Plenty of cases are showing how blanket prohibitions on abortion lead to women dying. If we are to restore reproductive rights these very horrible stories need to be spread far and wide so that adherents to the seductively simple pro-life ideology are forced to reckon with reality. That might sound impossible, but I managed to come over from the other side. 

How the SCOTUS Leak Exposed the Games Being Played With Abortion

Abortion has been a massively contentious political issue for my whole entire lifetime (and I ain't young). It was probably the first political issue I really learned about, growing up as a devout Catholic with ardently anti-abortion family members. As part of my youth group at church I even attended a couple of local anti-abortion protests, the first time I ever protested anything.

Of course, I later ended up in grad school in the humanities, where the feelings about abortion are pretty much the polar opposite. This experience (which I like to call "bubble jumping") has maybe given me some special insight into the current reactions to the leaked SCOTUS opinion on Roe and Casey.

Pro-choice folks have been justifiably enraged over the theft of rights by the hands of a court put in place by presidents who didn't win the popular vote and whose draft decision reads like something out of the late 1800s. Much of this rage has been vented at the Democratic Party for failing to stop this, and prominent Democrats have been having to play catchup with the mood of their base. The reaction by anti-abortion types has been far more muted. Most of what I see is more about the leak itself than the prospect of their dream of killing Roe coming true after five decades of grinding battle. 

I think an explanation for all of these reactions is that the political games that have been played with abortion for my entire life have been exposed. Alito et al have flung the gaming table over, chips flying. I want to start with the games played by Democratic politicians, then the more significant ones played by Republicans.

A lot of the commentary I've seen on Twitter focuses on how Democrats failed to codify Roe into law despite having some opportunities. While this claim over-simplifies the ease of these opportunities, there is something to it. Namely, Democrats know that while they are in the majority on abortion, they are a diverse coalition of groups that can't afford to alienate too many people, lest they defect. There are plenty of Republicans, for instance, who are pro-choice in their private views, but they maintain party discipline when it comes to voting. Instead of being a coalition of groups, Republicans are an ideological bloc, and thus have an in-built advantage despite that bloc's minoritarian nature. 

The game the Democrats kept playing with their base was proclaiming that Roe was settled, a kind of bulwark or firewall, so it did not need to be codified. That game allowed Democrats to get the votes of pro-choicers while trying not to alienate swing voters. They never believed that the Right's onslaught on the courts, especially pronounced in Trump's administration, could actually overturn Roe. 

This is related to another game, that the Republicans' thwarting of the will of the people via undemocratic means or breaking established norms (the stolen 2000 election, Garland's nomination being crushed, Barrett's being rammed through, gerrymandering, Senate filibuster) did not necessitate an escalation. Instead their response was to tell people to keep voting. And while that is a necessary component of a strategy to preserve Roe, it is obvious now that it is hardly sufficient. The Court's leaked decision has exposed the Democrats' failed gamble at the political gaming table.

This exposure has enraged the Democratic base, but it has also quieted the Republican one. The Republican Party's biggest game on abortion was to constantly use it as a way to rile up their base and get support (especially for judges who would gut regulation on behalf of their corporate backers). It worked, even though the anti-Roe position is very unpopular. They knew, however, that the average anti-abortion person is several degrees more passionate about this topic than the average person who supports Roe, mostly passively. In this way they were able to pull off the political magic trick of having a very unpopular opinion that actually GAINED them votes. 

Unfortunately for Republicans, the leak has exposed the true stakes at the gaming table, and the momentum of outrage has completely shifted. This is especially the case for younger voters, the kinds of people most likely to get into the streets. Republicans and anti-abortion types have not been rejoicing about winning a victory because the coming backlash is easy to see. 

Also, the anti-abortion movement (less so the Republican party itself) has talked to its membership as if THEY are the majority, and lot of people in this movement actually believe it. The public reaction is proof positive that they most certainly are not, and many of them I think are genuinely shocked. 

Additionally, there's a big game that's been exposed as a cheat. The anti-abortion movement treats ending a pregnancy as tantamount to murder and a fetus as a full-fledged human being, but this decision does nothing of the kind. It does not ban abortion nationwide, it only allows states to do so. It also does not establish fetal personhood. This Court is as friendly as anti-abortion folks could ever hope to have, and even now they are not getting a decision that fully coincides with their ideology. They were promised something that could never actually be delivered, and now they are being forced to defend a suboptimal outcome from getting rolled back. 

GOP politicians are desperate to scream about leaks because they don't want to have to defend the SCOTUS decision, either to the public or their opponents. Democrats are scrambling to appease their enraged base while fully knowing the time to stop this would have been in 2015 when they stood by while Obama was not allowed to nominate a justice. Both have been playing games on abortion, and now the bill is coming due. I don't know where things are heading, all I know is that the old rules of the abortion game, in place my whole life, are gone forever. 

Abortion, The Right's Indispensable Weapon

There's a reason that Citizen Ruth's satire of the abortion issue was made by a fellow Nebraskan

The news came this week that Donald Trump will be personally attending the annual March For Life march in Washington DC. This has never happened before, and is ironic considering Trump's earlier statements of being pro-choice and my absolutely certain belief that he has paid for at least one abortion in his life.

It is entirely in character considering Trump's craven, transactional instincts. If he waves the Bible and goes to Liberty and says all kinds of anti-abortion stuff he expects conservative Christians to vote for him in return. These Christians are also so craven that they do not care if Trump is a greedy, corrupt, immoral sexual abuser as long as he puts their judges on the bench.

Both Trump and conservative Christian leaders understand that abortion is their indispensable weapon. Christians who might balk at Trump's words and behavior, or question his other policies, are simply told that they HAVE to vote for him or else condemn the unborn to genocide. This issue has helped tie Catholics and Evangelicals together in a common political alliance, when those groups have traditionally been on opposite sides. Hell, even in private today they still talk the worst shit about each other. (I will admit that my disdain for American evangelicalism began with my Catholic upbringing and the fundie kid in school who said I wasn't a real Christian.)

I have special insight into abortion's power as an issue, having been brought up in a very anti-abortion devout Catholic milieu. In my rural Nebraska stomping grounds you can't throw a rock without hitting an anti-abortion billboard or bumper sticker. Abortion was and remains the sole political issue that priests would consistently expound on from the pulpit. We heard about it all the time in youth groups, and saw anti-abortion flyers on the church bulletin board. (My all time fave was for an event called "Guns For Life" at a shooting range.) I have been involved in many political protests over the years, but my first protests were anti-abortion protests.

My views on this subject have changed since then, but it wasn't easy. I still feel residual pangs of guilt over my newfound support for legalized abortion, and am more hesitant to talk about this political issue with my family over any other. (Just typing that last sentence made my heart race.) This issue was made the absolute center of my moral universe in my youth, and that is not something you can simply uproot from your soul.

One huge mistake that pro-choice folks make is that the stance of so many anti-abortion folks is just as cynical as Trump's. It's not. There is a genuine and deeply abiding belief that life begins at conception and that abortion is tantamount to murder. While I often hear it said that pro-lifers want to control women's bodies, which is true, that is not the sum total of their reasoning, or even their primary motivation. If it was, this movement would not be nearly so important to the Republican party.

The GOP knows that they (excuse the expression) hold a valuable trump card. For a large chunk of voters it is just flat-out morally unacceptable for them to vote for a pro-choice candidate, and nothing will change that. Like the gun issue, abortion is not a political view, it is a fundamental attribute of their very identity as human beings. Furthermore, they will go to the polls and vote even for Trump because if one truly believes they can stop a mass murder, they are obligated to do it even if The Donald is their champion.

Trump knows he's in trouble, that's part of the reason he's going to March For Life. It's the same reason he has prioritized putting judges on the bench. He knows that there is a fervent core of his supporters who will snap to attention when he and other Republican leaders invoke the fetuses. This will happen no matter how horribly Trump fails and whatever crimes he commits. If that's not an indispensable weapon, I don't know what is.

Lessons From Living in the Anti-Abortion Bubble

Citizen Ruth, by my fellow Nebraskan Alexander Payne, seems more relevant than ever

I grew up in a very devoutly Catholic family in small-town Nebraska in the 1980s and early 1990s. I heard about abortion constantly from a very young age, it might have been the first political issue I was even really aware of. The first time I ever participated in a political protest was holding an "Abortion Kills Children" sign as part of one of the nationwide protest days (not sure which, but it was on a Sunday.) I participated in this event multiple times.

I was an altar boy who for a time thought about going for the priesthood, and was a member of Catholic youth groups in high school. My experience in the church was very positive, so I was primed to accept its line on abortion uncritically. Most of the congregants of the church were, like me of German ancestry. After the world wars our forebears had chosen complete assimilation to avoid having their patriotism questioned. This meant that the local cuisine was drained of any of its ethnic flavor, and that the brand of Catholicism was especially zealous. In other communities in America being Catholic is part of being Irish, Italian, Mexican, etc. Where I am from being Catholic is part of being Catholic.

The one and only political commitment demanded of this brand of Catholicism was opposition to abortion. There was not a month that went by when it did not make its way into the priest's sermons. The church bulletin boards always had information about anti-abortion organizations. Abortion was really the one and only time we were ever asked as Catholics to apply our faith to society. Jesus' exhortations to protect the most vulnerable among us were often interpreted to mean that we were demanded by God to defend "the unborn." (This had the added effect of not challenging the congregants on their support for the Reagan era assault on the poor.) After being told this message every week for years from the mouths of some of the people in my life that I trusted the most, it's no wonder I found myself carrying signs in anti-abortion protests.

My views have changed a lot since then, but I think my experience in the bubble might shed some light on the recent wave of draconian laws outlawing abortion across the country that I hope can aid in fighting back.

The first thing to understand is that the anti-abortion movement bears some similarities to the NRA. In both cases the majority of the country does not agree with the goals of these groups. Banning abortions outright and lifting all restrictions on guns are very unpopular positions. However, both movements have captured one of the major parties, which means that Republicans who are not really anti-abortion in their hearts (or who even ask their mistresses to get them) will vote for the most extreme abortion restrictions to maintain the support of the large group of one-issue voters.

The pro-gun and anti-abortion movements are also similar in that while they are a minority, their members care a LOT more about these issues than the people in favor of legalized abortion and gun control. There's obviously a strong pro-choice movement out there, but few people who agree with legalized abortion are part of it. The anti-abortion movement also benefits from the mobilization resources possessed by churches. In order to push this movement back, the silent majority of those in favor of choice needs to be mobilized with equal fervor, because those on the pro-life side never rest.

Having grown up in that milieu, I understand why. If someone really and truly believes that an abortion is tantamount to murder, and that God himself demands that something must be done about it, it is extremely hard for them not to put everything they've got into this issue. Some folks on the other side make the mistake of assuming that the cynical exploitation of these beliefs by conservative politicians means that pro-lifers don't really believe that they are stopping genocide, but I can assure you that they definitely do. There really isn't any point to changing anyone's mind, the real issue is getting that aforementioned silent majority engaged. Once the Republican party has to pay a price for its abortion position, it will go back to treating it as a matter of conscience among its members as opposed to a core priority.

While the belief that abortion equals murder among pro-lifers is a sincere one, the issue does indeed carry symbolic weight. If you come to my home region, you will notice that there are anti-abortion signs everywhere, unlike any other political issue. On my last trip back I got to thinking about this, and I think this tendency, along with the local churches' emphasis on it, demonstrates that abortion is a general proxy for traditional society. In the places where anti-abortion feeling is the hottest, there is also anxiety about the loss of "traditional values." This was a common refrain in church, but the one specific political issue this always seemed to land on was abortion. It stood in for anxieties about the nuclear family, women's sexuality, and women's liberation in general. It was about more than "controlling women's bodies" because women who were committed to traditional values were the staunchest supporters of the pro-life movement in my community. (You could call this the Schlafly Effect.)

However, it is not merely a political issue. Like guns, it is embedded in the very IDENTITY of those who call themselves "pro-life." This means fighting back against this determined minority is going to be tough, but the only way to do it is with a fight. The other side is not going to rest, nor or they going to change their minds.

A Reproductive Rights Dialogue

A: Women do not have a right to terminate unwanted pregnancies and abortion should be outlawed.

B: OK, so I assume you support making contraception more available to prevent unwanted pregnancies, right?

A: Oh no no no. That is also immoral and would encourage immoral behavior. I also don't want education on how to use contraception available in schools

B: Well then I guess you think women ought to remain abstinent until marriage?

A: Actually, no. I mean, if young women are not having sex with young men they might get frustrated and shoot up a school or run over people with a van or something. For the good of society women need to be fucking these men.

B: What about the children born of unwanted pregnancies? Do you support increased funding for children's health care, pre-K education, and child care subsidies?

A: Are you kidding me? That's SOCIALISM, man. No way.

B: Then I assume you support a broad range of families being able to adopt children their mothers want to give up?

A: Are you kidding me! We can't have these children raised by homosexuals or atheists.

B: Then at least shouldn't pregnant mothers be better covered by health insurance? America has horribly high rates of infant mortality and of women dying in childbirth.

A: Again, socialism. And if those women were more responsible they would not have gotten pregnant.

B: I mean, just, wow. OK then, what on earth could you call this ideology you subscribe to?

A: Pro-life, of course!

The Moral Rot of "Fetuses Uber Alles"

It looks as if the election in Alabama is shifting back to Roy Moore. The Republicans who had condemned him have now embraced him, with Donald Trump giving him an endorsement today. They have made their usual Leninist calculation, as with Trump's nefarious tape, that they can win the election and face zero consequences for supporting sex abusers.

In Alabama this has to do with the fact that the state is a very conservative place where a Democrat winning is seen as an impossibility. An article in the Times today discusses this, as one Democratic operative even admits "I don't think the Lord Jesus could win as a Democrat in Alabama."One of the reasons cited in this article, and one I have seen in many articles about Moore, is abortion. Many Republican voters claim they will never support a pro-choice candidate.

I have always wondered about the limits of this, since I know a lot of people who hold similar views. For them abortion is the ultimate issue, and even when they do not like the Republicans on offer (like Donald Trump), they tell themselves "at least they don't support abortion." This is the absolution that forgives all sins. A vain, bigoted, misogynist, greedy, mean-spirited, thrice divorced man like Trump, who would seem to be the opposite of Christ's example, suddenly becomes God's anointed once he appoints an anti-abortion justice to the Supreme Court.

I have long disagreed with the Fetuses Uber Alles position, but I once did give it some respect as an expression of moral righteousness. I do not accept the premise that a zygote is the equivalent to a human being, but those I know who subscribe to this position take it very seriously, contrary to the stereotypes that many pro-choice people have. (The argument that pro-lifers are merely about controlling women's bodies is a self-serving interpretation that does not tell the whole story, and part of the reason that advocates for abortion rights keep losing, since they so fundamentally misunderstand their opponents.)

Well, those days are over. Fetuses Uber Alles is nothing but a dirty cop-out. It is an easy way for religious conservatives to deny their complicity in the horrible immorality of the policies pushed by the people they vote for. After Trump and Moore I am convinced that this crowd simply likes voting for conservatives and approves of their policies, and saying they are doing it for the fetuses gives them moral cover to be immoral. "Fetuses Uber Alles" does a lot of work in our current political discourse in this regard, which is why I am skeptical the anti-abortion Democrats can somehow get votes that would normally go Republican.

Those folks will still vote Republican, and will maybe feel a little bad when their neighbors are deported, but will always be able to console themselves by saying that they are still saving the fetuses. I honestly don't know what is to be done about Fetuses Uber Alles, because no one I know who subscribes to that outlook seems capable of being shaken from their position. As Alabama shows, it is an extremely powerful wall to break down. The only real solution is to make sure that we are more organized than they are, and I fear the necessary work in that regard isn't getting done.

The Need To Understand Soft Middle Of The Anti-abortion Movement

Like a lot of people, the shooting in Colorado Springs has shocked and horrified me.  As always happens after mass shootings and terror attacks, the takes have been hot and unending.  One thing that has struck me, however, is the depiction of those opposed to abortion.  While I understand why pro-choice people would lash out in anger after this attack, they are repeating the common mistake of failing to understand their opponents.

I have been involved in a few protests over the years, but the first ones I ever attended were anti-abortion protests.  There was one every year in my hometown that involved long lines of people on the two main streets (forming a cross) holding signs that read “Abortion Kills Children.” I participated in that protest at least twice.  My parents both were and are strongly against legalized abortion, and they still attend anti-abortion events.  Other members of my family are also very vocal and politically active on the issue.  My views on the subject have changed, although I understand where my family members are coming from, even if I don’t agree with them.

One thing I have noticed, ever since I was a child, was that the ways that many pro-choice activists characterized opponents of abortion seemed completely alien to my experience.  One accusation I kept hearing was that those against abortion were simply misogynistic men who wanted to control women. This surprised me, since the biggest and most passionate opponents of abortion I knew then (and now) were women.  These were also not meek, submissive women, either.  The men I knew didn’t seem particularly patriarchal in their attitudes compared to the rest of the male population.  By the way, I am not discounting in any way that criminalizing abortion carries with it an attempt to control and limit women.  However, to view opposition to abortion only through that lens is a distortion that will make it extremely difficult to understand the resilience and power of the anti-abortion movement.

My concern with abortion in my youth had everything to do with growing up in the John Paul II Catholic Church.  It was the one and only political issue that the priests would speak on from the pulpit, and they spoke on it incessantly.  I swear it was the subject of every other homily I heard, and I heard a lot of them.  I was a very devout believer, and my relationship with the abortion issue, like a lot of other Catholics in places like rural Nebraska, had a lot more to do with my religious beliefs than my political orientation.  On pretty much every issue except for abortion, I was liberal, rather than conservative. As my more Leftist political outlook flowered in high school, I tried to see protecting fetuses as part of a greater concern with social justice and protecting the powerless from harm.  That's at least how I tried to reconcile two sets of beliefs that seemed at odds with each other.  Over time my mind changed, but it took awhile.

Of course, a lot of other people with similar upbringings have yet to change their minds.  When I visited home this summer, I was struck and surprised by the sheer volume of anti-abortion billboards, both on the roads and in the towns.  It was part of the landscape, like the clouds in the sky.  I get the feeling that in that part of the world being anti-abortion is just another way of expressing allegiance to the local identity, as is being conservative, as in "of course I'm not pro-choice, I'm not some sort of weirdo from back East!"  This is the soft middle of the anti-abortion side, the sector you don't hear much about.

Events in Colorado Springs have shown how there is also a violent, extremely radical sector of this movement, one that acts with bullets and bombs.  Unlike what some folks have implied, the soft middle doesn't go for this.  One close family relation of mine lives not far from Wichita, and even though she is very active in supporting pro-life causes, she took to social media to denounce the murder of Dr. Tiller. I'm a little put off by a lot of popular commentary on the anti-abortion movement, because it lumps people together with vastly different viewpoints, even if they agree on making abortion illegal.

Abortion is an issue I have shied away from discussing here, both because it is probably the issue with the least fruitful public dialogue attached to it, and also because I do feel a twinge of shame at breaking from my family members on an issue they probably care about more than any other.  While I tend to take the pro-choice side these days, I am tired of the blanket stereotypes and bad faith when it comes to interpreting the motives of abortion opponents.  I am sure it makes those who want to keep abortion legal feel good about themselves, but it won't help them if their goal is to actually advance their cause.