(Photo by Sora Shimazaki (cropped))
In my last blog, I wrote about the Determined Actor Fallacy, and how this fallacy is at the root of why so many people think abortion bans are a bad idea: they think that the bans don’t actually stop abortion happening, they just change where and/or how safe the abortions are. Our position is that the Determined Actor Fallacy is indeed a fallacy, and that abortion bans, while not eliminating abortion, do reduce it – sometimes by a lot. Ireland is one obvious example of this.
However, I think pro-life activists need to rethink how dedicated they are to abortion bans or restrictions as a major aim of the movement. It’s not an exaggeration to say that passing laws that ban or restrict access to abortion is a major focus of the pro-life movement in Ireland and internationally. Related to this point, electing pro-life politicians who will draft and champion such laws is also a major aim of pro-life movements worldwide. I often wonder, though, whether we focus too much on the law and on electoral politics, with too little focus on seeking to persuade people in general to adopt a pro-life position. There are several reasons behind my thinking.
Abortion bans should always be a means, never an end
Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa of New Wave Feminists, who we have interviewed on the blog before, has a great way of phrasing this point: the pro-life movement should seek to build a world where abortion is not simply illegal, it is unthinkable. Laws are great, but a society that outright rejects abortion will never see unborn babies’ lives put at risk, regardless of the legal structures that exist. If the point of the pro-life movement is to protect unborn life, the only surefire way to do that is to work to ensure that no one ever wants to end an unborn life. Laws can help, because they can directly reduce abortions and may also play some role in shaping public opinion, but even the perfect pro-life law would only ever be a means to an end goal, with the ultimate goal being to end, not just to ban, abortion.
Abortion bans don’t eliminate abortion in the short run
One thing that opponents of bans are correct to point out is that bans do not end all abortions. As long as abortion is available, there will be abortions, even in a country that restricts or bans abortion, for the reasons that we in Ireland are so familiar with: women will travel to a jurisdiction where abortion is available, or women will obtain illegal abortions at home. This means that even in a country with strong pro-life laws, persuasion is still necessary. We still have to build a pro-life culture, where no one would choose abortion regardless of how readily, or not, it is available.
Abortion bans don’t even work in the long run! Unless we change minds
Finally, even if a pro-life law exists and is so well-enforced that the number of women in that country who have abortions is very very low, it is still important to focus keenly on changing people’s minds on the issue of abortion. This is because abortion bans simply won’t work in the long run unless we change people’s minds on the fundamental issue, for the very obvious reason that laws can be changed. Pro-choice activists will find ways to work within the law to challenge or change the law – we saw this again and again in Ireland. Ireland was not unique – pro-choice activists use every opportunity they can to undermine pro-life laws in every country, and pro-life people employ the exact same tactic with pro-life laws. Abortion is a complex area, and even the most carefully crafted pro-life laws will have edge cases that bad-faith actors can exploit. We are chasing after an impossible dream if we think that just one more law will sort this problem – it won’t. If we want to stop the pro-choice challenges to pro-life laws, we have to stop people being pro-choice altogether.
Pro-life people can argue the toss about whether strong pro-life laws are a necessary condition for ending abortion. Personally, I think pro-life laws are probably not even necessary in theory, but probably are in practice. However, many pro-life people disagree with me on that, and it’s not a position I’m strongly wedded to. What I am convinced of, however, and what I think all pro-life people should recognise, is that pro-life laws are not sufficient to end abortion – in fact, they’re not even close to being sufficient. Taking a purely arithmetical approach, even if we assume that Ireland’s new laws doubled our abortion rate (thankfully it’s not quite that bad, but just for the sake of argument), then that would suggest we should dedicate no more than half our time and resources to the legal and political sphere, with the other half of our time and resources dedicated to ending the other half of abortions that took place even under our pro-life laws, and that would continue to take place even if we magicked back the Eighth Amendment overnight.
With this in mind, have a think about your own pro-life activism. Do you think you spend most of your activism fighting in the legal or electoral space? Or do you lean more heavily towards activities that are not focused towards law or electoral politics, such as practical supports for women and children, actively promoting a pro-life view of pregnancy and parenting, or making the basic case for the unborn amongst family and friends? Maybe it’s time to revisit the proportion of time you spend on non-legal focused activism. After all, there are some real life Determined Actors!
Muireann
The Minimise Project 
We have to fight in the “legal and/or political space”. If we do not, abortion will be made more and more widely available and the number of lives lost will increase. Witness, for example, the current threat to the 3-day reflection period in our legislation, despite clear statistical evidence that it is working as intended and allowing women to consider their options and in some cases to continue with their pregnancies. If we do not lobby politicians and publicise this in the media, it will be quietly dropped from the legislation.
From canvassing at doors, and occasionally talking one-to-one with e.g. relatives or friends, I would not be optimistic about the effectiveness of the approach suggested here by Muireann. All most Irish people “know” about abortion is what they see and hear in the media, and in my experience they are not at all receptive to anyone trying to persuade them otherwise. If you are out of step with the media, you are often regarded as a freak or a crank, and you are not listened to.
To me the only hope of doing anything to limit abortion is to convince our politicians that they are losing the votes of pro-lifers by liberalising abortion further. As for “banning” abortion, that is simply not a realistic ambition at this time. All we can hope for is damage limitation.
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Thanks for the comment Jim! I think there are two premises to your position. (1) that changing people’s minds on the issue of abortion is unrealistic and (2) that there are a sufficient number of pro-life voters to make politicians wary of losing our votes if they liberalise laws further.
I disagree on both premises. On (1), we saw many people change their minds from a pro-life to a pro-choice position in recent years. There is no particular reason to think people can only change their minds in kne direction. Furthermore, we have witnessed many people, including two members of The Minimise Project, who changed their minds on this issue, from pro-choice to pro-life, and now actively campaign with us. Effective, thoughtful conversations, based on evidence-based techniques, are possible! We dedicate many of our blog posts to tips and tricks on how to have such conversations, and we also run regular workshops training people in these techniques. If you would like to attend one, please let us know!
On (2), the votes simply are not there. Opinion polls show only 4% of people consider abortion as the first or second most important issue when voting – and that includes pro-choice and pro-life voters combined. Abortion is not, and never has been, a motivating factor in elections in Ireland. A politician has no more to fear from losing pro-life votes than they have to fear from losing pro-choice votes, and furthermore the demographics are against us. This enduring wishful thinking by the pro-life movement has cost us dearly. It’s time to move on.
If public opinion doesn’t change, nothing else will. Maybe public opinion can’t change, but if that’s the case, there’s nothing else we can do I’m afraid!
Muireann
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Thanks Muireann for the thoughtful response to my comment. Clearly you have been more successful at persuading people one-to-one than I have been, and all I can say is keep up the good work.
There were 720,000 votes against Repeal in 2018, and I am quite amazed that these never translated into general election votes, but I agree with you that this did not happen. There are probably 1000 to 2000 pro-life votes per constituency in general elections, however, and these would be of interest to FF or FG say, and could determine the destiny of the final seat. That is what I had in mind when I made my earlier comment. We do not have a lot of leverage but we do have some!
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