There’s a lot to be depressed about in global abortion politics. The overturning of Roe v Wade may have been the greatest victory for the rights of the unborn in decades, but it was swiftly followed by a series of referendum defeats across the USA. From deep blue liberal states like Vermont to conservative bastions like Ohio, every time since Roe that an abortion question has been put to a public vote, the pro-choice side has won. Meanwhile, after decades of being roughly evenly divided between pro-choice and pro-life, the US population has been getting steadily more supportive of abortion since 2016 (I wonder what happened then?), and support for abortion on demand is now at its highest level since Roe was first decided.
In Europe things are if anything worse. Nearly a decade ago I wrote about my greatest fear for the pro-life movement. Under what I called the European Equilibrium, abortion would be largely restricted later in pregnancy, but widely available at the earlier stages. I worried that apparently pro-life trends in US politics and pro-choice ones in places like Ireland were really a single trend towards a ‘compromise’ that banned the most obviously monstrous abortions in a way that left majorities satisfied but the vast majority of abortions still legal.
That equilibrium has proven remarkably stable. The recent spate of conservative and right-wing governments elected across Europe have been no help: the political right is largely focused on immigration and gender issues, and is mostly content to leave pro-choice laws in place and let abortion fall off the agenda.
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The pro-life movement’s response to these challenges has been… wanting.
In America, the movement has failed to update its pre-Roe playbook to a post-Roe world. It hasn’t made the basic case for the equality of the unborn, it’s stayed wedded to Donald Trump even as he abandons the cause, and it’s failed to bring about the kind of comprehensive social support that could help convince people that a future without abortion is desirable.
In Europe meanwhile the main problem is getting on the agenda at all: the pro-life movement struggles with invisibility and apathy. Overall there’s a pervasive sense that we’re standing still or going backwards.
I don’t want to make light of the situation. These problems are real, and many of them are still unsolved. The level of apathy about abortion and the dignity of the unborn is to me a particular worry.
But I think despair is completely unwarranted. The pro-life movement can change: and it is already changing.
Let’s focus on just one example: getting the US movement behind socioeconomic supports for women and children. The impression you’d get is that nothing has been done on this since Roe, that promises of a pro-life pivot to pro-child social policies was illusory. But that’s not the case. There’s been a huge amount of work done behind the scenes to build support in the pro-life movement for such policies. The fruit of that work can be seen in the recent Blueprint For Life manifesto, which calls for an expanded child tax credit, federal paid parental leave legislation, financial support for childcare (both in and outside the home), and expansion of Medicaid to cover postpartum care. That manifesto has been signed, not just by “new pro-life” organisations, but by big, mainstream organisations like Live Action and Students for Life of America.
Meanwhile, Americans United For Life and Democrats for Life have together launched the Make Birth Free campaign, which attempts to do exactly what it says on the tin, removing any cost to the mother at the point of birth. (The white paper is here.) Patrick Brown and Leah Libresco critique that policy here, suggesting that it would be better to focus efforts on reducing the long-term, post-birth, costs of childrearing. Allan C. Carlson defends the proposal here. (I’m with Carlson: why not both?)
Large parts of the movement itself are rapidly abandoning any doctrinaire support for laissez-faire economics in favour of a more holistic, practical vision. It’s true that that support hasn’t filtered through to legislation yet as much as I’d like. Many Republican legislators are not pro-life true believers. They’re happy enough to put legal bans in place in exchange for pro-life votes, but they baulk at measures that threaten small-government orthodoxy. There’s a lot more work to do to build new coalitions to get these supports enacted.
But the pro-life movement’s shift on these issues hasn’t been entirely ineffectual at the policy level. “Two Years After Dobbs”, a report from the Ethics and Public Policy Centre, lists an impressive array of policies implemented in the past two years by states which have abortion restrictions that wouldn’t have been allowed under Roe. They include:
- 22 of these 23 states have extended Medicaid coverage, increasing the length of time a postpartum woman receives medical care from 60 days to one year
- 16 states took direct action to expand child care choices, from expanding subsidies to streamlining regulatory barriers for child care providers
- 14 states introduced or expanded programs that provide targeted, material assistance to pregnant women, whether directly or by working through pregnancy resource centres
- 13 states increased eligibility for safety net services, from expanding income eligibility thresholds for assistance to eliminating benefit caps based on family size
- 11 states acted to expand access to or coverage of health services for women, such as mammograms or screening for postpartum depression
- 9 states introduced or expanded paid parental leave for state employees, on top of the many states that had already done so prior to the Dobbs decision
There’s a lot more to do, and I think Charlie Camosy is overstating the case when he writes that “the pro-life movement’s turn to women and families is complete”. But there’s a clear direction of travel, and that’s a real reason for optimism.
When Roe had just been overturned, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote the following:
To win the long-term battle, to persuade the country’s vast disquieted middle, abortion opponents need models that prove this critique wrong. They need to show how abortion restrictions are compatible with the goods that abortion advocates accuse them of compromising — the health of the poorest women, the flourishing of their children, the dignity of motherhood even when it comes unexpectedly or amid great difficulty.
These issues may be secondary compared with the life-or-death question of abortion itself, but they are essential to the holistic aspects of political and ideological debate. In any great controversy, people are swayed to one side or another not just by the rightness of a particular position, but by whether that position is embedded in a social vision that seems generally attractive, desirable, worth siding with and fighting for.
Building that social vision needs to be done in different ways in the US and Ireland: the problems different countries face are different. But it can be done, and every step taken toward doing so should give us all hope and encouragement.
Ben
The Minimise Project 