[Image by 巻（Maki） from Pixabay]
We live in an era of outrage. Even the smallest thing, that seems completely non-controversial, can cause someone to get offended. Not just offended, in fact, but extremely offended, and to be Very, Very Vocal about this. When it comes to something that is controversial, such as abortion, the outrage dial tends to permanently hover somewhere between 9.8 and 10.
Sometimes, however, outrage is justified. Sometimes, people do outrageous things. People harass and abuse people, they trespass on or damage their property, they spew hatred about specific named people online, they capture people on film and share the footage widely, and sometimes, they do this purely because they happen to disagree with the other person on a topic such as abortion.
Pro-choice people have done all the above, and more, to pro-life people. This is really wrong, and sad, and unjust, and I wish it didn’t happen. Many decent pro-choice people also wish this didn’t happen, and I’m not going to try to talk to the unreasonable minority who think it’s just fine to do any or all of the above. They will not be convinced, and they are not worth my time.
When pro-life people see pro-choice people acting in an unkind, unjust, disrespectful, cruel or illegal manner, they are often tempted to highlight these actions. It’s a common impulse to want to link or share examples of bad acting by pro-choice people, especially since similar examples from pro-life people are often widely circulated. I think, however, that highlighting pro-choice abuse is a mistake, for several reasons.
The pro-life side does not come out of this looking well
Funnily enough, even though the impulse to share this kind of content is to try to get people to see the pro-choice movement’s true colours, this strategy can backfire. To speak plainly, it looks mean and petty to share examples of a bad minority acting badly. Those who share such content tend not to look like righteous warriors standing up for innocent victims. Instead, we come across as unedifying, immature, or just like we’re having a bit of a moan.
There may well be a double standard here, in that a pro-choice person sharing such content re pro-life people may not get the same kind of reaction. I don’t know why that is, but regardless, it’s not something we can control. If a double standard exists, we can’t change it – but we do have to live with it.
Highlighting abuse causes abuse
This is one of those annoying facts of the internet, but highlighting bad actions actually makes people more likely to do them. This is a well known phenomenon: even very serious violent crimes like mass shootings, or dangerous social phenomena like self-harm or suicide, are actually more likely to happen the more they are highlighted. It really does give people ideas when we draw attention to pro-choice abuse.
The internet amplifies the worst in us
Not so long ago, if someone did something outrageous in Manchester, people in Manchester would hear about it. Now, thanks to the internet, if someone does something outrageous in Manchester, everyone all over the world hears about it, within hours. The internet makes it seems like abuse and dreadful behaviour are more common than they are, and this only happens because people fall into the trap of sharing the content, again and again. It’s not good for us or our movement to be part of this problem.
The pro-life movement is not about us
One thing Ben likes to remind us of at workshops is that the point of the pro-life movement is not to make the world a better place for pro-life people. It’s to try to make the world a better, safer place for the unborn. It’s good to remember this, and rising above, rather than highlighting or amplifying, the abuse that pro-choice people inflict on pro-life people is a great way to do that.
We legitimise the pro-choice side doing the same
Like it or not, pro-life people can also be abusive, unkind, cruel, unjust, and can also break the law. When we share examples of pro-choice people acting badly, we make it OK for pro-choice people to do the same when pro-life people act badly. Given the unfavourable view our movement gets relative to the other side, this is bad publicity we simply can’t afford. Far better to stay out of this altogether, to the extent that we can.
We don’t need every pro-choice person to become a paragon of virtue to achieve our aims. We just need to stop abortion. That’s a challenging and worthy goal, and it deserves all our focus. Highlighting pro-choice abuse can wait.
Muireann
The Minimise Project 
Some questions, of sorts. I do agree, that this tendancy to focus on pro-choicers acting unreasonably, including even when a pro-choicer just says something stupid, is detremental to the unborn, and that’s even when it’s not highlighting something like a pro-choice extremist wishing harm on pro-lifers (and this assumes that the pro-choicer is actually being unreasonable, sometimes the pro-choicer is making a legitimate critique of bad pro-lifer takes, even if their critique will obviously not justify society sanctioning the killing of prenatal humans). And on a flipside, it needs to be noted that some of the more staunch, but not necessarily fundamentalist ones do genuinely think the pro-life movement as a whole does actively wish harm on women (and girls, and trans people capable of pregnancy). And like, it does us a real disservice to accuse or implicitly think of all pro-choicers as unreasonable (even the ones that genuinely think abortion for any reason up to birth is morally acceptable), acting in this way just doesn’t change minds.
That said, I do think that there’s a potentially interesting problem worth highlighing. Suppose we do get to a point at which a majority of the public does genuinely want some substantial abortion bans and more welfare, crackdowns on sex discrimination, properly tackling domestic violence and rape, secure and actually affordable housing (read, no meaningful risk of being homeless if you run into financial difficulties), increased access to contraceptives and sterelisation on an informed consent model etc, i.e. all the things that do make abortion disincentivised. I don’t buy that this cultural shift by itself, gets abortion banned, even if it would more than likely mean fewer people abort, since they see it as less mroally acceptable.
Why, well the rich fundamentally really don’t actually want abortion banned (despite what pro-choicers tend to erroneously claim), and capitalism is never going to give up power without people doing some level of disruptive protests (one only need note the Epstein files, pedophillia is pretty universally regarded as morally evil, yet the rich quite frankly don’t care about acting ethically in this regard, and will actively cover up child sex trafficking for eachother). As another example of this sort of principle, within the UK, rent caps have overwhelming political support, at about ~70% support (and even very substantial minorities of Tories and Reform voters endorse them) yet the only parties that will endorse rent caps are the Greens, Your Party (presumably, although I haven’t checked and perhaps they still need to make policy here), and various tiny far-left parties.
It feels like at some point, and we can certainly actively debate when that is, that pro-lifers would need to build some form of pro-life populist movement dedicated to challenging at the least, this element of capitalist power, and an invariably highlighting political corruption, and stuff like abortion providers taking money from genocide complicit arms companies, opposing universal healthcare, historically speaking arising from open eugenics movements etc would theoretically be a good way to galvinise political opposition to them.
Which I guess, really leads to a key question worth asking. What precisely, is the difference between “Oh no! A pro-choicer did something immoral, or said something stupid.” and highlighting stuff like political corruption among anti-life institutions? I definitely don’t think we ought to be in the least focussed on pro-choicers saying something dumb or acting in an extreme way, but I’m unconvinced the pro-life movement can ever win a sustainable long-term battle against abortion without at minimum seriously restraining capitalist power, and I don’t see how we get there without left-wing pro-life populism (or at least a relying on radical flank effect, similar to the gay rights movement’s actions in the US, including Stop the Church). Heck, I suspect that even doing this, will likely inadvertantly increase the numbers of pro-lifers who act unreasonably, and might even result in a handful pro-lifers embracing political vandalism (though I must admit I actually see this as while illegal, legitimate political protest, and if it wasn’t illegal, I’d in truth almost certainly do it myself on the regular).
LikeLike