It's Time for a Pro-Life Rethink

The 45th Annual March for Life was held last week: Another year, another march and another long stalemate in these longstanding culture wars.

I've been observing the pro-life movement from both the inside and sidelines for years now and I've come to a stark realization:

The pro-life movement (overall) is not dedicated to the task of reducing abortions and saving lives. Let that sink in for a minute. Rather, the movement is focused on making abortion illegal. 

They may seem the same at first, but those are actually two very different goals. They require very different courses of action.

There are exceptions to this, of course, but I'm talking about overall trends in the movement itself, especially on the national level.

I understand why people would want abortion to be illegal. It makes sense for the unborn to have the protection of the law, pure and simple.

But you have to look no further than the prohibition of alcohol in the 1930s to see what happens when a law is forced upon a population that does not support it. Despite being illegal nationwide, many people still drank alcohol. An entire industry of organized crime, backwoods 'stills and urban speakeasies sprang up to meet the demand. This underground economy gave opportunity to gangsters like Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly. The experience was such a colossal failure that it ended up killing the movement against alcohol. The movement not just for prohibition but also for temperance and moderation has been set back decades, if not forever. When is the last time you heard a sermon on temperance? I hope you have, but from what I can tell, they are much rarer than they used to be.

The pro-life movement can and must evolve into a movement that encourages a holistic culture of life—creating a society where abortion would simply not make sense anymore to anyone. Other options and other ways of looking at unplanned, unwanted or problematic pregnancies would be so prevalent. That's going to require everyone's "all in." Making abortion illegal is actually easy by comparison—it doesn't require most of us to change our lives, attitudes or behaviors. We can sit back and judge "those people" from what we think is a safe moral distance.

It is worth asking whether making abortion illegal in this time and place in history would have the net effect of saving lives. Those with resources would simply go abroad to have the procedure done (it's not the 1950's anymore, flights are readily accessible anywhere). There would no doubt be an industry of back alley abortions outside of any kind of regulation or oversight. Offenders could be punished by the law, but I wonder how many additional lives would be lost by botched procedures? Despite that, I'm sure that abortions would probably be significantly reduced  if it were made illegal, but that could get negated when you look at the long-term trajectory: Eventually, our pro-choice culture would revolt against this legislation, putting such strong nails in the coffin to make it hard to ever resurrect it again, with the pro-life movement no doubt in full retreat and unable to mount much of any resistance at that point (just like with the prohibition of alcohol). If by some miracle Roe v Wade were overturned and each stated voted against abortion, it still wouldn't stay illegal for long and that's the piece I never hear anyone mention.

Making abortion illegal would punish people (mainly women), but it may not stop abortions from happening. Those on the pro-choice side often accuse the pro-life movement of being punitive toward women. Making abortion illegal without an underlying culture of life to support it could potentially have that effect.

However, changing the goal of the pro-life movement from "making abortion illegal" to "saving lives" would be very freeing—and at the same time, challenging. Everyone would have to do their part, not just people in difficult pregnancies. It would be about nurturing and supporting people in all stages of life, rather than making life as difficult as possible as some kind of a moral test to see what they will do—we can all do some pretty rotten things when pushed to our limits.

It might also ease some of the tunnel vision. The pro-life movement has thoroughly been used and taken advantage of by politicians. They appreciate the votes but give very little in return outside of occasional showmanship and lip service. Pro-life voters are held hostage because of the distant possibility that politicians might actually do something about abortion rather than just use it to win elections and then play political football with later, always blaming the other party for failures. Pro-life voters have shown they will support the most vile candidates who do the most vile things in office (including murderous policies) in exchange for the *possibility* of anti-abortion legislation.

Stopping abortion does not have to happen legislatively. In fact, it probably cannot happen that way if it is going to be a sustainable cultural change. In our current cultural context, a legislative overturn of Roe vs. Wade would be punitive but not corrective, judgmental but not life-giving.

A final note: If the movement is going to carry the name "pro-life," then it must be a champion of just that—life. All life, all the time, everywhere. From conception to natural death. Otherwise, it is the "anti-abortion movement" but not the "pro-life movement." Words matter, and we need to be honest about what we are about.

In some ways, the anti-abortion movement has no choice. The moral strength of the movement is based on the fact that abortion is the taking of life. It is the taking of life that is wrong. Abortion is simply one instance where the taking of life happens. But if abortion is wrong, then the taking of all life is wrong. Moral theologians make distinctions and add qualifiers such as the "intentional" taking of "innocent" life, but the faith teaches us that all life has dignity. Activists need to pick and choose which causes to dedicate their limited time, talent and treasure toward, and some may chose abortion and not other issues. But it is important when doing so not to deny the legitimacy of other issues. If the pro-life movement is going to carry that name, then it needs to step up to the plate and be a champion of life itself. Those are big shoes. Either fill them or just call yourselves what you actually are. And by supporting other issues, such as ways to reduce poverty, reform immigration and address injustices in the criminal justice system, we may find that rates of abortion also go down in the wake.

My recommendation: The pro-life movement could get out of its stalemate by focusing more on saving lives than making abortion illegal—a subtle but significant distinction. This involves creating a widespread, holistic culture which is life-affirming from conception to natural death. Addressing poverty, immigration, criminal justice and wage theft are proven ways of reducing abortion rates, as well as simply being good neighbors who reach out to the people around us. You may never know how many abortions you might prevent by being a good mentor, neighbor, uncle or teacher, but statistics say you would be directly alleviating the stressors that people claim are the primary reasons that drive them to consider abortion. The movement would have an easier time seeing these connections if it adopted a truly holistic, consistent ethic of life.

Addendum:  I am not suggesting that the movement should entirely give up its goal of making abortion illegal—not at all.  But if that is going to be successful, the culture has to be willing to accept it or else a purely legislative change without the support of the people would most likely seriously backfire and send the movement back decades.