The Peculiar And Destructive Focus Of The Pro-Life Movement

Why is prohibition the main focus of the pro-life movement when it often causes more harm than good and other, better methods exist to achieve their goals?

An abortion bill was recently introduced in the state of Virginia and the details are rather barbaric. According to the text of the legislation, virtually any claim of impairment would permit an abortion in the third trimester. Thankfully, third trimester abortions occurring after 21 weeks are extraordinarily rare. Given the rarity in which they occur, the rate of natural viability, and advances in modern medicine, other than for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment, I submit there are powerful reasons for prohibiting abortions occurring after 21 weeks.

In an ideal world, restrictions on rare third trimester abortions would coincide with policies that would otherwise maximize individual autonomy when it comes to family planning. This is because strong evidence suggests that increasing human access to birth control significantly drives down abortion rates. Furthermore, the studied correlation between access to birth control and poverty rates has produced verifiable data supporting the conclusion that empowering individuals with the ability to plan whether and when to have children will invariably increase economic prosperity within both large and small communities.

The fact that increased individual control generally leads to more positive outcomes, including significantly decreasing abortion rates, should be encouraging. Moreover, this kind of information should inspire policy solutions outside of the traditional overuse of criminal law, which has only resulted in biased, destructive outcomes. Instead, the pro-life movement remains inexplicably committed to the premise that the only moral answer to the issue of abortion is wholesale prohibition well before 21 weeks.

I find the pro-life movement’s obsession with prohibition peculiar and indeed destructive for a number of reasons. For one thing, as long as prohibition is viewed as the only moral solution, the pro-life movement will be faced with terrible enforcement choices. These are to either: 1) Establish a police-like state, where the entirety of the masses within the country or a state is subjected to intense government supervision regarding the most intimate personal decisions, or; 2) Absent a vast police state, law enforcement will inevitably have to use discretion and basic resource allocation to direct enforcement only within certain communities or demographics. In other words, the choice for the prohibitionist-minded pro-life movement is between a police-like state (that can effectively police the inevitable black market), or a system of organized hypocrisy where only certain communities are targeted for grossly unfair enforcement.

The pro-life movement’s unyielding commitment to prohibition has also resulted in hypocritical and contradictory legal arguments. For example, the state of Georgia recently passed legislation that bans abortions after a heartbeat is detected. In justifying the legislation, the drafters in Georgia maintain that unborn children should be entitled to the privileges of the 14th Amendment. As others have illustrated, this is not a reasonable legal position under our current system and would constantly place law enforcement in preposterous predicaments.

For example, if the unborn were entitled to 14th Amendment protections, it would become illegal to detain a pregnant mother in prison without reasonable suspicion that the unborn child committed a crime. Moreover, in Georgia, it is a serious felony to inflict suffering on a child, yet pregnant mothers in prison are often denied adequate medical care and nutrition. Therefore, unless serious changes are made within the Georgia prison system (which is almost assuredly not going to happen), Georgia correction officers, police officers, and prosecutors would, and should, be subject to felony charges for detaining and inflicting suffering on unborn children. The fact that it is virtually certain no member of law enforcement will ever be subject to such a charge only underscores the gross hypocrisy of the legal argument being made in Georgia.

Another strange fact about the pro-life movement is while they are obsessed with protecting the life of the unborn with prohibition, they seem indifferent or even hostile towards the application of prohibition to protect life in other circumstances. It makes little sense to say that under a 14th Amendment standard medical termination in the womb should be prohibited entirely, while access to lifesaving medical procedures later in life is not a matter of liberty at all. Especially since the number of deaths resulting from denials of access to medical services based on purely monetary reasons quadruples the number of third trimester abortions that generate so much disgust and outrage within the pro-life movement. The fundamental hypocrisy of the pro-life movement therefore, is they are essentially saying a right to life is sacred for the unborn, just not for an adult who cannot afford life-saving medical procedures.

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So, what explains all the hypocrisy and unrelenting obsession with the prohibition of abortion? To be honest, I do not think a single answer could explain it. Certainly, orthodox religious notions of sex being limited to child bearing purposes only is a factor in the desire to restrict access to birth control. Given the economic benefits and empowerment that come with granting individuals control over their procreation I cannot help but think there are sinister motives at play in the debate. But I also do not doubt the sincerity of the vast majority of folks in the pro-life movement who say they are out to defend the defenseless. I suppose I am simply left wondering why such devotion to protecting life, at all costs to personal liberty, so often disappears outside of the context of the unborn.

The only thing that is clear is there are specific ways outside of prohibition and all the negatives that it brings, that would enable society to effectively drive down abortion rates and increase economic prosperity, all while embracing treasured individual autonomy. The obsession with prohibiting virtually all individual autonomy in family planning decision-making therefore only serves to undercut the pro-life movement’s legitimacy and overall stated goals. It’s time to adopt a better path.


Tyler Broker’s work has been published in the Gonzaga Law Review, the Albany Law Review, and is forthcoming in the University of Memphis Law Review. Feel free to email him or follow him on Twitter to discuss his column.

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