The Pro-Life Movement and Its Discontents

I was reading this blog post recently:

I've long held the opinion that protecting foetuses is not actually what drives the Pro-Life Movement when looking at the large organisations and its leaders, but rather an adherence to "traditional values" and the usual conservative culture war positions. However, we also know that a lot of the public rhetoric of the movement has moved in the direction of protecting the unborn, women who are pushed into having abortions, and in general trying to present a positive, affirming message.
What I'm wondering now is whether that kind of rhetoric will become a problem for the Pro-Life Movement as the younger generation that has grown up with it comes of age? Will there be a disconnect for them between the "protecting the innocent" and the practical effects of the policy the Pro-Life Movement champions, or is there enough enforcement of stuff like the purity myth and traditional values in general that Pro-Lifers on the ground won't be very likely to start questioning or changing the movement?
In general, where is the Pro-Life Movement heading and will it have legs? As we know, around 50% of people in the US identify as Pro-Life, though very few adhere to the absolutist stance of the movement leaders, and that has held steady for over a decade, but is the definition of Pro-Life changing?

The blogger above also wrote a follow-up article:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejo...-objections-on-my-pro-life-movement-post.html

My big argument against the pro-life movement is the same as it's always been: If those people actually cared about the status of children, we'd be living in a golden age of subsidized day care, pre-and-post natal health programs, and anti-poverty programs aimed at improving the quality of life of children. Abortion would be only one of many issues in a multi-pronged attempt to improve the life of all children, and not just fetuses.

To be fair, I look in our church as an example of a place where most people are anti-abortion and there are a disproportionate number of people who have and are in the process of adopting children compared to the general population. I do believe there are people who are anti-abortion as part of some general agenda, but I think if you're interested in an honest discussion about the issue you have to understand a lot of people just have an issue with killing something that they can't tell you when it is a baby and when it is not. Honestly, I have a personal problem in that I don't believe (assuming the mother's life is not in danger) you should be able to deliver a baby and kill it one minute after delivery, don't believe you should be able to kill it one minute before delivery, don't believe you should be able to kill it at 8 months, and as I go backwards I don't know the magic line where I am comfortable with it. Just my personal feelings. (And I swore a few years ago I would not get caught up in a heated, name calling abortion thread again, so that's my two cents FWIW.)

For what it's worth, I don't regard adoption as an acceptable alternative route to what madkevin and that blogger are talking about. That's analogous to the way Mitt Romney is personally charitable; being kind on the individual level is not the same as ensuring there's a system in place that looks out for those in need. The former is admirable, depending on the situation, of course, but it's not a substitute for policy that removes the fate of the downtrodden from the whims of those with means.

I think Jason was the first one I heard phrase it this way, but for most pro-lifers the real issue is women's sexuality; abortion is just a proxy for controlling women. That doesn't mean that there aren't those out there who really are motivated by the sanctity of unborn life, but I think they're somewhat of a minority.

Ah, but Jethro, I'm relatively confident that you support sex ed and availability of contraceptives, so you still wouldn't fit within the Pro-Ruining-Your-Life movement. :)

Also: it's sort of telling how many pro-lifers also end up being anti-contraception, and how quickly they resort to various forms of slut-shaming when discussing this topic. Which indicates - to go back to the OP - that I think the pro life movement over the next generation will experience a radical decline.

It's certainly the most productive frame of analysis if you look at problems of women's health historically. Medical questions associated with women, whether on the theoretical or practical level, are intrinsically connected to moral standards. In the 20th century you can trace the advent of modern conservatism in its rabid, grassroots form to Roe v Wade, and whether it's Phyllis Schlafly's "Don't take away the privilege of being subject to men" or just outright misogyny, the arguments about the proper place of women in society are at the heart of the matter.

The corollary to that is a lot like making the connection between racism and many forms of opposition to Obama: if you're interested in strategic progress, direct confrontation by putting the argument in such stark terms probably means you are going to say something that isn't usefully polarizing, one way or another. I don't know what the right answer is, to be honest.

For my part I square this circle by mostly not caring if I'm the one making strategic progress. I've got neither the patience nor the personality to be the one responsible for that. I think there's something to be said for understanding the issue - any issue - even if expressing that understanding is strategically counterproductive.

Yes, that's true for many of us, until the academic "deep" analysis crosses out of things where we have established relatively defensible positions. Let me give you an example that the male-but-not-MRA-nor-academic-feminist people here might remember, namely the MRA threadtastrophe. One of the recurring issues was that people had studied the issues of sexuality formally were articulating deep descriptions of the nature of consent with relation to what we consider rape, and those are descriptions that I believe are profoundly insightful in an academic discussion of the topic, and have a lot to offer in terms of understanding the issue in the abstract.

However, what you saw in the discussion here was people who were arguing in good faith and are pretty far from being MRA finding themselves quite uncomfortable and angrily so when the implications of those kinds of statements were thrown their way, which is completely understandable because it happens every time these sorts of analyses leak into popular discourse. Which is to say that when you have a "deep" or "thick" description of these kind of phenomena (that is, depending on whether you are framing them psychologically or anthropologically/historically), whether it becomes actionable intelligence depends a lot more on how well you build a bridge to that for everyday people regardless of its accuracy.

What I'm getting at is that there's a lot of work between identifying a key variable like "desiring control over women's bodies" and attaching it to particular groups within those movements; not everyone is motivated the same way or to the same degree, and those distinctions matter the same way that the differences between MRA and normal men who just haven't read much about the history of gender and sex matter. As a rhetorical hand grenade on its own, it's just not very useful or, indeed, not nearly as "honest" as it might first seem.

I'm sympathetic to Jethro's honest difficulty with the issue and I'm not sure if argument is apt to be persuasive about a deeply felt semi-metaphysical discomfiture, but from the point of view of a a non-religious person who values human life, fertilization is as arbitrary and inadequate a line as birth is in terms of a time for "the dignity of an official human life" to devolve onto a collection of cells.

Viability and sentience are more tenable as "magic lines" but they both come uncomfortably late for pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike, because of the similarity of the developing fetus to a baby, and because of the progressive number of autonomy biological functions happening and so on, with the result that even pro-choice folks draw a line somewhere a good bit earlier than sentience or viability, at a point where there's not a great deal of "personhood logic" except for uncomfortable physical resemblance to a person and/or "personhood potential."

But if you go down the "in potential" rabbithole you have to figure out why you don't extend human rights to gametes, or gametes-which-god-intended-to-be-people, at which point you run into opposition to contraceptives and forms of sexual behavior god supposedly disagrees with. To that extent I sort of understand the logic of the anti-contraceptive people even if I think they're creepy villains out of a Margaret Atwood novel.

I don't trust anyone who is Pro-Life who isn't also fiercely Pro-Science. If your reason for being Pro-Life is to save unborn children, then you should be demanding that science push farther to shorten the amount of time the mother is required in order to bring a child to term.

To Jason M's point: I think you're wrong in saying "most" people who are anti-abortion are all about controlling women's sexuality, etc. That may make it easier to minimize their concerns, but my experience is that most people I have known in my life who are anti-abortion are purely against it because they are opposed to the physical act. Sure, the louder, public people you see may have their agendas but I just don't believe that is the majority.

And my discomfort has nothing to do with religion. It started when I worked in college part time in a clinic that did abortions, and it got me thinking hard and moved me away from the abstract to the physical act. Jason T - I don't know where the line is where I feel it is OK. If it was purely about babies coming into the world without the support they need, you could make an equal argument that is OK to just drop the baby at birth in a bucket of water. Like I said, I think it is wrong at 9 months, at 8 months, and I don't know where, for me, the line is where I feel it is OK. Rape, incest, health of the mother, etc. I understand. I also know that about 90% of abortions occur during the first trimester. 3/4ths of women who have an abortion state that the child would be inconvenient to work or other responsibilities. Also, the last numbers I found, CDC, 22% of all pregnancies end up being aborted. I don;t think anyone can be truly anti-abortion and not very pro-contraception and sex education - if you are, then I put you in the category of having an agenda beyond the physical act of abortion.

Again, I'm happy to be the one person here who has problems with abortions and explaining my thought processes and experiences as long as it doesn't turn into the standard name calling, emotive thread so many of these turn into.

The polling data sure looks like "most." We've gone over it before; about 50% of people who say they are anti-abortion are a-ok with rape exemptions - because that makes murder ok, I suppose? Same deal if the woman is already married; same deal if the child will be disabled. None of those make the slightest bit of sense if it's about the kid.

I'm not sure where you got that; the Guttmacher numbers? Note those are choose as many as you want, the 74% that put "will dramatically change my life" that's the closests also gave other answers. I don't see "inconvenient" listed.

That page has the polling for various exemption scenarios.

I don't think "ability to survive absent any parental care at all" is a major "magic line" in discussions of this kind - it's even later than a consciousness-based magic line, which is already "too late" in terms of... being post-birth, and therefore wildly socially/culturally unacceptable.

I guess for me the actual inarguable "magic" line is some conservative concept of consciousness - which is basically not going to be anything pre-natal - and then the time period between the early-third-trimester "viability outside the womb" period and then is sort of a buffer. That buffer is helpful in that it respects the need to be conservative in one's ruleset about respecting human rights, and accords with (some of) the natural (if strictly non-rational) emotions usual about the fetus being a loved pre-person. From a super-pragmatic point of view - and I'd say this is a bonus rather than a reason to have this viewpoint - it's also a lot more politically tenable than talking about a magic line at or after birth.

"Late magic line plus big buffer" is quite study and adaptable, but for some people the first three words will just be a dealbreaker.

Well, it is Debate & Discussion.

Well, there is the standard thought experiment where you wake up tomorrow in the hospital hooked up to another person against your will, and are told by the doctor that you need to continue to remain in bed for the next nine months, or they will die. I wouldn't call deciding to pull the plugs and take off in that situation murder.

No, because they are human beings dealing with a difficult and emotional issue and don't want a woman to go through that constant reminder of the rape. Most who are antiabortion would still regret the physical act of the abortion, but in spite of demonization they are human enough to also understand the pain of the woman. Seriously, I know you want to make people who have a problem with abortion one dimensional and stupid and evil, because that makes it easier to dismiss them. But many, most that I know, are not Pat Robertson.

The numbers I got, as I recall (and they are from memory) I thought were from the CDC's data.

Civility's a two-way street here. I'm just reading this as Jason M. focusing on the seeming inconsistency (and from the last I read poll data, actual inconsistency) of the majority pro-life stance, which is that the act of abortion is equivalent to murder, but (for reasons of humanity, whatever) they're nevertheless not always opposed to it. From the point of view of a materialist who both disagrees with it being murder and puts a premium on logical consistency, that seems like a "sometimes murder, sometimes we pretend it's not murder," or "sometimes murder, sometimes acceptable murder" position.

Disagreement that can be articulated without anyone on either side putting non-hypothetical words in mouths.

Did you seriously just do that?

I'm in agreement with Jethro that this thread fell into the, "Everyone who disagrees with me is stupid or evil" internet gambit early on. So, maybe we should all step back for a moment and make this about the arguments and not the people.

Rather topical NYT article from a few weeks back about pain-awareness laws and attempts to push categories of personhood earlier than "viability."

IMO the article contains some fairly opinionated philosophizing and sets a "consciousness" bar so high as to occur somewhere in mid-childhood, which I think is being a bit fussy about things. The awareness, however limited, of a not-exactly-conscious-but-awake infant is differentiable enough from one that never was awake, to say nothing of the also elided difference between not-conscious infants and conscious-but-not-self-reflective young children and older ones growing it full mind-hood.

No, I worded that poorly, so thanks for pointing that out. First, when I said "you" I meant people in general, not Jason M, (even though reading it, that is not what I said - apologies to Jason M.) and what I meant to convey is that it is much easier to try to label people and put them in nice cubbyholes because it makes the arguments simpler. I can't remember the last time I read a thread on this topic when anti-abortion people weren't attacked as unfeeling, evil, controlling SOBs nor when anyone acknowledged there might be more to it than that. Both sides do this. For example, in this thread the generalizations have been that anti-abortion people quickly become "slut-slammers", that most anti-abortion people just want to control women's lives, etc, All those have been stated as fact. When you (someone) says "Oh, see how hypocrytical anti-abortion people are, when they say they can agree that women who have conceived from a rape should be able to have an abortion" my point is that you're attacking people who are exhibiting a bit of humanity.

fwiw I think it's important to distinguish between people who oppose abortion and the organized anti-abortion movement. Jethro you're right that we shouldn't paint with broad strokes, but likewise we also shouldn't prevent like all of this is happening in a vacuum and that there's no historical context.

jeffd, I agree. There absolutely are people who use abortion as some type of club/power issue. And they tend to be the loud/visible ones. They aren't the ones adopting, working in battered women's clinics. working at shelters, helping young single mothers, etc. I'd just like to speak for those who are in the latter category and make sure people know a lot of people - IMO the majority of "average" people who oppose it - oppose it purely because they have great heartburn over the physical act. They are the ones who say of course, even though we don't like the act, we cannot fault women who have been raped or victims of incest or women in danger of their life who abort.

It's nice that they're exhibiting a bit of humanity, but some of us would appreciate it if they would also exhibit a bit of rational consistency in their belief systems. I, for one, am a pedant, and think that consistency is quite important.

You're setting yourself up for disappointment, then. The vast majority of people are not consistent. Nor are they particularly rational. If I can be allowed the shorthand: I can absolutely see how folks arrive at the standard "pro-life except..." position by weighing relative squick factors. It's not necessarily the result of a rational process, but nonetheless that's what it is.

Sometimes things are complicated and not easy to resolve. To take it to the extreme, I don't know many people who believe aborting a baby minutes before it is delivered is OK. But I think a lot of those same people would understand, in the extremely rare case, if that was required because of a complication during the birth that was going to kill the mother.

I'd sort of disagree with you in two ways: first, while undoubtedly there are people who use this (or any other ultra-emotive political fault line) "like a club," you also have to realize this is the sort of issue where one can infuriate the hell out of people without ever setting out to do that, and the "innocent not setting out to infuriate anyone" person can be to blame in such a scenario. I suspect a lot of the time a "polite somewhat pro-life" person finds him or herself staring down a torch-wielding mob it's because of that dynamic, not because pro-choice people are oversensitive or because there's some big bloc of pro-choice people out to use the issue as a club.

Second, and genuinely no offence, I'm skeptical about the "ones adopting, working in battered women's clinics. working at shelters, helping young single mothers, etc" grouping which sounds an awful lot like an idealization and at any rate isn't, either way, a crucial group to be considering? The US pro-life movement is... not anything I'd identify with the above. Frankly - because of the general congurence of womens' groups and groups-helping women, and womens' groups feelings vis a vis these issues, I associate that sort of good conduct with the other side of the divide. Not questioning the truth of your experience just how it hooks up with the wider prosopography of pro-life/pro-choice political activism

Just because I'd like it to happen doesn't mean I actually expect it of people.

No offense taken. I'm just talking about people I have known over the years, in the places I've lived all over the country. The people I've known who were anti-abortion don't look at all like the stereotypes. Kinda like most Christians I know hate the idiots like Westboro, Pat Robertson, etc. as much as most atheists do. Any more than most people in favor of legal abortion are represented by those who argue abortion should be legal up to the second a child completely clears the womb, for any reason. There's a reason I almost never post in a thread like this.

But these people tend to not be part of any "movement." Their beliefs are highly personal. They understand it is a difficult issue for exactly the reason some have pointed out here, there are situations in which it is not black and white for them. I struggle with it personally. My only attempted point is that there are a lot of people who struggle with abortion that have no desire to keep women in their place, etc. And if you try to categorize everyone who is anti-abortion that way, you'll be missing something.

It's not the consistency - it's "well, what's the explanation then?" My suspicion is that "murder" isn't a full description of what's going on.

There's clearly the other angle you're thinking of - social and gender control and a certain sense of norms-contraveners-must-get-what's-coming-to-them - for a lot of people.

But as I mentioned in that thread I started about faith confronting extreme problems - the failure of theodicy, death of loved ones - sometimes people kind of act like they sort of only half-believe in basic stuff like "the afterlife exists, the person is in the best of all conceivable places having a wonderful time." Best I can tell, there's a "fuck logic, I'm punting" response where the logical untenability of contradictory facts or behaviors is just ignored because the faith is important but so is the impulse to sadness/humanity/whatever.

So if that's a thing, it's not much of a stretch to think of a sort of schroedinger's cat situation where sometimes abortion is "murder" and sometimes it's some undefined lesser tragedy preferable to an alternative.

The two sets of people, however, are vastly disproportionately relevant in terms of both policy and rhetoric on a national stage.

Just as the supposedly-sane Republicans get tarred with the same brush as the Teahaddists, so too do empathic pro-life people, because they are represented, on the national stage, by the extremists. Both in terms of policy and rhetoric.

If they - and you - don't like that, maybe y'all should get a collective sane voice in the matter. Or just donate to Planned Parenthood, because the one surest, easiest way to bring the number of abortions down is to support PP.

I think both threads have reached the same impasse. You're saying the people who hold a certain view are neglecting reason in one way or another. When someone else brings up a counterexample, you state that it's not representative of the group as a whole.

For your problem of evil thread I quoted C.S. Lewis on faith and you replied:

In this case, when Jethro brings up an abortion counterexample of people he's interacted with your opinion is:

And so the counterexamples of others are dumped into the exception that proves the rule bin. I don't see how we can continue a reasonable discussion past this point. Your opinion is that group X is like Y, and counterexample Z isn't particularly relevant. If the past is any indicator of the future, all other counterexamples will be treated accordingly.

Note that I'm not saying you're wrong. I have no idea which of us is wrong in the faith example, and no idea who is wrong between you and Jethro. In order to prove it either way, someone would have to cite a nationwide poll that addressed the issue, and even then we might end up arguing about methodology.

I'm just saying that we're not getting anywhere here, and maybe we should stop and talk about something else we can find common ground on.

Without wishing to talk around you, I was mainly responding to Jethro specifically.

I also don't really think an "impasse" is created by opining that certain perspectives - CS Lewis' definition of faith, or Jethro's "excellent people uncomfortable with abortion" - are more exception than rule. You can disagree or say [citation needed] or what have you, but that difference of opinions doesn't constitute an impasse.

There's a few angles where I don't see how you reasonably end up as "abortion should be illegal":

1. When life begins - if it's conception, why do 50% of pregnancies end in miscarriage? Should everyone be having funerals for 1 month zygotes, when often the woman doesn't even know she was pregnant?
2. Effectiveness - it's pretty much guarenteed that illegal abortion makes things worse in terms of actual birth and death outcomes. Even a cursory glance though history shows this; for it to not turn out so you'd have to set up a police state like the world has never seen. Which no one says they want to do.
3. Concern for the child - why the opposition to government programs that given kids free food, then? Why the studious non-interest in regulating smoking, drinking, and eating by mother? By women who might get pregnant?
4. Doctors vs. mothers - how come no one wants to send women to prison for having an abortion? It's always about the evil, evil doctors, who apparently use their satanic powers to cause abortions. The women have no real influence on the decision, apparently.

The rejoinders to this are basically "god said so" in one format or another:

1. God said you shouldn't do X, pregnancy is your punishment to make you behave better. Abortion lets you dodge the punishment.
2. Implicit "conception is the quickening" arguments, whether the speaker realizes that's what they're saying or not.

By process of elimination I end up at "it's really about gender roles, sex, and control." Note that uncomfortable with it is a different bag entirely; it's just unpleasant no matter how society handles it. Actually wanting to arrest people, though? The least unpleasant thing I can say about that is that it's moralistic wish fulfillment, like our drug laws.

The problem is that I don't see a way to prove that one person's experience is more exception than rule. In the absence of empirical data, we don't have anywhere to go past The Big Lebowski's, "That's, just like, your opinion, man."

I mean, I wanted to respond to Jason's first, third, and fourth points, but it would involve relaying the opinions of people who are anti-abortion despite not being massive assholes. Those opinions would be dismissed as being not representative of the national opinion, and everyone would go on believing exactly what they did before this thread started. I'm not sure how this exercise is improving any of us.

Jason M., again, i don't believe the majority of people who are anti-abortion have any thoughts of it as "dodging punishment" as opposed to having a problem with the physical act of abortion. The loud mouthed idiots, maybe, but I truly believe they are the minority. There are people who genuinely feel that a fetus at, for example, 3 or 4 months is a life and feel it is wrong to kill it. But you're not gonna believe that, so I'm not going to try to convince you.

Let me ask you a question, though: at what point in a pregnancy do you feel it is wrong to abort? Throw out the rape/incest/danger to the mother cases.

Well, happily, it's a discussion forum and not a forensic debate where this might present some sort of insoluble scoring problem. To take the presumably less contentious of the issues I was (and remain) confident that Lewis' definition of faith was (like a lot of his apologetics) quite distinctively his, and not all that big of one outside of, say, CS Lewis fans. Theoretically I guess we'd have recourse to surveys of intellectual history? Really weird public opinion polls? But this just being a conversation, I politely assert it, confidently but not dickishly or uncontradictably. That isn't an impasse, it's just not agreement about something.

It'd be hard to parse, really, since what Jason's talking about is basically "a nasty subtext" along analogous lines to "the socially disadvantaged lack the virtues of the advantaged, therefore I am against collectivist social programing" subtexts. On some level it's one of those things left-ish people think about right-ish people; it does also fit into the idea of deontological as opposed to utilitarian "understanding of the rules," as outlined here and in the research it glosses.

On which subjects can one take one's opponents words at face value? On one level it's always best to, on the other hand, it's not like the GOP has "Lee Atwater speeches" every day, yet we still suspect them of the same vices, and not without reason. It's inductive stuff, but I imagine you agree with many of the other inductions about right-wing nastiness.

Not strictly directed at me, but as I mentioned above, I view the period between viability and most basic consciousness as basically a buffer extended beyond a very late "line" - basically birth. In practice social preferences tend to obviate the "so does that mean you are ok with a pointless casual abortion at 30 weeks" problem, and conversely, no one on either side of the abortion divide is going to get very excited about (woman-respectful) limitations to abortion in the third trimester.

That said, I wouldn't be ok with some sort of hierarchy of "acceptable reasons to get an abortion by X weeks" system that effectively set itself up as a moral judge of womens' reasons.

Baldr, I know some people don't think the things I'm saying, polling just sure looks like there's a lot of them. There also seems to be way more of them than in any other developed country.

I have no damn idea. Seriously, I don't; it's an immovable object meeting an irresistable force. Conveniently I also think it's pretty much irrelevant - who are these people having abortions for the "wrong" reasons?