Abortion advocacy has taken another dark turn. It remains explicitly anti-life, of course, yet now doubly so as the movement seeks to abandon hope of compromise. All the while, proponents draw some similarities with their pro-life counterparts.
Enlightening reporting from Vox reveals that abortion advocacy groups are content to wait out the incoming Republican administration rather than work with the “exceptions” framework of abortion legislation. This holds even in the face of backlash to women dying as a result.
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In fact, they see it as the most promising option. From the advocate’s point of view, total abortion freedom is more important than women’s health. Since Roe was overturned, abortion advocates have been blaming every pregnancy complication on abortion bans, even though abortion bans are not to blame for the substandard care pregnant women receive. Instead of clarifying that the life of the mother should always be protected, abortion advocates are holding out for total legalization.
Compromise “would legitimize restrictions,” Vox explained. The most effective method, then, will be quietly allowing the bans to do their damage, whereby “abortion rights will only grow in salience for voters in elections to come.”
So goes the line of reasoning. What the advocacy groups are saying is simply that they want women as unwitting martyrs. Forget the cry of imminent danger under President-elect Donald Trump: What matters most is the abortion cause.
All of this context clears up why abortion advocates have clung to the Amber Thurman lie for so long after it has been debunked. Thurman undertook a legal chemical abortion, developed sepsis, and her doctors delayed in helping her — likely because they misunderstood Georgia’s clear abortion law. Instead of explaining the full truth of stories like Thurman’s, abortion advocates want miscommunications, and flat-out lies that abortion bans result in deaths, to do their convincing.
That game is the new strategy: Bank on women dying and spin their deaths into something marketable, all to be able to bank on children dying instead. Really, it does not have to be one or the other if saving lives is the goal. Anti-abortion advocates want to spare the lives of children and better the lives of mothers. Pro-abortion advocates insist, ironically, that the two are mutually exclusive.
It is corrupt framing and it is death-based. But in other ways, it is not too far from the uncompromising pro-lifer’s stance.
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There are a few camps within the pro-life movement: Some people are for exceptions, some believe there are zero exceptions but are willing to negotiate as a political tool, and some take up both zero exceptions and zero negotiation. That third camp is usually all-in on a federal ban and finds its leader in Live Action founder Lila Rose. It wrestles with pro-life Trump supporters who want to make big gains by way of the gradual game.
For those in the political realist camp, however, working with a seriously powerful figure like Trump saves lives in the here-and-now. Their principles find gestational limits and exceptions equally repulsive, but they consider it prudent to work forward from what the country offers presently. It is why Vice President Kamala Harris absolutely could not win — everything would go to slaughter, and it was worth backing Trump for those reasons and for the long-run political order.
To have refused Trump, the non-negotiating pro-lifer pivoted on a single, pure principle of life. It is hands-off — do not work with a flinching party. There is something admirable in its pursuit of justice, yet it does endanger a lot of lives. If every pro-lifer followed that heuristic, the period of damage would have been irreconcilable. At the same time, they are on to something: Compromise hurts the movement. Once the argument shifted from “abortion takes a human life” to “pro-life is pro-woman,” conviction wobbled. No one can deny that a federal ban is the ideal-world outcome.
Hopefully, the mirroring is by now clear. The modes of reasoning within the pro-life and pro-abortion movements are fairly parallel, if miles apart in value.
The difference is that one, the pro-life, operates with the goal of saving lives. The other operates for autonomy.
Abortion advocates “are not willing to compromise when it comes to our ability to make decisions about our bodies, lives and future.” That point is the core, motivating principle. The cause is for bodily autonomy above anything else, and their preferences show as much. Bans do not endanger lives, they pose barriers to an entirely freewheeling, amoral society. The freedom to obtain an abortion does not safeguard women’s rights, it instructs on how to use them.
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The anti-choice-ness of the pro-abortion side showcases this quality. To the extent that women use their autonomy to make pro-abortion choices, the cabal is all for it. Abortion pill reversal is perhaps the ultimate expression of a woman’s choice and her reasoning ability, yet the pro-abortion coalition’s most vehement efforts go against it. The procedure is natural, and it can work, but it argues that maybe, just maybe, a child is a gift.
To bury such messaging, Democrats hoped the election would be a big win for abortion-minded politicians. But “that didn’t happen,” as one Democratic senator told Vox. It is a point of despair for abortion advocacy groups: They can see that the majority is less extreme than they are themselves. And rather than accept public interest, the abortion coalition will use its one play — death — to keep itself in the queue. There is something of consistency in it, at least.