Conservatives Don’t Believe Their Own Pro-Life Rhetoric

In April, the Oklahoma legislature passed a new law making abortion a felony, subjecting anyone who performs one in the state to a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of $100,000.

In so doing, lawmakers no doubt believe they have struck a blow for the sanctity of unborn life.

But what they’ve actually done is prove how little they believe in their own rhetoric.

The new law, far from elevating the status of the unborn to what the right would claim for it — full legal personhood, on par with the already-born — actually undermines the moral case for such status. It proves that even those who most loudly proclaim the equal worth of fetal life don’t believe it.

Because if they did, two things would be different about this law.

First, it would also seek to punish, with prison, any woman seeking or obtaining an abortion — not merely the doctor who performs one.

And second, it would not punish such an act — cold-blooded murder if you believe the anti-abortion position — with a mere 10-year prison stint and a financial penalty.

If abortion is indeed murder, it should be met with far harsher consequences than those.

…far from elevating the status of the unborn to full legal personhood on par with the already-born, [the new Oklahoma law] proves that even those who most loudly proclaim the equal worth of fetal life don’t believe it

And in a place like Oklahoma, which has shown its support for capital punishment and long prison terms for other types of murder, it would be.

Not prosecuting women who have abortions while prosecuting the doctors who perform them would be like not prosecuting a mom who solicits and obtains a contract killer to take out her toddler while making sure to charge the hitman.

At least that’s the analogy that holds if you believe abortion doctors are basically contract killers.

I don’t believe that, but anti-abortion folks do.

So why charge the killer but not the one who conspired to “murder” the unborn child?

Right-wingers will say it’s because they have “compassion” for the women in these cases. But why?

Why be that “compassionate” towards someone you think just went out of her way to have a doctor murder her unborn baby?

Is it because the mothers are under emotional distress due to an unplanned pregnancy or perhaps financial anxiety? If so, would they allow the mom who has her kindergartner killed to point to her stress levels or bank account as an excuse for her actions?

Of course not.

So what that leaves us is a tacit admission by the people who claim there is no moral difference between that 5-year old and that unborn child that, indeed, there is a significant difference between them.

Perhaps the difference isn’t so significant that we should view fetal life as utterly without value or just a clump of meaningless cells.

But it’s undoubtedly large enough to suggest that the moral claims of fetal life pale in comparison to those of actually born humans, including those who carry them throughout gestation.

Likewise, the relatively light criminal penalty for what is being defined as the felonious taking of life is a tell, in gambling terms.

If fetal life were truly on par, morally, with born life, there is no way that anti-abortion folks would be satisfied with a 10-year sentence and fine.

If someone kills a toddler, an infant, a teenager, an adult, the fine folks of Oklahoma are overwhelmingly prepared to kill them in return, or at the very least incarcerate them for life, often with no chance of parole.

But here, if a doctor terminates a pregnancy — thereby, in the eyes of supposedly pro-life folks, killing a baby — they get a decade behind bars, maybe less?

What does that say?

Again, it says that even the people supporting these laws know full well that fetal life and born life are not the same — not only practically and Constitutionally, but also morally.

. . .

There is, I suppose, one other possible interpretation of what a law like this demonstrates. And while it may be slightly more charitable to the anti-abortion side, it nonetheless undermines the moral case for their position.

Perhaps, one could argue that with a law like this, conservatives have made a necessary compromise to significantly reduce abortions, if not end them outright in Oklahoma. After all, if they also sought to imprison women obtaining abortions, they would face fierce opposition, even from many who call themselves pro-life.

Such a provision — or even treating the doctors like actual contract killers with life sentences or a death penalty — would be considered extreme by most, regardless of politics.

By writing the law this way, the state can drastically limit abortions in Oklahoma while avoiding the provocation of too much backlash.

Perhaps.

But that kind of compromise is precisely the kind of utilitarian consideration the religious right usually condemns.

It’s the kind of purely political calculation that demonstrates the lack of a moral or ethical basis for anti-abortion politics.

And to the extent these folks would never hedge their bets this way with regard to imposing harsh penalties for other types of “murder,” they clearly realize the public does not view fetal life and born life as equivalent.

If they did, imposing prison time on women who obtain abortions would not provoke backlash, and there would be no political reason to exclude it from the law.

So what does it tell us that the vast majority of Americans, and even Oklahomans, would repel from laws seeking to prosecute women who have abortions? When almost no one objects to criminally prosecuting moms who kill their born children?

It tells us that most everyone, regardless of politics or religious beliefs, sees the fundamental difference between fetal life and already-born life.

It tells us that almost no rational person views them as morally equivalent. It’s not even a close call.

And if they are not equivalent, then the rights of the already born will always, by necessity, take precedence over the rights of the unborn. This includes the right to bodily autonomy and self-determination — the very right traduced by bans on abortion.

. . .

Ultimately, there is no discernible constituency or support for prosecuting women who “murder their unborn babies.”

And the reason for this is simple — everyone knows that’s not what they’re actually doing.

By their latest actions, anti-abortion lawmakers in Oklahoma have tipped their hand and signaled to the world that they know it too.

The pro-life movement is a fraud based on a lie.

Always has been, always will be.

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This post was previously published on Tim Wise’s blog.

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