Moral Quicksand

A recent essay published on Politico describes the issue of “abortion” as political “quicksand” in which the Republican Party is beginning to sink. Where a few years ago polls showed voters split roughly 50/50 over the “abortion issue,” since the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Republicans have been dealt a series of crushing electoral defeats. The outcomes of these contests have been lopsided, like the 59-41% vote in the August 2022 Kansas referendum which rejected a state constitutional ban on abortion.  The 2022 midterm election and the recent special election to fill a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court were even more powerful statements of general voter hostility to attacks on reproductive freedom.

            Though the political dimensions of this phenomenon are dramatic and “made for television,” it is foolish to be lulled or distracted by the bells and whistles of our profit-driven media machine. Voters, activists, commentators and elected leaders should not treat this as a political issue, because it is not one. It is a question of foundational civil rights that must be protected in law. Anyone who is trying to deprive citizens of their inalienable reproductive rights is assaulting the basic humanity and dignity of millions. The movement to criminalize abortion is thus not properly denoted as “political quicksand,” but as moral quicksand.

            Religiously conservative pundits such as Ross Douthat have gotten into the habit of complaining that the Christian right’s reception of Dobbs has been “too extreme.” By this reading, there was an optimally “reasonable” course of activism that would have been heralded by the removal of the protections to women’s and families’ rights guaranteed by Roe v. Wade. A set of policies that were “pro-children” rather than “anti-women” would have constituted the agenda of this “reasonable” post-Roe world.

            Such a specious fantasy was at best always a glib pretense, but the reality that has ensued in the wake of Dobbs reveals it to have been a vicious lie. The ten-year old girl forced to travel from Ohio to Indiana to receive an abortion after being raped by a male relative, and the numerous instances of women denied treatment when faced with severe health risks during pregnancy since the Dobbs decision, all stand testimony to a fact that has been crystal clear since Roe v. Wade was first adjudicated: there is no way to “kindly” or “gently” remove the essential safeguards that protect human liberty, autonomy, and dignity.

            Although it is a wonder that mendacious pundits like Douthat can sleep at night, some of the blame for our current morass lies with elected leaders who have been defending reproductive freedom in recent decades. They let the so-called “pro-life” movement pull a con on all of America. The public discourse on reproductive rights has been stuck in a debate over the ethics of abortion, which is patently absurd. Reproductive freedom is not and has never been an issue about the ethics of abortion.

The question at the heart of the debate about reproductive freedom is not whether abortion is wrong, but whether there is any way to morally employ state power to criminalize abortion. The answer to that question is now and has ALWAYS been an emphatic: “NO!” Even if, for the sake of argument, we grant that government has some legitimate authority over what happens inside a woman’s body (which it most certainly DOES NOT), in a nation of 330,000,000 people spread over almost four million square miles, there is no way that government at any level (federal, state, or local) can gather information fast enough to make informed decisions about how many of the three million unwanted pregnancies that occur every year may be “rightfully” terminated (for example, to protect the health of the mother or because they were the result of incest or rape).

Criminalizing abortion cannot be done “reasonably.” It necessarily subjects women to egregiously intrusive forms of government surveillance, unfounded suspicion, and arbitrary restrictions on their medical care. In the best case scenario all women become subject to gratuitous insults to their dignity, as they are forced to plead with petty bureaucrats and lawyers for the basic care to which they should be entitled as citizens and human beings. In the progressively worse (and more likely) case scenarios, millions of women are materially injured, abused, or murdered, as their work and travel are restricted, they are denied critical medical treatment, or as they are forced to carry the offspring of men by whom they have been battered and raped.

Propagandists like Douthat enjoy spreading the myth that the Dobbs decision is the culmination of decades of “grass roots activism” by well-meaning and conscientious people of faith, and that it is just an unfortunate coincidence that the repeal of Roe has coincided with the recent surge of fascist extremism by right wing voters and politicians. But that, of course, is an extension of the lie that there was some “non-authoritarian” path to the removal of safeguards for reproductive freedom in the first place. The remaining minority of Americans who support Dobbs range from the moderately religious to the zealously fanatical. Some of them will be satisfied by very narrow restrictions on abortion that allow liberal exceptions for "rape and incest" and "the life and health of the mother." But many (if not most) of them will only be satisfied by the most draconian ban on abortion "from the moment of conception" in ALL CASES, and will want further controls on common forms of contraception like IUDS, birth control pills, or even condoms. Many (if not most) members of this latter group will want to see restrictions placed on women's travel and even employment, for the protection of the "unborn."

In order to keep the so-called "pro-life voter" coalition coherent enough, in an age of polarized electorates, to continue to control policy, the fanatics have to be appeased. The aftermath of Dobbs has proven this, and is only a foretaste of what is to come. There was thus never any context in which Roe v. Wade could be repealed except a slide toward fascism in the USA. Anyone who claims to dislike the bigotry, racism, sexism, and anti-democratic thuggery of the MAGA movement but to approve of the politics of Dobbs is a liar, full stop.   

Democrats are understandably excited about the results of elections like those in Kansas and Wisconsin. But leaders of all parties should understand the lessons of the past. “Abortion” was a “50/50” issue before Dobbs because elected leaders did not speak  candidly and substantively about the issue of reproductive freedom and what was at stake if Roe v. Wade was repealed. The fact that so many millions of voters who previously told pollsters that they were “pro-life” have showed up at the polls to vote against “pro-life” propositions and candidates in the last year shows that they were surprised by the consequences of Dobbs, and they should not have been. If a candidate, for example, like Hilary Clinton had spoken frankly about what the effects of a repeal of Roe were certain to be, we might not be in this position in the first place.

It is too late to undo those mistakes. But today’s leaders can learn from them. The voters are obviously ready for a discussion about the true moral stakes in the debates over reproductive rights. If elected leaders and political candidates speak to voters with informed candor and moral clarity, the hard work of restoring the safeguards of reproductive freedom can be accomplished.