The Next Battle Over Abortion
The pro-life movement needs to rediscover its identity
For nearly half a century, the pro-life movement was united, working toward the singular purpose of repealing Roe v. Wade. That Supreme Court decision had quashed all debate over abortion, making it a binary issue — either legal or illegal. Discussions about where to draw the line or what exceptions should exist were subsumed by the greater question of whether abortion should be legal or not.
Now that Roe has been overturned, the pro-life movement faces serious questions about its own identity and how to create a culture that values human life rather than treating it as disposable. Recent victories by the pro-abortion side in both Kansas and Ohio — both red states where Donald Trump won twice — underscore the need to build a coherent message. No longer can the pro-life movement simply raise money off the prospect of overturning Roe; it must find a way to communicate a positive message.
A few weeks ago, Idaho Press reporter Carolyn Komatsoulis asked me to comment on the possibility of an Ohio-style pro-abortion referendum coming to Idaho. Though I’m always wary when talking to the media, Komatsoulis fairly represented my perspective. You can read the whole article here. I found it interesting that only former Attorney General Jim Jones, BSU professor Jeff Lyons, and I responded with comments, while the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, Idaho Chooses Life, and Attorney General Labrador’s office all declined.
I think that passing a similar referendum would be an uphill battle in Idaho, because opposition to abortion really does unite all the disparate factions of the right. Most Idaho Republicans, outside of perhaps Sen. Geoff Schroeder and a few others, boast about their pro-life credentials. The race for lieutenant governor last year saw Scott Bedke and Priscilla Giddings each claim to be more pro-life than the other. If an attempt was made to legalize the practice, then I think the Republican Party would stand together.
According to a survey cited in the Idaho Press article, a clear majority of Idahoans want abortion to remain illegal, with 11% wanting no exceptions and 43% open to some exceptions:
Yet we should not underestimate the power of this issue to rally the left and to persuade the center. Pro-abortion activists will use rare and marginal cases such as rape or genetic disorders as the camel’s nose in the tent to remove all restrictions on abortion. This is happening in Texas right now. We must find a way to hold the line, but in a way that demonstrates compassion for mothers, children, and families.
Before the movement can build on the massive victory that was the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, we must first confront several myths that hold us back:
Myth #1: Most Americans oppose abortion
We like to tell ourselves this one, to reassure ourselves that the majority of Americans value life, even that of unborn children. We’ll cherry pick a survey here or a poll there, or extrapolate the real fact that most Americans oppose outright infanticide and partial birth abortion to suggest that they also agree that life begins at conception.
Twice in the last year, citizens in red states chose to legalize abortion. One exit poll from Ohio’s recent referendum shows a majority of both men and women supported the constitutional amendment protecting abortion, despite Donald Trump winning the state by 8% in 2020.
This is an issue we must take seriously rather than ignoring it or pretending it’s fake news. The fact that a majority of people support some form of abortion does not make it right, but it means we are going to have to engage people differently in order to promote a culture of life in our nation.
We take life far too cheaply today. Abortion is justified on the basis that it’s better for children to die in the womb than live in poverty or have parents who don’t want them. Modern life is structured to take children out of the house as much as possible, to break down connections of family and community to make us as atomized as possible, and then to shuffle off our elders into group homes where they can be out of sight and out of mind.
We should work to pass the most pro-life laws possible, but we can’t ignore the culture that is producing people who think killing the unborn for the sake of convenience is a sacred right.
Myth #2: Women are not responsible for getting abortions
This one is especially popular among older people in the pro-life movement. Perhaps out of a misplaced sense of chivalry, pro-life men do their best to avoid holding women responsible for their choice to get abortions. They will say that no woman would choose to kill her own child, and that any woman who would abort her baby is only doing so because a husband, boyfriend, or father forced her.
Donald Trump, of all people, discovered this land mine in the pro-life movement when he was first running for president. As a new convert to the pro-life position, he said the obvious: if women kill their babies they should go to jail. Leaders of the movement quickly jumped on him, telling him that holding women accountable is very wrong.
I think there is also a fear in the pro-life movement that holding women accountable will scare them away from supporting anti-abortion legislation. Yet we cannot let fears like this tarnish our message. A parent who hires a hitman to murder his or her children after they are born is not morally different from a woman who goes to a doctor’s office to have her unborn children destroyed.
Watching women on social media “shout their abortion” and boast about doing it multiple times will quickly disabuse you of the notion that women bear no moral responsibility for the choice to kill their unborn children. If we really believe in the equality of the sexes before the law, then we must hold both men and women accountable for their actions.
Myth #3: We must embrace socialism to prove that we’re really pro-life
It started as a taunt from the pro-abortion crowd: “If you’re really pro-life, then why don’t you support cradle-to-grave welfare?” Then it started seeping into the movement. I remember listening to numerous speakers at last year’s Life After Roe rally who advocated some form of state support for mothers and children.
Holding the belief that the unborn are human beings with the same natural rights as adults and children does not mean we have to support government welfare. We need government to step back and allow families, churches, and communities to fulfill the roles of charity and support that they once did. Government welfare only increases dependency and inflates the bureaucracy. We cannot allow proponents of socialist programs to hold us hostage to our pro-life beliefs.
The result of Dobbs was that the issue of abortion was returned to the states. While it would be great to have some federal action on abortion, whether a 15 week ban or full abolition, I don’t see it happening. We should focus our energies on making Idaho a sanctuary for life and maintaining the most pro-life laws possible.
Make no mistake, the pro-abortion movement will pull out all the stops to legalize their dark sacrament in Idaho. This article from a pro-abortion group that tries to tie the pro-life movement to militias, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis is typical of the rhetoric we can expect.
Below is a picture of a pamphlet I found on the ground at Boise Pride Fest in 2022. As you can see it shares options for Idaho women to order abortion pills or get help going out of state for abortions. I’ve redacted the websites because I don’t want to give them any traffic.
Our opponents treat this as a civil rights issue, seeing themselves as a modern day underground railroad rescuing people from oppression. This is another sign of our societal decay. Clearly some people are still going to try and kill their babies no matter what the law says, but that is not an argument for repealing the law, rather it is a reminder that we must hold the line and work to change our culture of death into one of life.
The pro-life movement needs a strong, coherent, and united message. I believe societies can be judged by how their treat the most vulnerable, and there is no human being on earth more vulnerable than an unborn baby. We must remind people that it’s not the pro-life side that is extreme but those who advocate for state subsidized abortion on demand, without question, even up to the point of birth or afterward. Beyond the debate over exceptions or heartbeats or how many weeks, every civilized American should be able to agree that murdering a baby who has passed the point of being able to survive outside of the womb is absolutely barbaric and should under no circumstances be legal.
Overturning Roe v. Wade was a tremendous victory, one that many of us never thought we would see in our lifetimes. Now the real work of building a culture of life begins. Let us make Idaho a beacon for life in a nation and a world gone mad.
Thank you for bringing this issue back to the forefront as we head into the next legislative session. Well said. I agree with everything you articulated. What happened in Ohio was appalling and show just how organized the pro-death machine is. My only questions: who in Idaho will be the person/group that we can rally around and support their organized efforts to oppose such evil? Perhaps Idaho Family Policy Center? We need a plan.