Thanks to advances in scientific imagery, neonatal medicine, and contraception development, the pro-life movement is more poised than ever to shift evenly-split opinion in its direction. But grandstanding, such as the Alabama bill that would forbid rape victims from obtaining abortions at any point but its own authors admit will never go into effect, greatly harms the pro-life movement’s chances of succeeding. Instead pro-life proponents ought to make two good faith concessions to demonstrate that the pro-life cause isn’t about the control of women’s bodies, but rather solely about the protection of the unborn.
First is contraception deregulation. This includes making hormonal birth control available over the counter or directly from a pharmacist. The simplest case for deregulating hormonal birth control comes from medical professionals themselves. Absent any external health complications such as coronary artery disease or lupus, oral contraceptives are safe and up to 99.9% effective for the overwhelming majority of women as long as they are not smokers over the age of 35. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American Medical Association have all publicly endorsed over-the-counter status for oral contraceptives.
Study after study demonstrates that improving overall access, not simply the literal price, of oral contraceptives will posit the greatest gains in birth control coverage for the women most at risk of an unintended pregnancy. The University of California, San Francisco’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health found that making oral contraceptives over the counter would increase the amount of American women using by 11%-21%, thus decreasing the nation’s astronomically high unintended pregnancy rate of nearly 50% by 7%-25%.
The good news? Senate Republicans are already advocating for federal regulators to expedite approving over-the-counter birth control. Pro-life proponents ought to enthusiastically endorse this push, and President Trump should vociferously get on board.
Next, pro-life proponents should make two vital cases with regards to federal funding: divert it from facilities providing abortions and double it to other Title X non-abortion-providing Title X facilities. Enacted under President Nixon, Title X is a family planning program. It provides services such as Pap smears and HPV vaccines that can prevent cancer, plus STI testing that can prevent infertility, HIV testing that can prevent death, and birth control that can, obviously, prevent pregnancy. The Guttmacher Institute says that in 2010, federal family planning spending “helped women prevent an estimated 2.2 million unintended pregnancies that year, of which 1.1 million would have resulted in an unplanned birth, 760,000 in an abortion, and 360,000 in a miscarriage” and saved taxpayers $10.5 billion. Pro-lifers often oppose Title X spending because funding sent to places like Planned Parenthood for non-abortion services is fungible and does effectively subsidize any losses incurred by abortion services.
So let’s make a deal: divert funding away from Title X recipients providing abortions and to ones that don’t — then double it. It’s good not just for the unborn but for public spending as a whole. Given how many unwanted births, abortions, cancer cases, and STI complications Title X funding prevents, Guttmacher found that for every dollar spent, taxpayers save $7.09.
Proactive messaging and good faith attempts to demonstrate that pro-life proponents are pro-choice prior to conception can take back the narrative.
As we’ve seen with Democrats embracing the Green New Deal, outlandish proposals designed to trigger and virtue signal ultimately do their causes more harm than good. We need fewer performances like that in Alabama that will never actually go into effect, and more proactive proposals that will actually prevent abortions and grant women agency before they have an unwanted pregnancy.
