One of the most popular “clap backs” to pro-lifers and pro-life activists these days is the charge that they aren’t really pro-life.
If they were really pro-life, the argument goes, they wouldn’t simply oppose abortion. They would also support government programs designed to help mothers and babies thrive once the baby is born. By opposing abortion without also supporting social welfare policies, most pro-lifers reveal themselves as only caring about babies before they are born. They aren’t actually pro-life; they are pro-birth. They are either not thinking through the implications of their pro-life convictions, or they are failing to put them into practice.
This criticism is about as flawed as it is popular. In the first place, the core pro-life contention is that all life should be legally protected — that the state should always prevent individuals from unjustifiably taking it. What sets pro-lifers apart from others on this score is that they are trying to extend this protection to life in the womb. The entire point of the movement is to press for consistency and equal protection before the law.
In other words, pro-lifers are against killing across the board, unlike those who would exclude the unborn from the same legal protections as all other human beings.
At this point, some readers might feel that I’ve missed the point of the criticism. The idea is not that pro-lifers are inconsistent in which lives they seek to protect, but that if babies are valuable enough to deserve legal protection, then surely they are also valuable enough to deserve our help. And yes, there is something objectionable and inconsistent about someone whose pro-life activism amounts to nothing more than casting a vote for the candidate who opposes abortion, all the while refusing to lift a finger to help mothers and babies in difficult circumstances.
But we must take care not to conflate help with government programs. Those opposed to abortion can both agree that mothers and babies deserve our help, and disagree that whatever government program is under discussion is the best way to provide that help. Pro-lifers who care about mothers and babies, but who are also are skeptical of the efficiency and efficacy of some or all government programs, can be found giving to charities designed to help mothers and babies. Among other things, they are known to volunteer at pregnancy help centers that provide free healthcare, child care, job training, diapers, clothes, food, and other needs for mothers before and after birth. Pro-lifers also deploy other private, nongovernmental strategies for providing help to mothers and babies in difficult circumstances.
Moreover, consider how we judge the actions of pro-choice officials in government who have tried very hard to shut down pregnancy help centers all over the nation, from New York to Baltimore to California. Are they not doing precisely what they accuse others of doing — cutting off help for already-born human beings? Although the Supreme Court has largely blocked their efforts to cut off this help, would the opponents of this form of aid to mothers and children appreciate being told that they oppose helping them, just because they believe this form of aid to be ineffective or even counterproductive?
It’s sensible to think that those who seek to protect babies via legal restrictions on abortion should also be providing positive help to mothers and babies in difficult circumstances. This is what the “pro-birth” objection gets right. But there is room for debate on the relative merits of social welfare programs. Without establishing that forced governmental redistribution is the only effective means of providing help to human beings after they are born, the charge of inconsistency does not stick.
Kyle Blanchette is an instructor of philosophy at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.
