The Jedi Mind Trick of the pro-choice movement is focusing public attention on edge cases.
When confronted with the image of a fetus at, say, ten weeks, a person of normal moral intuitions is likely to be squeamish. “Maybe we shouldn’t kill that tiny baby,” is a common response, and with too many voters thinking that, legislatures are liable to turn pro-life.
The pro-choice movement knows they need to distract the public from the reality of abortion. So, friend, what if we were really debating about … INCEST! You aren’t for THAT, are you?
But if you have wonder whether there truly are many abortions due to incest, I have the answer for you: no.
Data from Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration, which tracks the reason for every abortion, suggests that in 2018 about 1 in 10,000 abortions was due to incest. Put another way, a woman is more likely to be struck by lightning than to get an abortion because of incest.
Well, chum(p), how about … RAPE! You don’t favor making RAPE more agonizing, do ya?
This category is a political and celebrity favorite for abortion, but, fortunately, still rare. The same Florida data shows that only 0.14% -- about 1 in every 700 – abortions is due to rape.
Ok, then what if the child was GENETICALLY ABNORMAL?!
At this point, some may notice that we are moving into philosophically shaky territory. Abortion because of incest and rape carries an uncomfortable undercurrent of honor killing, but we have been conditioned to ignore the ethical problem because of horror of the underlying crime. Proposing to kill children because you deem their life unworthy living focuses more attention on the true issue. When is a life not worth living? Is it ever? As I have said before, “Better Off Dead” is a movie, not a moral theory; we don’t euthanize children in other contexts.
Is fetal abnormality, however, the reason for many abortions? Given that most abortions are first trimester, it probably should not surprise that it is not. Drawing again from the Florida data, a mere 1% of abortions are due to serious fetal genetic defect, deformity, or abnormality.
But what if, you woman (pregnant person?) hater, without an abortion the MOTHER WOULD DIE?!
Once again, contrary to endlessly circulated stories on Twitter, this reason is a red herring. The Florida data shows that less than 0.28% of abortions were due to a life endangering physical condition affecting the mother.
The fact is that almost all abortions are because the mother doesn’t want the social and economic consequences of a baby. And if you don’t believe the Florida data because it is from a state that sometimes votes Republican, you still have to accept that reality. Data from the radically pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute leads to the same conclusion. When you see someone talking about incest, rape, and babies and mothers doomed to death, you are being distracted from the real issue.
But shouldn’t we be sympathetic about the social and economic consequences of pregnancy and child-rearing?
Of course, and pretending that pregnant mothers denied abortions are doomed socially and economically is another Jedi Mind Trick of the pro-choice movement.
Abortion is not the last choice a mother has. Relinquishing a newborn for adoption is straightforward due to Safe Haven laws in all 50 states, and some states even have “Baby Boxes” for anonymity.
The focus on the misery of mothers raising an unplanned child ignores the reality. Mothers choose to raise unplanned children, rather than give them up for adoption, for the same reason that most choose not to have an abortion. Most mothers would make any sacrifice for their children, and could not bear to give one up, even in bad circumstances.
Nor is this choice social and economic suicide. Single motherhood is a major risk factor for poverty, but most single mother families are not poor. Those who are have access to a variety of federal and state programs, many specifically targeted to mothers with young children. Moreover, if poverty is the problem, one would think that more generous benefits would be the solution. It is telling that the same progressives beating the drum for more welfare benefits grow silent when such benefits are suggested as an alternative to abortion.
What is left to the pro-choice arguments when the usual Jedi Mind Tricks are stripped away?
Not much. Some, such as this law professors writing in the NY Times, start incoherent rants about sexual servitude, as if prohibiting murder in the course of a fundamental biological process was akin to slavery. More philosophical types tend to go for crazy analogies. The (inexplicably) famous essay by Judith Jarvis Thomson, “A Defense of Abortion,” for example, thinks pregnancy is like being abducted by a Society of Music Lovers, knocked out, and connected as a medical Siamese twin to a comatose and fatally ill violinist.*
In conclusion, the pro-life side must adopt the wisdom of Jabba the Hutt: Recognize the Jedi Mind Tricks, and focus on reality. Killing babies is an ugly thing, and it is not just the core issue, it’s the only issue.
* Please read Thomson’s essay if you think I exaggerate, though I warn that you will wish you had those minutes of your life back at the end. For those who prefer to use their time wisely, let me note a few of the more obvious defects in the analogy: (1) As we just saw, almost no abortions are the result of an involuntary action, but rather are the foreseeable potential consequence of having sex; (2) pregnancy is a natural biological process, is literally the female body’s reproductive purpose and function, and is obviously nothing like being unnaturally connected to another human; (3) pregnancy is not remotely as restrictive as being tethered to an unconscious adult; (4) your own child is not a stranger, and all cultures in human history acknowledge a unique moral obligation between mother and child; (5) letting someone die of an independent fatal illness is not the same as deliberately killing them or deliberately altering their natural circumstances such that they will surely die. I could go but we are probably both tired by now. Let me end by quoting the last paragraph of the essay, which neatly illustrates how Thomson ignores biological reality without any attempt at an explanation when not making absurd analogies: “At this place, however, it should be remembered that we have only been pretending throughout that the fetus is a human being from the moment of conception. A very early abortion is surely not the killing of a person, and so is not dealt with by anything I have said here.” QED, indeed.