Taking Abortion to the Next Level: Infanticide
by Jim Hewes
Doe v. Bolton (a companion case to Roe v. Wade) significantly expanded the definition of the “health” exceptions. The ruling interpreted “health” very broadly, encompassing a woman’s overall well-being, not just physical danger. This broad interpretation enabled a woman to obtain an abortion at any point in her pregnancy, to protect her “health,” as defined by the attending physician.
Similarly, California law (Assembly Bill AB 2223 in 2022) previously prohibited abortion after the point of fetal viability but included an exception, when a physician determined it was necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant person (once again, a broadly defined standard).
Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont, along with the District of Columbia, do not have bans based on how far along a pregnancy is. Their laws protect the right to abortion throughout pregnancy. These jurisdictions impose no gestational limits, making abortion legal at any stage of pregnancy.
From Late-Term Abortion to Infanticide
Since abortion can be performed up until birth in some jurisdictions, it can be viewed as a natural extension to allow infanticide after birth. In 1982, “Baby Doe” was born in Bloomington, Indiana. A routine operation could have fixed the problem of a birth defect that would not allow food to pass into this boy’s stomach. However, the parents and doctors decided to let him starve to death because he had Down Syndrome. Many families came forward, willing to adopt the child. The Supreme Court in Indiana ruled that the parents had the right to withhold care, which would mean that the child would starve to death. The child was not given food or water and died in agony a few days later.
Kathy Tran, a Democratic legislator in Virginia, stated during a 2019 committee hearing that her bill (HB 249) would allow abortion up until birth. Republican Delegate Todd Gilbert asked if the bill would allow an abortion when a woman is “about to give birth” and “is dilating.” Tran initially responded that it would be “a decision that the doctor, the physician, and the woman would make at that point.” When pressed further on whether her bill specifically allowed it, Tran replied, “My bill would allow that, yes.”
Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam also voiced support for legislation that would significantly loosen restrictions on late-term abortion. He stated that if a mother is in labor, “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
Democrats in Congress voted against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would have required medical providers to provide care to infants who survive an attempted abortion. The act would have mandated that healthcare providers give such children the same level of care as any other newborn, ensured immediate transport to a hospital, required reporting violations to law enforcement, and imposed criminal penalties for intentionally killing a newborn child.
Logic suggests that the same reasoning used to justify late-term abortions could justify ending the child’s life right after birth. In Mothers Who Kill Their Children by Cheryl Meyer and Michelle Oberman, the authors report on numerous cases of women who have killed their children after birth (some very famous). They discovered that, for various reasons, these children only became unwanted after they were born.
In fact, if the newborn baby’s life is worth so little, couldn’t a case be made (like the Nazi doctors did), to harvest their organs before they’re killed and give them to those babies whose parents want them to live?
Bioethics and the Justification of Infanticide
Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and a Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, has argued that infanticide under certain circumstances, particularly for severely disabled infants, would be morally permissible. He claims that newborns are not “persons” in a moral sense because they lack self-consciousness and the capacity to envision a future life. Singer writes:
If the fetus does not have the same claim to life as a person, it appears that the newborn baby does not either, and the life of a newborn baby is of less value to it than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee is to the nonhuman animal . . . so to kill a newborn baby cannot violate the principle of respect for autonomy. In all this the newborn baby is on the same footing as the fetus, and hence fewer reasons exist against killing both babies and fetuses. (Practical Ethics p.169 & 171)
James Watson, a Nobel Laureate in 1973, similarly stated: “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice . . . the doctor could allow the child to die, if the parents so choose, and save a lot of misery and suffering” (Children from the Laboratory, J. Watson, AMA Prism, Ch.3 p.2. May 1973). Dr. Francis Crick, also a Nobel Prize winner in 1978, supported infanticide.
Alberto Giubilinim & Francesca Minerva argue that since both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, but are only potential persons, what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is allowed. This includes cases where the newborn is not disabled (especially since there can be misdiagnosis or no diagnosis at all).
Historical and Eugenic Precedents
Lucas Warren, 2018 Gerber spokesbaby
Ancient Greece allowed infanticide, so those they deemed “defectives” would not pollute their society.
In the United States, the eugenics movement was promoted by Margaret Sanger, the founder of what is today known as Planned Parenthood.
In Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, eugenics was used to eliminate after birth more than 100,000 lives of those who had mental or physical disabilities. This was before the Nazi regime even began the “Jewish solution.”
As the saying goes: “we’re not putting them out of their misery – but putting them out of our misery.” Thus, infanticide becomes a reality.
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For a post that does follow-up to the “Baby Doe” case mentioned in this post, see:
A Lawyer’s Turnaround on Baby Doe with Her Own Down Syndrome Baby
For an innovative perspective on a prevalent infanticide thought experiment, see:
Is There a Post-Dobbs Back Alley? The Record on Women’s Abortion-Related Deaths
by Rachel MacNair
I had just turned 14 when Roe v. Wade came down. I reacted positively – it would get rid of back-alley butchers. Soon I realized it actually put a back-alley butcher back in business. The problem wasn’t the legal nature of abortion, but the nature of abortion, period.
There were arguments before Dobbs that abortion bans wouldn’t have dire back-alley impacts that we didn’t already have before. But now we don’t have to speculate about what would happen. We can observe what did happen.
I commented right after Dobbs that we were about to have a “natural experiment” – unlike a lab experiment, it’s not set up on purpose, but it’s still set up, so we can collect data. My post’s first section made predictions on women’s deaths. I document below that my predictions were just about right.
ProPublica has been chomping at the bit to show abortion bans have deadly consequences for women. It won a 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its coverage.
If abortion bans are deadly for women, that would be alarming to those of us advocating them. So – is it true?
ProPublica List
(to date, April 2026; in chronological order by death date)
| Name
Date of Death |
Condition | Malpractice? |
| Joselli Barnica
09.07.21 |
Wanted pregnancy, miscarriage | Delayed antibiotics for sepsis, etc. |
| Amber Thurman
08.19.2022 |
Legal Abortion | Delayed D&C at emergency visit 5 days later |
| Candi Miller
11.12.2022 |
Abortion pill from online | From the online source, sloppiness |
| Porsha Ngumezi
06.11.2023 |
Natural Miscarriage | Delayed, treated with misoprostol when should have been D&C |
| Nevaeh Craine
10.29.2023 |
Wanted pregnancy, infection | Two hospitals and three visits, ignored symptoms |
| Tierra Walker
12.26.2024 |
Difficult pregnancy | Several ways of not following protocols |
Joselli Barnica
ProPublica: “A Woman Died After Being Told It Would Be a ‘Crime’ to Intervene in Her Miscarriage at a Texas Hospital.”
Secular Pro-Life Video: Does Texas require doctors to wait until there’s no heartbeat to intervene in emergencies? (Josseli Barnica)
Before Dobbs, with a Texas abortion ban, Joselli had a wanted pregnancy but suffered a miscarriage at 17 weeks. They delayed intervention until there was no heartbeat, citing the Texas heartbeat law. Unlike the following cases, ProPublica had the word of the medical team. They misinterpreted the law; the remedy is to educate doctors on this.
After the D&C was finally done, doctors didn’t confirm the fetal parts were all removed and sent her home with them still inside her. She got an infection. It caused her death. The doctors should have taken her concern seriously when she reported symptoms. There’s certainly no abortion ban that keeps doctors from properly monitoring and treating an infection.
Amber Nicole Thurman
ProPublica: Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care
Secular Pro-Life: Georgia Woman Dies After Delayed Treatment of Abortion Pill Complications (Amber Thurman)
LifeNews.com: Leading OBGYN Believes Woman Died From Abortion Pill, Not Pro-Life Law
Amber was a Georgia resident, past the state’s gestational limit. She went to North Carolina to get the abortion pill regimen. Returning to Georgia, five days later she had complications. The doctors discussed but didn’t do a clearly-indicated D&C to remove fetal remains. Since the twins were already dead, there was no legal issue. ProPublica attributed this delay to doctors’ fears of the Georgia heartbeat law, without asking them what the reason for delay was.
Candi Miller
ProPublica: Candi Miller Died Afraid to Seek Care Amid Georgia’s Abortion Ban
LifeNews.com: Candi Miller Died From the Abortion Pill, Not From an Abortion Ban
This involved an online order of abortion pills. Of course that’s dangerous. No check for ectopic pregnancy, which the pill wouldn’t treat? No check for negative blood type to see if she needs a Rho-gam shot? Those who argue it shouldn’t be banned should at least insist on better regulation and monitoring.
Porsha Ngumezi
ProPublica: A Third Woman Died Under Texas’ Abortion Ban
Secular Pro-Life: ProPublica tries again: responding to claims about Porsha Ngumezi’s death
Porsha Ngumezi bled heavily from a miscarriage and went to the emergency room. She wasn’t seen for seven hours and then was given misoprostol instead of a proper D&C. After she died, the doctor’s notes claim her bleeding was minimal, contradicting nurses’ notes. Delaying the D&C for fear of the abortion ban? Administering misoprostol would also be against that ban.
Nevaeh Craine
ProPublica: A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Visits to Texas Emergency Rooms
Secular Pro-Life: Nevaeh Crain’s family says her death is being used for politics
and ProPublica can’t see malpractice, only abortion bans (Neveah Crain)
LifeNews.com: Nevaeh Crain Died Because of Poor Medical Care, Not From an Abortion Ban and Neveah Crain’s Family Blame Hospitals for Her Death, Not Texas Abortion Ban
Nevaeh was happily 6 months pregnant. With symptoms of infection, she made three different visits to two different emergency rooms and couldn’t get them to take her reports of symptoms seriously.
Tierra Walker
ProPublica: In Texas, Tierra Walker Wasn’t Offered an Abortion Before a High-risk Pregnancy Killed Her
Secular Pro-Life: Interview with Dr. Christina Francis regarding the case of Tierra Walker
LifeNews.com: Abortion Activists Exploit Pregnant Woman’s Tragic Death to Lie About Abortion Bans
Tierra had a high-risk pregnancy and so should have received better coordinated care than she did. ProPublica claims at 20 weeks she asked about terminating and was turned down. But at 20 weeks, terminating a high-risk pregnancy has its own medical risks. It’s not like getting rid of the pregnancy gets rid of the risk. So doctors’ judgment on the medical issue alone may have been correct. What we do know suggests that the medical risk management could have been better coordinated.
Not on the List Because There Was No Ban to Blame
Alexis Aguellos died February 6, 2025 from an amniotic fluid embolism as a complication of a 22-week abortion at Fort Collins Planned Parenthood. State legislature testimony, heard in the video clip below, shows the ambulance was called much later than it should have been.
This fits the pattern of the Roe era. Abortion-related deaths were only kept track of by pro-life groups (see lists from Feminists for Life, Students for Life, and Operation Rescue). Women’s deaths from abortions when there’s no ban don’t count in “pro-choice” eyes. Literally – they don’t count them.
Baseline
Here are the most recent numbers on abortion-related women’s deaths from the Centers for Disease Control when Roe was reigning:
To reasonably conclude that abortion bans, introduced in 2022 or soon thereafter, caused a spike in abortion-related maternal deaths, there would have to be more such deaths than in preceding years. ProPublica mentions six cases in three years. Only the two from 2022 would count as abortion-related, and no previous year had fewer deaths than that.
The concept of making a before-and-after comparison, basic to science, hasn’t been done. These are journalists, not scientists, and it shows. But even journalists should take into account a comparison to what happened previously before declaring a change, for fear of discovering that they’re only finding the situation is about the same after Dobbs as it was before.
Dobbs didn’t stop malpractice. Separate from abortion, it’s been a longstanding problem in the medical field to dismiss women’s reports of pain or symptoms.
Conclusion
We now have well over three years of experience of a post-Dobbs world in which 13 U.S. states have banned abortion and 28 more have gestational limits. We have a publication that’s pouring resources into trying to find these bans hurting women. They find cases that fit the narrative, find pro-abortion doctors to bolster their case, ignore what the actual doctors involved in the cases have to say, and assert what they know to be true because it’s supposed to be true.
ProPublica and others of similar advocacy claim women wouldn’t get proper treatment for natural miscarriages as doctors delayed needed treatment for fear of abortion bans. There are thousands upon thousands of women suffering natural miscarriages every year. They get the needed treatment. If this were actually a widespread problem, ProPublica reporters should be able to come up with many more cases.
I’m grieved for the loss of the lives of all the women they named and the one they didn’t. I also grieve for the amount of harm that’s been done to women by abortion businesses.
I personally have found a flood of problems just at Planned Parenthood since the year 2000 that dwarfs the evidence they give:
- Well over a hundred malpractice lawsuits, an average of over four a year.
- Hundreds of ambulance calls.
- Some of the health inspection reports detail horrifying clinic conditions.
- Many of the patient and employee online reviews indicate medical dangers, including emergency room visits.
Those mainly don’t involve deaths, though there are 11 cases of patient deaths. They include a lot of complaints that don’t have to do with abortion. So these findings aren’t comparable.
But the point is that finding risky practices among abortion providers is easy to do. ProPublica weakens their case by being unaware of how meager their cases are in comparison.
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For posts on similar topics, see:
The Back Alley and the Front Alley
Post-Roe Stats: the Natural Experiment
Abortion Facilitates Sex Abuse: Documentation
Excerpt – Peace Psychology Perspectives on Abortion: Child Abuse
Almost No One? How Survey Polls Work
Abortion Pill Reversal: One Woman’s Story
by Sarah Terzo
At the 2026 March for Life, a woman named Sarah Hurm shared her story. Hurm took the abortion pill and saved her baby with abortion pill reversal.
The Abortion Pill and Abortion Pill Reversal
The abortion pill regimen comprises two medications: mifepristone and misoprostol. Mifepristone works to inhibit progesterone, a naturally occurring hormone that maintains the uterine lining. Without progesterone, the lining breaks down and starves the baby of vital nutrients and oxygen, killing her. Then, misoprostol is used to induce uterine contractions, which expel the baby’s tiny body, usually subjecting the woman to heavy bleeding and severe cramps.
Abortion pill reversal is simply a dose of progesterone, which counteracts mifepristone and protects the uterine lining. If it’s taken in time, and all goes well, it can “reverse” a medication abortion in progress. The Human Defense Initiative has an excellent resource that describes the process in more detail.
When Sarah Hurm discovered she was pregnant with her fourth child, the baby’s father urged her to abort. She recalls his “harsh, judgmental” words, which made her feel “trapped and alone”:
He said, “26 years old, four kids, three different dads. That doesn’t look good.” His words drove me to call the abortion facility.
The reaction of the pregnant person’s partner, the baby’s father, often has a big impact on whether she has an abortion or spares the life of her preborn child. I recently covered two studies showing the influence of teen fathers on young girls’ abortion decisions.
Seeking Help: A Contrast
Hurm wanted someone to sit down with her and help her decide what to do. She said she was “seeking guidance.” Sadly, she didn’t turn to a pregnancy resource center, perhaps not knowing of one. Instead, she asked for counseling at an abortion facility, only to be told they didn’t offer any. The only “choice” they offered her was to pay them and schedule an abortion. They weren’t interested in spending time with her beyond that, nor did they care to ensure she made the best decision for herself. (Of course, they didn’t care what was best for the baby.)
The abortion workers didn’t seem concerned about Hurm’s overall well-being or interested in her as a person—they just wanted to sell her an abortion.
Hurm decided to take the abortion pill. She says that the abortion facility was “cold” and “sterile.”
Many abortion facilities now offer abortion pills via telehealth. In these cases, a doctor doesn’t see the pregnant person. She never has an ultrasound or any tests to determine how far along she is in her pregnancy or whether the pregnancy may be ectopic, which is a life-threatening condition. This puts the woman having an abortion at serious risk.
This time, abortion workers performed an ultrasound before giving her the pills. Hurm doesn’t mention whether the worker offered to show her the ultrasound, but says that the abortion worker told her:
You are lucky the Heartbeat Bill hadn’t passed, because if it had, we wouldn’t be able to continue. We detect a strong heartbeat.
Based on the stories I’ve read, it’s unusual for abortion workers to mention the preborn baby’s heartbeat. Usually, they do everything possible to dehumanize the baby. If not required by law, they rarely give facts about fetal development and sometimes even lie about it.
For example, I did an interview with Catherine Anthony Adair, who used to work at Planned Parenthood. She told me:
We never discussed fetal development. The baby was referred to as the “contents of the uterus” or a “clump of cells.” On the rare occasion a woman asked about the size of the baby, I would tell her it was about the size of the tip of my pencil, regardless of how many weeks into her pregnancy she was.
At the time I worked for Planned Parenthood, ultrasounds were only done if the woman was unsure of the dates of her last menstrual period, or if the doctor ordered one. Women were not given the option of viewing the ultrasound.
Hurm took the first abortion pill in the abortion facility and left with a paper bag containing the second drug, with instructions to take it at home.
She began having second thoughts:
As soon as I walked out of the facility, it was as if the world went from dark gray to bright blue. The clinic had felt lifeless. Outside, I felt life again.
That sharp contrast between darkness and light made me feel something I will never forget. I instantly began to regret my decision, and I broke down in my car. I continued to try and go about my day, but I couldn’t even so much as look in my children’s faces without thinking about the child within me.
Hurm searched online and found information about abortion pill reversal. She called the hotline on the abortion pill reversal website. The woman who answered the phone was kind and encouraging. Hurm says, “I realized then that I wasn’t alone; I wasn’t without options, and I could fight for my child’s life. And so, I did.”
She went to the pregnancy center that was offering abortion pill reversal and says:
I met a doctor and a team who gave me care, guidance, love, and most of all, hope — exactly what I was needing, which was far different from the abortion clinic, which had treated me like a transaction.
The contrast with the abortion facility is striking. It was clear which place genuinely cared about Hurm.
Hurm’s son was born completely healthy on January 11, 2019. He is still doing well.
Hurm says, “I am here to tell you that the abortion pill reversal can work. My life and the life of my son is [sic] living proof.”
She then encouraged pro-lifers:
Today, my son is one of the greatest joys of my life. Here is what I want you to know: saving a life can be as simple as answering a phone call, driving a friend to an ultrasound, or helping her pick out a car seat.
Or you can also show up in any little moment. Small sacrifices can become enormous victories that can support moms like me and children like mine. You have the power to be the person who connects a woman to hope.
Be the reason she knows she’s not alone.
Support and genuine interest in the needs and desires of the person carrying the child can go a long way. It can save babies’ lives and change the course of mothers’ lives for the better.
You can watch Sarah Hurm’s entire speech in this video.
I previously covered another abortion pill reversal story on Substack, which you can read here.
The Reality of Abortion Pill Reversal
The pro-choice movement, the mainstream media, and even medical organizations continue to insist that abortion pill reversal isn’t real—despite all the real-life stories and cases.
One of the big opponents of abortion pill reversal is the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which purports to be a neutral source of information, but is very pro-abortion. As Live Action News documents, however, there is evidence that they know full well that abortion pill reversal works, despite their public statements to the contrary.
In October of 2020, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released updated medical guidelines for abortions by pill. Included was a discussion of “the depo shot,” officially called depo medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA), which is a progesterone-only contraception. The guidelines said that a depo shot shouldn’t be given at the same time as the abortion pill, because the progesterone it contains can counteract the abortion pill’s effects:
Patients who select depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) for contraception should be counseled that administration of DMPA on day 1 of the medication abortion regimen may increase the risk of ongoing pregnancy . . .
Concern has been raised that the immediate use of hormonal contraception that contains progestins could theoretically interfere with medication abortion efficacy . . . Patients should be counseled about this small risk of ongoing pregnancy, which needs to be weighed against the risk of potentially not receiving their desired method of contraception. [Emphasis added]
It simply makes no sense that progesterone given in a depo shot would interfere with the abortion pill, and progesterone given by a pro-life doctor wouldn’t. It’s the same substance, often administered the same way.
So even pro-abortion doctors, many of whom are also abortionists, know full well that abortion pill reversal is in fact “real” and can be effective.
This is the abortion pill reversal website, and here is the 24/7 hotline: 1-877-558-0333. Please share these resources far and wide to raise awareness of abortion pill reversal, a lifesaving option.
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For more of our posts on the abortion pill, see:
The Safety of Incredibly Dangerous Things
Medicine’s Movement towards Abandonment
Boycott Strategy: CVS & Walgreens
The Strategic Value of the Consistent Life Ethic
Some thoughts from members of the Consistent Life Network Board of Directors
Helping the Pro-Life Movement
Richard Stith:
There are many anti-abortion groups out there that break political stereotypes. I’m thinking of Secular Pro-Life, Feminists for Life, Democrats for Life, the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, the Rainbow Pro-Life Alliance, and more. They are all doing great work and more power to them. It’s really important for people who consider themselves more or less on the Left to realize that they can also be against prenatal violence.
The Consistent Life Network is similar in that it, too, breaks stereotypes. By working against war, the death penalty, euthanasia, poverty, and racism, the Consistent Life Network gives peace people, anti-racism workers, community organizers, and others permission to come out against killing our littlest sisters and brothers. They don’t have to feel that by opposing abortion they have somehow turned against those other good causes.
Yet the Consistent Life Network is special. We see a deep, even metaphysical, commonality in all struggles against lethal violence, and we point toward a fundamental social transformation founded on the inviolability of human dignity.
The difference between us and those other great counter-stereotype groups comes down to two words: despite and because. Those other groups rightly point out that one can be against killing in the womb despite being secular or feminist or a Democrat or a gay rights ally, etc. Our Consistent Life Network, by contrast, seeks to stop the violence of abortion because we seek to stop all lethal violence. Stopping malevolent curettes is of a piece with stopping bombs, executions, and lynchings.
We and the other groups are all doing important advocacy against abortion. But we offer more than political outreach. As our postmodern society becomes more and more confusing and meaningless, people are searching for the kind of simple yet transformative grounding that the Consistent Life Network and other consistent-life groups present: non-violence across the board, founded on human dignity across the board.
Helping the Peace Movement
Rachel MacNair:
In addition to the obvious point that pro-lifers are more likely to listen to dialog about peace and justice issues when done by fellow pro-lifers, there’s the most basic point. It’s the one that’s been motivating me the most:
If the peace movement can’t act according to its own principles, it’s doomed.
See, for example, my post: An Example of Why the Peace Movement is in Deep Trouble.
And a multi-author post dealing with a peace group having a pro-abortion project: Another Blind Spot: Win Without War.
But this is beyond merely taking an inconsistent stand on abortion by using euphemisms for it and being oblivious to its violence. There are too many times when consistent-lifers have been shut out of having tables, being co-sponsors of good initiatives, or otherwise face the kind of hostility that anyone who pays attention to diversity, listening, dialog, and other peace practices should be embarrassed to notice that they’re doing
As a Quaker, I’ve had fellow Quakers actually yell at me on the topic. I’ve had my lit table at a Quaker conference sabotaged – the staff knew about it and one told me later they disapproved. But did nothing about it at the time.
I went to a conference of the national Quaker lobbying group in 2023 and spoke out against them moving to a post-Dobbs pro-abortion stand. Several people in the halls told me I was brave. Brave? Really? A Quaker standing up and telling a group of Quakers what she thinks? That shouldn’t require bravery. The fact that this came up several times should be flashing red alarm bells for groupthink. And belligerency induced by cognitive dissonance.
They’ve also weakened their ability to make the case for nonviolent policy to Republican office-holders who are aware that their pacifist stand against killing has one glaring exception.
So, in addition to my pro-life activism being for the sake of the pro-life cause, it’s also for the sake of the cause of peace. Peace goals can’t be achieved as long as their advocates don’t follow their own principles.
Multi-Issue Strategy
Rachel MacNair:
A major advantage for a single-issue approach is that it gives the biggest tent and draws the greatest number of people. Back in the day, when we were at National Right to Life exhibits, there would be one for Feminists for Life and another for Eagle Forum; one for Pro-lifers for Survival and another for Young Americans for Freedom. We all got along at that location because we shared the single issue.
So why do we at CLN go multi-issue? The truth that issues are connected by itself isn’t enough to explain it as a strategy, as opposed to simply taking the issues separately and then perhaps pointing out connections.
Reasons we do this:
- Peace movement people think this way. We think about connected issues all the time, and so when we speak this way, we’re talking a language that others in the peace movement understand.
- It breaks stereotypes.
- Consistency has power. It avoids inconsistency, which weakens the case on all issues. The persuasive power can be strengthened in some circles, especially where inconsistency is disdained.
- It offers insights we can’t get otherwise, as shown by all the insights we offer.
- People in the peace movement are more willing to listen to the pro-life case from fellow peace movement people, and people in the pro-life movement are more willing to listen to the case against war and the death penalty from fellow pro-lifers.
Single Issue – Multiple Facets
Bill Samuel:
Another way to look at our approach is not as a multi-issue approach but as a single issue with multiple facets. The CLN Mission Statement is written from that perspective. Its first sentence is “We are a network of organizations and individuals committed to the protection of life, which is threatened in today’s world by war, abortion, poverty, racism, the death penalty and euthanasia.” It identifies one issue, the protection of life, and then identifies threats to that value. As time went on, we increased the number of threats from those we initially listed, while recognizing we were not identifying all the threats to the protection of life, but rather stating which ones we are making priorities for our work.
Why protect all life? Because each human being has inherent worth and dignity that society should respect. That understanding underlies everything we do.
It’s consistent because it has that common root, that common ethic. It makes sense as a single unified concept, which is a reason why we can sometimes get a respectful hearing on an aspect on which another has had a different view when they may not listen with an open mind to someone on a particular component of it who doesn’t embrace the ethic as a whole.
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Oscar-Nominated Short Documentaries 2026: War and Abortion
by Rachel MacNair
Four of the short documentaries nominated for Oscars this year are quite worthwhile for consistent life education. (The fifth is a sweet artistic film about donkeys hanging around an observatory.) I saw them as a set in an arts theater before the ceremony.
Children No More: Were and Are Gone
This covers silent vigils in Tel Aviv in which Israelis hold up photos of children recently killed, usually in Gaza, with a note giving their names and ages, saying “was and is no more,” and their death dates. Interviews with organizers indicate these photos are documented from deaths that were two or three days previous, and each vigiler holds a different child.
When these vigils were held in places with many passers-by, there was intense hostile reaction. The vigilers didn’t respond, but continued to stand silent with their pictures, which was clearly the right thing to do. I’m accustomed to seeing this reaction to anti-war demonstrations, of course (also pro-life ones), but what interested me here was that so many yelled about how the vigilers were unrealistic. Or out of touch with reality.
But reality was exactly what they were showing. A reality that so many of those shouting wanted to be out of touch with.
There were others who yelled at them for not also having pictures of the hostages then being held by Hamas. That is indeed another reality, and also an excruciating one. For the first vigil, the vigilers went over to attend a different vigil for the hostages when they were done. Because, of course, the hostages are also victims of outrageous violence.
This is an especially good documentary for consistent-lifers since it portrays the exact kinds of things we do.
All the Empty Rooms (on Netflix)
This is another project where children who were killed are commemorated. Because these children were shot in school shooting massacres, there’s no hostility at all, but sympathy for the children and for the journalist documenting the aftermath for their families. It’s a good project.
This isn’t socially approved killing, of course. We don’t need to convince people that this kind of killing is wrong. It’s already as illegal as it can get. But the shooters do suffer from a war mentality, and the tools of mass killing similar to those used in war do have some degree of social approval, so we’ve occasionally covered this as part of our purview. It’s good to have a project focused on the victims.
This is the one that won, and I was glad to see it.
Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud (on HBO Max)
Brent Renaud was a journalist who risked his life several times to document wars and some specific lethal effects of poverty in various places. The risk finally caught up with him when he was shot in Ukraine in 2022. The work of such journalists is crucial to helping the public understand the realities of war.
The Devil Is Busy (on HBO Max)
This covered an abortion facility in Atlanta Georgia. Georgia has a heartbeat limit on abortion, so the facility did them before that and sent women elsewhere if the heartbeat was visible on the sonogram. The viewpoint of the filmmakers is that abortion bans are a bad thing. It’s worthwhile watching to get more of a sense of the reality of what abortion facilities are like.
As was designed by the filmmakers, I found the protesters outside to be embarrassing. They were all men, and they yelled condemnations through bullhorns. They asserted their own beliefs, totally oblivious to the idea that attempts to persuade would better achieve the goal of saving babies. The goal of helping pregnant women didn’t seem to come to their minds at all, outside of keeping the women from going to hell – unless, of course, the protesters did better and/or had women protesters at times that didn’t get into the film. The “devil” of the title is intended to describe the protesters as threats to women’s rights, on the idea of flipping the script on what the protesters were saying about where the devil was. So we can count on it that they were shown in the worst light possible. I just wish the protesters had made that harder to do.
They seriously need some training from a group like Sidewalk Advocates, a group that’s similarly religious but pays attention to experience and to the needs of women and how to persuade. I’ve attended some of SA’s conferences and find their training to be mainly well done.
The religious aspect was uppermost in this documentary. The featured staff member, a security guard, started the day with prayer and ended it (and the film) with prayer. Much of the argument was that women need not worry that God wouldn’t forgive them for this, because unlike the condemnatory pronouncements they were hearing from the bullhorns, God is forgiving.
I would say that this point is quite crucial in therapy with post-abortion people (I’m including the fathers and other family members here). But it’s a very strange idea that you can go ahead and do something you know to be wrong – in this case, an act of lethal violence against someone who is innocent and a blood relative – on the grounds that God will forgive you. The idea is therapeutic afterward, but it was never intended to be an excuse you would offer in advance.
Though it’s interesting that they made the argument that God would forgive rather than making the argument that there was nothing that needed forgiveness.
That featured staff member mentioned as an interviewee that she had herself had an abortion. It was painful for her. I’ve seen this pain many times. When she later got pregnant with twins, they were born prematurely and didn’t survive the day. Did this have to do with the abortion? Biologically, it’s possible. She wasn’t thinking in biological terms, though, but in divine punishment terms. This is common in post-abortion psychology, and therapy is needed. She was getting the opposite of therapy – she was having repetition of the trauma. Ironically, this is also a common post-trauma method of trying (and failing) to cope.
Overall, this documentary has the same feature I’ve seen other times: material that’s intended to advocate for abortion is actually good at making the case against it. Any pregnant woman who’s ambivalent, trying to decide whether or not to abort, would probably be more inclined not to after seeing this. And couples who think it’s no big deal to have unprotected sex since they can always get an abortion in case of pregnancy may be more inclined to think that maybe it is a big deal and they should be more careful.
As for recruiting more people to work in abortion provision? This was definitely an anti-recruiting film. It might attract those who think this is a noble pursuit that requires courage which they do in fact have. But, especially with the doctor’s comments, it’s a definite turn-off to any medical professionals who have good working conditions and respectability in mind.
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For more short takes on the consistent-life aspect of various movies, see:
Hollywood Movie Insights I (The Giver, The Whistleblower, and The Ides of March)
Hollywood Movie Insights II (Never Look Away, The Report, and Dark Waters)
Hollywood Movie Insights III (She Said, Cabrini, My Dead Friend Zoe, and Snow White 2025)
See the list of all our reviews in the list of all blog posts under
Movie, Television, and Documentary Reviews
Abortion and Dependency
by Jim Hewes
Imagine a toddler at a pool. Three lifeguards are present and on duty. There’s another person present at the pool who has been a lifeguard in the past but isn’t currently on duty. The toddler suddenly runs into the pool in the deep end and is at risk of drowning. The lifeguards immediately spring into action, but the former lifeguard by the pool doesn’t need to help, since her responsibility is lessened because of those officials on duty.
Now imagine a different situation, again with a toddler. This time there’s one lifeguard present on duty. There is a former lifeguard present, but she’s not working. There are no other people in the pool. The toddler runs into the deep end of the pool. The lifeguard is distracted by something and doesn’t realize that the toddler is in the pool. The toddler could drown. In this case, the responsibility of the off-duty lifeguard is heightened because she alone can save a vulnerable person when no one else reasonably can. If she didn’t exercise her heightened responsibility, she would have to live with that tragic inaction the rest of her life.
Dependency and Principled Responsibility
It’s true that the child within the womb is totally dependent on the mother. Nobody else can care for her pre-born child as she can. This situation has heightened her responsibility rather than lessened it. That’s why pregnant women are warned about taking certain drugs which could harm their pre-born children, where other people may not be negatively affected.
Too often in the abortion debate, dependency is treated as a negative value, rather than a natural, often temporary phase of human life. This way of thinking is pervasive in the United States on so many levels. Yet there are many situations in life where one’s responsibility is a positive factor and is heightened, not lessened. In fact, there are at times “lifeguards” present in the form of family, community, churches, and pregnancy centers.
When a baby is born, parents care for this child If they’re unable to do so for one reason or another, the child can be placed for adoption or brought to a safe haven, where others are prepared and expected to take on responsibility for the newborn. Society recognizes that dependency calls forth care, not abandonment.
Pregnancy and Shared Responsibility
Likewise, when a woman is pregnant, her child bears no responsibility for coming into existence. The responsibility rests with the mother, at least until the child is viable. Yet she doesn’t have to face her pregnancy alone. In many cases an unexpected or untimely pregnancy can become a catalyst for addressing underlying difficulties and eventually finding practical solutions. These realizable solutions can offer the woman a fuller and more stable life than she may have imagined before the pregnancy.
Leah Libresco Sargeant captures this powerfully in her book The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto (p. 2): “Women’s bodies and relationships are shaped by dependence, which makes us exceptional and unwelcome in a world that expects men and women to be autonomous (or at least pretend to be). A world that is unwilling to acknowledge dependence as foundational to human life is unable to treat women as equal in dignity.”
At various stages and circumstances of life outside of the womb, humans are also dependent upon others. Our value as human beings is not magically bestowed on us when we gain the ability to care for ourselves, nor do we lose our dignity or humanity when we cannot. Newborns, infants, conjoined twins (who depend on one another for survival), people with significant disabilities or serious brain injuries, the elderly with infirmities, especially with dementia, and people under anesthesia during surgery are all fully dependent on others for care and survival. In all of these situations—and many more—dependency increases responsibility, especially when there are no reasonable alternatives. Dependency does not diminish a person’s humanity; it reveals our obligation to protect and care for one another.
Dependency Before and After Birth
In some ways, the baby is more dependent after birth than before birth. In the womb, the child depends primarily on the mother maintaining healthy habits and attending regular medical appointments. After birth, a newborn baby is totally dependent, and their care requires many people and many actions: providing breast milk or baby formula, feeding the baby multiple times a day, purchasing and assembling a crib and placing the baby numerous times in the crib to sleep or holding them if they can’t sleep, buying baby clothes; changing their diapers several times a day, taking them to a doctor, including getting vaccines, and eventually introducing the baby to extended family members and community.
This shows that when dependency exists after birth, society recognizes a shared and unavoidable responsibility to protect life, even when biological parents cannot provide care themselves.
Conclusion: Dependency as a Human Good
We cannot assign or withdraw people’s value (in other words, penalize them) based on how dependent they are at any given moment on life’s continuum. Dependency is a fundamental feature of the human condition, present from the beginning of life until its natural end. Far from being a flaw, dependency is an ordinary and widespread part of what it means to be human.
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Other posts from Jim Hewes include:
Abortion When it Involves a Rape: See the Faces
Presenting about Abortion: Sharing Experiences
Abortion and Other Issues of Life: Connecting the Dots
Reflections from My Decades of Consistent Life Experience
Consistent Life History: Being Across the Board
Death-Hastening for Psychological Reasons: Dangers and Distractions
by Ms. Boomer-ang
Author’s Note–This essay uses the term MAID, because it currently seems to be the most common. But it includes death-hastening done not only by medical people but also by the other professionals who might also be deputized to execute it.
With the concept of staying alive until one’s body dies naturally under attack, one must be aware of developments that make doing so harder quietly sneaking in while focus is on another aspect of the issue. Could concentrating on the dangers of MAID for psychological conditions (like depression) alone detract attention from the establishment of policies that make it harder to opt out of MAID for other conditions? Although MAID for mental illness alone has serious implications, couldn’t highlighting that it can engulf young able-bodied healthy individuals give the impression that one is against not euthanasia but merely “premature” euthanasia?
To illustrate that MAID violates human rights, examples of doing it for psychological conditions on young healthy people can be relatively weaker than examples of doing it for other conditions.
For one thing, a “request” for mental-illness-justified-MAID is more likely to be self-initiated, and the death is more likely to be voluntary. But in a world where killing people before they die naturally is routine, most official death-hastening warrants would probably be initiated by a medical provider, family member, service provider, service providing agency, or insurance company’s computer. No matter who initiates the request, there’s often a risk of people complying out of resignation, expectation, and lack of escape routes rather than real desire.
If a young able-bodied otherwise-healthy person with depression requests to be killed, wouldn’t a stream of kith, kin, social workers, doctors, and counselors try to talk them out of early death and suggest alternatives? Wouldn’t insurance cover alternatives? But if a person has another MAID-qualifying condition, even if they themselves have not requested death, might some of the same people harass and pressure them to surrender to death-hastening, poo-pooing and hiding what alternatives they know about?
In addition, of the many reasons for killing innocent people, depression is the one most likely to fit the “we’re just ending their suffering the way they want” argument. Of all killings by MAID, aren’t those for self-reported psychological conditions alone likely to have the highest percentage provably voluntary?
Concentrating on the prospect of death-hastening for psychological conditions alone can play into the hands of those who promote MAID by painting an image of patient-initiated requests, discussions of alternatives, verification that — after considering alternatives — the patient still really wants to die, and the patient going voluntarily to death, often self-administering the poison, in a “loving, peaceful” setting, in the presence of only people of their choosing. This ignores the people who submit to MAID because they feel they have no alternative, are killed against their will, try to escape their killers, or are killed by trickery. It ignores the plight of people who want to stay alive but whose family wants them dead and is legally allowed to pressure or trick them into submitting to death-hastening.
Moreover, the debate over which psychological conditions and anti-social behavior qualify for death-hastening might never be settled. Will society become comfortable going back and forth over it, using it as a debating exercise? Meanwhile, couldn’t this debate hide or accept the quiet “settling of the issue” for certain specific non-psychological conditions — with death-hastening for people in those conditions becoming expected, allowed against the target’s will, or required?
Surprising as it now might seem, as late as the 1960’s, a dog care book then still in print said something like, “When your dog is old and fading, unless it is dangerous, there is no need to have it killed. It wants to live as long as possible so it can enjoy your company.” Now the idea of letting a pet live until they die naturally is inconceivable for “grown up” people. Issue settled.
It is unfortunate that the issue was settled that way for pets, and it will be unfortunate if it is settled that way for people. Will debates on fine-tuning who qualifies for voluntary MAID obscure that this is happening?
A solicitation letter from an anti-euthanasia organization in the 1990’s started with an envisioned story about a mother whose daughter one day never comes home from high school. After extensive asking around, the mother finally finds out that her daughter left school to go to a place that encouraged her to get out of her normal teenage depression by killing herself, which she quickly did, supported by professionals, without anybody telling her family before or after. Reading a story like that, one might think that is what the organization most fears. Actually, it is conceivable that laws allowing MAID for psychological reasons on some people will specifically forbid doing it for psychological reasons on otherwise-healthy able-bodied people below a certain age.
A more likely scenario, starting with the premise that the girl never came home from school and the mother had to ask around on her own to find out what happened, would have been that the girl had a disability or chronic illness, the mother’s ex-husband gave permission for her to be killed, the girl was dragged out of her classroom screaming for her life, and she was killed in the presence of her father, stepmother, and people she was told were her “real friends.”
Questioning the competence of mentally ill people to make the decision can be a double-edged sword. One must not assume the default assumption will be life. Where the law allows someone else to make the decision for a person ruled incompetent to make it, it is likely the decision will be life for healthy able-bodied people below a certain age who are willing to take psychotropic medication, and death for people judged to be too unproductive, old, expensive, uncooperative, disabled, or sick.
To back up statements about the wrongness of MAID for psychological reasons alone (in addition to it being another reason to entrap a larger percent of the population in it), how about pointing out the following:
- It can lead to MAID being enforced for other reasons. Where wanting to live while in certain conditions is a legal sign of “irrationality,” since irrationality is a sign of mental illness, a person’s rejection of MAID would be considered another reason to kill them; and since irrationality is a sign of dementia, a person’s rejection of MAID could qualify them for MAID without their consent.
- Suspicion that one’s family members might be plotting to get one’s death hastened (a reasonable suspicion in places where informed consent is not required) could be taken as sign of paranoia, another reason to kill.
- It can be used to enforce conformity. Non-conformities putting an individual at risk for MAID could range from “annoying behavior,” to refusal to take certain medication, to not smiling for a “great leader,” to holding on to “defeated, old-fashioned” principles. After all, such behavior and attitudes could be declared a sign of mental illness. (Ironic, because in the Cold War, we were told that one reason we’re better than the Communists is that they put their non-believers in mental institutions.) In raising this point, we might find allies in some activists who otherwise support death-hastening. (How to interact with those who are “with us” on some points and “against us” on other points warrants discussions of its own.)
But these three bullet points involve cases where the death warrant is not self-initiated. And attention to MAID for psychological reasons tends to focus on self-initiated death requests.
So death-hastening for psychological reasons alone does open the door to new dangers and should be a source of concern. But it must not distract attention from fighting more extensive threats to the right to live until one’s body dies naturally.
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For more of our posts on euthanasia, see:
Figuring out Euthanasia: What Does it Really Mean?
Confronting MAID: Is it Autonomy?
Assisted Suicide is Inequality, Just Like All Legal Violence
Euthanasia by Poverty: Stories from Canada
What’s Cruel for the Incarcerated is Cruel for the Terminally Ill
A Tragedy for the World: The End of the New START Treaty and What Comes Next
A Tragedy for the World: The End of the New START Treaty and What Comes Next
by John Whitehead
The New START Treaty, an important nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, expired on February 5th, 2026. Although the Russian government offered to maintain the treaty’s limits on nuclear weapons for at least another year, the Trump administration opted not to accept that offer and simply let the treaty end.
The end of New START is a tragedy for the world. The lack of the treaty’s formal limits on US and Russian nuclear weapons means either or both nations might choose to build more weapons. Such nuclear build-ups might in turn encourage other nuclear-armed nations, such as China, to build more nuclear weapons of their own.
The end of New START also has the subtler effect of undermining the kind of transparency and cooperation among nations necessary to reduce the nuclear threat. The fewer international agreements there are to limit nuclear weapons and to exchange information on such weapons, the less trust there will be among nuclear-armed nations and the less likely they will be to pursue such agreements in the future.
The United States and Russia need to negotiate a new nuclear arms control agreement to replace New START. Until such an agreement is reached, they need to maintain New START’s limits on nuclear weapons.
How Did We Get Here?
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) was signed by US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in 2010 and went into effect in 2011. New START limited the United States and Russia to each possessing 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads. “Deployed” means the warheads are not simply kept in storage but are loaded onto missiles, bombers, or submarines and can be used relatively quickly. “Strategic nuclear warhead” means the warheads have a very high (by nuclear weapons standards) destructive power.
Beyond the limits on nuclear weapons, New START also required regular information exchanges between the United States and Russia about the weapons covered by the treaty and allowed inspections within each country to check compliance.
For peace activists, New START had definite flaws. The limit of 1,550 strategic weapons still gave each country more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy humanity. Further, the treaty did not cover non-strategic nuclear weapons, which are comparatively less powerful but still enormously destructive.
Still, the treaty continued the general trend since the 1980s of reducing the numbers of nuclear weapons of world. The treaty also provided some transparency about what the two nations with the largest nuclear arsenals were doing with their weapons.
The Covid-19 pandemic led to a suspension of nuclear inspections under New START, but the treaty received a five-year extension in 2021, under the Biden administration. After that, New START has grown progressively more precarious.
In September 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia stopped sharing information about the nuclear weapons covered by New START. Early in 2023, Russia suspended its participation in the treaty. Shortly thereafter, the United States curtailed its own information sharing about nuclear weapons.
Despite the tense US-Russian relationship, maintaining New START’s nuclear limits seemed possible. Last September, Russian President Vladimir Putin extended an apparent olive branch by proposing to abide by the treaty’s limits on nuclear weapons for at least one more year. US President Donald Trump initially seemed sympathetic to the idea.
However, the Trump administration ultimately did not pursue the Russian offer. The president seemed unconcerned about New START’s end, telling the New York Times in January, “If it expires, it expires. We’ll do a better agreement…. I’d rather do a new agreement that’s much better.”
Why Did We Get Here?
Why the Trump administration did not take the Russian offer, especially given the short-term initial commitment involved—adhering to New START limits for only a year—is puzzling.
One possible reason is that the administration aspires for a broader nuclear arms control agreement that involves countries other than the United States and Russia. This could be the “better deal” Trump referred to.
Such an aspiration was recently expressed by Thomas DiNanno, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security, at a UN-sponsored disarmament conference. DiNanno said that “The next era of arms control can and should continue with clear focus, but it will require the participation of more than just Russia at the negotiating table.”
The administration may be particularly concerned with bringing China to the negotiating table. In his January interview with the Times, Trump said, “I actually feel strongly that if we’re going to do [a New START extension], I think China should be a member of the extension. China should be a part of the agreement.”
However, if the administration ignored an opportunity to maintain New START limits in pursuit of some hypothetical future arms control negotiations involving China, that was a woefully misguided calculation. Attempts to negotiate a three-nation treaty involving China are unlikely to succeed. A Chinese Foreign Ministry representative has explicitly said China “will not participate in nuclear disarmament negotiations at this stage.”
Chinese reluctance to participate in arms control negotiations is understandable. Although China has reportedly been expanding its nuclear weapons arsenal, the country still has dramatically fewer nuclear weapons than either Russia or the United States—China has roughly 600 weapons relative to the thousands possessed by the other two nations. Expecting China to limit or reduce its nuclear arsenal in tandem with the United States and Russia is, from a Chinese standpoint, unreasonable and unfair.
Another influence on the Trump administration’s refusal to accept the Russian offer may simply be a general aversion to international agreements. Trump and his associates may prefer not to have American actions constrained by treaties and may have let New START end so US nuclear weapons would no longer be subject to the treaty’s limits.
Such an attitude raises the ominous possibility that the administration’s next step will be to expand the US strategic nuclear weapons arsenal. This could involve taking weapons currently in storage and deploying them on missiles again.
Expanding the US nuclear arsenal would not only be dangerous in itself but could spur the Chinese to even more intense efforts to expand their own nuclear arsenal, thus achieving exactly the opposite of what the Trump administration says it wants. Grave as it is now, the nuclear threat could become even more severe in the near future.
What Do We Do Next?
For peace activists, our basic goal has not changed. We need to lobby for the United States and Russia to negotiate a new nuclear arms control treaty to replace New START. Until such a new agreement is reached, both nations must refrain from increasing their nuclear arsenals beyond the New START limits. That was the goal before New START’s expiration, and it continues to be the goal afterwards.
US citizens should contact their representatives in the House and their Senators to urge them both to support renewed nuclear arms control negotiations with Russia and to oppose any increase in the number of US nuclear weapons. The Arms Control Association provides a guide on how to send such messages to members of Congress.
Americans can also send messages to President Trump by email or phone (202-456-1111) urging him to pursue arms control negotiations and to abide by New START limits. Sending these messages makes it clear to the president that many people want to reduce the nuclear threat.
Nevertheless, the failure of the Trump administration to grasp even such a low-hanging fruit as the Russian offer to abide by New START for just one more year suggests we will see little positive from the president in this area. Meaningful progress on nuclear arms control may well have to wait for a different administration.
Peace activists therefore need to prepare for a long-term, sustained effort to advocate for new nuclear arms control agreements. We need to keep this issue in the public eye until a more favorable political situation emerges.
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For some of our many posts on nuclear weapons policy, see:
Reasons to Fear, Reasons to Hope: The Nuclear Threat after 80 Years
Persuading People to Act against the Nuclear Threat: Some Findings and Recommendations
Nuclear Disarmament as a Social Justice Issue
A Global Effort to Protect Life: The UN Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons
Problems with the Demand-Side Pro-Life Arguments for Making Abortion Unwanted but Not Illegal
by Jacqueline Abernathy, Ph.D. MSSW
Supply Produces Demand
As the United States approaches the 2026 election, pro-life (particularly anti-abortion) voters are faced with the same false dichotomy: vote Republican in order not to exacerbate the unjust social and economic conditions that drive abortion demand, or vote Democrat to reduce demand while safeguarding the supply of abortion options. While the former option is off the table for consistent life ethic (CLE) adherents like myself, I argue the latter should be equally unacceptable.
This is not merely a matter of principle but equally one of pragmatism. Despite how benevolent and pragmatic it may seem. “lowering abortion demand” instead of legally protecting human life is a flawed premise. Legal abortion creates its own demand! So says science, so says common sense.
As an independent voter with no loyalty to either side of the American partisan duopoly, I call out both ends of the spectrum rather equally. I have no sympathies toward either camp; rather I hold quite a bit of animus towards whatever party is in power and the opposition which fails to stop them. Yet I still can (and do) give credit where it’s due on both sides of the aisle. What I’ve found among left-leaning pro-life advocates seeking to rationalize a vote that effectively advances legal abortion in order to stop the human rights abuses from the supposedly “pro-life” right involves conveniently disregarding the efficacy of Republican-enacted state-level abortion regulations.
My pet peeve as a political scientist is when people state something factually accurate to support an inaccurate conclusion; a common one is that abortion rates go down under Democrat presidents. This is true, but to conclude that “therefore Democrats lower abortion demand” is not so simple.
When I ask how Democrats can simultaneously protect abortion access while somehow lowering the number of those who wish to access it, the answer I often get is social welfare policies.
But which ones? The first time we saw a decline in abortion rates was under the Clinton Administration, but he didn’t expand welfare at all. Instead, Clinton limited it significantly, capping it at only five years by changing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF). For many, welfare was cut off. This explanation fails. So then what actually happened that lowered abortion rates in that time period?
Answer: Abortion laws at the state level passed by Republicans after Planned Parenthood v Casey made this possible in 1991. The correlation between lower abortion rates and Democratic presidents only occurs after 1991. This coincides perfectly with political behavior that tends to elect one party at the federal level and the opposite party at the state level.
The decrease we see corresponds to Republican-enacted state laws: informed consent, parental involvement, waiting periods, regulations. Essentially any hurdle between a woman and a hasty abortion is lifesaving. We can see this decrease has less to do with demand for abortion and more to do with limiting supply despite existing demand levels.
This is human behavior 101. People respond to consequences and behave differently when they perceive less risk.
We have seen this phenomenon with emergency contraception (also known as E.C. or the morning-after pill). Before E.C. decreased the perceived risk, concern for pregnancy often meant no condom = no sex. But after E.C., those who then believed they could engage in sex without contraception and just pick up a pill in the morning meant the pill’s very existence and ease of access created its own demand. This increased as barriers to access decreased (i.e. supply increased). The demand was far less when it involved the inconvenience of seeing a doctor, and more when it became a simple trip to the corner drugstore. The consequences of an action and the difficulty dealing with those consequences are the decision-making criteria that determine human actions. When it’s easy to end an unwanted pregnancy, there’s less care to prevent it.
If you don’t believe me or think that I’m underestimating abortion as no big deal, let me tell you about something called pregnancy ambivalence. Pregnancy ambivalence is where a woman is unsure how she would feel about a pregnancy. Rather than avoiding pregnancy until those feelings become clear, many are simply not engaged much with trying to achieve or prevent pregnancy whatsoever. They instead decide to just see how they feel about having a baby after they make one. This idea of test-driving pregnancy is only possible because women know they can end it.
This assumption that people always have and always will rampantly risk pregnancy in bad situations doesn’t hold true. If crisis pregnancies were a static fact of life, we’d have the same rate of unplanned pregnancy and fewer teen or out-of-wedlock births after abortion became legal. Instead, they’ve skyrocketed. When pregnancy requires a big commitment, behavior changes. Contraception created a false sense of security and created abortion demand. Yet even after contraception became accessible but abortion was illegal, the stakes were higher if it failed. There were far fewer unplanned pregnancies when they led to a shotgun wedding.
There are millions of babies only conceived because abortion is legal, most of whom are dead. When there’s no back-up plan, people are more careful about prevention or take fewer risks in general. This is basic risk compensation theory.
This is why lowering demand for abortion is not largely possible while safeguarding abortion access. Supply for abortion creates its own demand. Women have abortions because they don’t want their children for reasons that typically existed before the children were conceived (since year after year, around 87-88 of abortions are performed on women who got pregnant while single and don’t want a child with that father or no father at all). Even if more social welfare programs could mitigate the consequences of single motherhood, they don’t change those pre-existing circumstances. Women can change this by changing their sexual behavior, but while abortion is legal, they don’t feel any need to.
The problems for which women demand abortion like “I can’t afford to raise a child alone” are problems women simply didn’t risk so often before abortion was legal to “solve.” Without abortion, many of these problems would disappear. Society would be forced to actually help those that remain because our violent cop-out would be gone. There’s no legitimate need for abortion, and any problems abortion solves can be solved without violence.
There’s no evidence that abortion can be stopped by government interventions beyond prohibition. More food stamps would be nice, but I sincerely doubt it would change the minds of 4,400 women a day or that any woman who doesn’t want to be pregnant would remain so in order to depend on a welfare check. Believing we can save lives if we just had better social welfare programs is a comforting delusion that allows people to believe there’s something they can do and that women only have abortions out of desperation. Neither are true. It allows people to sound compassionate about the unborn while not actually protecting them. For that reason, it’s incredibly cruel.
The Problem of Power
If we truly desire justice for women and children, we can’t concede to abortion staying legal, thinking that with enough government support, abortion will end. This idea forgets one fundamental factor: the power differential between pregnant women who might not want abortion and the non-pregnant people who do want them to abort. Who has more power?
While abortion remains legal, it gives negotiating power and leverage to everyone but the pregnant woman. A man can say to a pregnant girlfriend, “it’s me or the baby,” or to his stay-at-home pregnant wife, “I’m not having more kids to take care of — so I hope you have a good job and someplace to go.”
Why? Because legal abortion lets them!
A woman terrified of the possibility of being kicked out on the streets with her other children might feel she has no choice.
Likewise, disappointed parents can tell their pregnant teen, “abort or get out,” or “if you have this baby we’re not going to help you pay for college anymore,” to get what they want. Terrified teens who don’t want abortions have abortions anyway.
Why? It’s legal! And because it’s legal, others have the power.
Threats are only possible because legal abortion makes pregnancy “reversible.” When pregnancy is an unchangeable reality, this takes threats off the table.
True, people can abandon pregnant women all the same. But it’s much harder to do, and they’re more likely to answer for it.
I know women who’ve called the bluff of those making such threats, who weren’t abandoned and whose children are deeply adored by those who had tried so hard to get them killed. But these are the strong ones.
When pregnancy isn’t an “optional” condition, pregnant women are more likely to be accommodated rather than abandoned. Because of this, threats like “if you really think you’re grown up enough to take care of a baby then you’re grown up enough to buy your own car to get to work” or “if you want another baby, you’re on your own” will bully women into unwanted abortions out of fear they can’t take care of themselves or their children unless they comply. I have seen it. A lot.
As long as abortion is a legal option, a woman will be told that any problems she faces from pregnancy was because of the choice she made to remain pregnant. Therefore, it’s all on her. If women can’t end pregnancy on demand, other people will be forced to deal with it and abandonment won’t be so easy.
True concern for unborn children involves demanding their human rights as human beings, and true concern for women requires ending abortion so women aren’t constantly expected to choose between someone else’s demands and the lives of their unborn children. The only way to get women the support they deserve is to stop allowing abortion as a cop-out!
In sum, every policy to support women and families that could lower abortion rates doesn’t require keeping abortion legal and accessible. This is a trade-off that some use to rationalize their vote for Democrats in the same way others use Democrats’ championing of abortion to rationalize their vote for Republican-sanctioned violence. We must do better.
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For more of our thoughts on abortion regulations, see:
What Studies Show: Impact of Abortion Regulations
Why the Hyde Amendment Helps Low-Income Women
Abortion Facilitates Sex Abuse: Documentation
For the idea that the demand-side with poverty does also deserve attention:
Preborn Babies, Infants, and Government Programs / Sarah Terzo
SNAP Cuts? More Poverty, More Abortion / Sarah Terzo
Social Programs to Help the Poor are Pro-life
Baby Hitler
by Rachel MacNair
There’s a “thought experiment” prevalent enough to have its own Wikipedia entry: if you had a time machine and could go back in time and kill Adolf Hitler as a baby, on the idea that millions of killings would thus be prevented, would you do it? In 2015, The New York Times surveyed its readers asking if they would kill baby Hitler. Response:
- 42% yes
- 30% no
- 28% undecided
This idea has kicked off debates on ethics and philosophy (plus of course some speculation on the practicalities of changing the past, which we won’t cover here).
I consider three aspects relevant to the consistent life ethic, ending with why a mere fantasy matters at all.
Why Kill Baby HITLER?
The Military Mindset
In 2016, this question came up during the U.S. Republican presidential primary debates, and Jeb Bush responded “Hell yeah, I would!” Considering potential unknown consequences, he said he still would, because “You gotta step up, man.” He got a lot of support for this position.
The point has explored by science fiction writers, where having a time traveler go back to the 1890s fits the genre. Two of interest:
- a 2002 episode of The Twilight Zone, “Cradle of Darkness.”
A woman travels back, succeeds in killing baby Hitler, so Hitler’s mother adopts a different baby and history turns out the same.
- a 1996 novel, Making History, by Stephen Fry
This avoids killing by having the time traveler render Hitler’s father Alois infertile before he’s conceived. But a different Nazi dictator fills the slot that Adolf left empty by not existing, and he was more effective – he got the German scientists to be willing to make nuclear weapons, conquered Europe, and did a more total job of exterminating Jews.
That last thought had certainly occurred to me before I read about it. You could get someone worse than Hitler. How could you get someone even worse? Easy – someone who wrote a better book, fooled people better, didn’t use astrology for military planning, etc.
The thing is, the society was set up for Naziism to develop. World War I, resentment of the Versailles Treaty and occupation of the Ruhr, hyperinflation, and a long list of other things were putting people in the mood. If society weren’t ready, Hitler would have spun himself out and gotten nowhere. If society were ready, then if Hitler weren’t there to do it, someone else would have taken over the slot. The reason they didn’t do it was that Hitler had already taken it.
So the premise of the whole question is based on the military assumption that if you can just get rid of specific leaders, the whole thing falls apart. That’s as unrealistic here as it is in other situations.
Why Kill BABY Hitler?
The Abortion/Infanticide Mindset
At the 2019 March for Life, Ben Shapiro was asked about the thought experiment and replied:
The truth is that no pro-life person on earth would kill baby Hitler, because baby Hitler wasn’t Hitler, adult Hitler was Hitler. Baby Hitler was a baby . . .
What you presumably want to do with baby Hitler is take baby Hitler out of baby Hitler’s house and move baby Hitler into a better house where he would not grow up to be Hitler, right? That’s the idea.
In response, three companies pulled their ads from his podcast. Oh, dear.
But it goes beyond his clear exposition of a proper pro-life response. The question I most want to know is: if we’re resolving an ethical dilemma in favor of killing, and we somehow magically know that we’re not making things even worse, but at least a little better – once all that magic has been posited, why are people intent on killing him as a baby?
There’s no reason to think he wasn’t a perfectly fine baby. Or that he didn’t grow up to be as good a child as his siblings and other contemporaries. We don’t know of him committing violence before becoming a soldier in World War I. Even then, there’s no reason to think he was any worse than other soldiers. Given all the scrutiny and animosity focused on him, if there were any evidence he had been above-average in viciousness, we would surely have heard about it.
Still, if we’re strategizing within the thought experiment and assume for the sake of argument that killing him is OK, why on earth not wait until he was a soldier? Arranging for him to get killed in the war would probably be easier for the future-knowing time traveler to do and not get caught at. Then Hitler would just be one of the over two million German soldiers killed in that war. That’s just as much a disappearance for the sake of keeping him from his role in Naziism, and at least you’ve allowed him to have some life at pre-soldier times when his living is no danger to others.
But so many don’t get that far because there’s such a strong bigotry about people that “shouldn’t exist.” We start that bigotry at the beginning. This gets especially vicious nowadays when people aim the hostility at babies who’ve been conceived in rape.
Why KILL Baby Hitler?
The Violence-as-Problem-Solver Mindset
People like Stephen Colbert and John C. Reilly have taken a position similar to Shapiro’s, that getting Hitler into a loving home was a better alternative.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t know that his upbringing was the main problem. He was a soldier in World War I. He volunteered in August 1914 and was lance corporal in the Bavarian Army. He got the Iron Cross for bravery and was wounded in action.
It seems reasonable to me to think this influenced his ideology far more than just his upbringing. That along with the observation that large numbers of other people were impacted the same way by both the war and longstanding pro-military attitudes and bigotries against Jews, etc.
Of course, the biggy for stopping Naziism would have been to stop World War I. Heaven knows there were peace activists at the time who tried. But they didn’t have the time-traveler’s knowledge of what was going to happen (which the traveler has because from the traveler’s point of view it already had). Stopping the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand that triggered the war could be done by distracting or bumping into the assassin without harming even him. Actually, it was so arbitrary that it could be done even more simply by having the driver of the Archduke’s car not take a wrong turn – exactly the kind of thing a time traveler’s intervention would be good for. That would have the moral advantage of preventing a murder rather than causing one.
It would still have the danger that, given what a powder keg Europe was at the time, a delay with a different trigger might have made things worse. It’s a good thing all this is a magical thought experiment. We don’t have to find out.
Also, stopping the various humiliations of Germany after World War I would help. But there were peace activists at the time who were trying. I don’t see how a time traveler’s knowledge would have an advantage over them. (A Quaker friend of mine took issue with me on this: he thinks of convincing the people negotiating the Treaty of Versailles that one is a time traveler who really does know the future and showing it to them. Well, sure. That’s as good a fantasy as any.)
So perhaps we’re stuck with seeing what we can do about getting Hitler out of the loop. Let’s say we’re doing it with magical knowledge that it will at least help, and not put a more vicious and effective dictator in his place.
Here his ambitions as an artist provide a prime opportunity. He made clear on different occasions that being an artist was really what he most wanted. He failed to gain entry into his desired art school twice.
The time traveler has that knowledge, and could go back and give him some tutoring to help him to pass the exam and get in. Or lobby the examiners, or whatever it took – preparation by studying the situation would be needed.
That was before World War I, but if he’d had a spot at the school, or had launched a career because of it, he may well have gone back to that and left his Naziism-launching spot unfilled.
All of which is still complete fantasy. We’ll never be able to run this as a real-life experiment to see how it would have worked out.
Conclusion
As long as we have thought experiments and fantasies, why aren’t we thinking in those helpful terms, instead of in terms of killing? If the point is to make someone absent from a place, why think in terms of death rather than in terms of something more beneficial?
Violence starts in the mind. If we want to stop it, I say we need even our fantasies to be more mature about what violence can and can’t do. We should be more eager to find the real need that violence is proposed to address, and find better and healthier ways of addressing that need.
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For more posts on speculations about changing history, see:
Would Nonviolence Work on the Nazis?
The Civil War Conundrum, 150 Years Later