3.16.20 Edition
The Future of the Pro-Life Movement
What better time than a period of quarantine and social distance to restart a stalled project? If all goes according to plan there will be another edition to follow on the pre-established bimonthly cycle, but under a new name than at present (“Lifecycles”). More to come…
For now, two notes on topic and then one off.
At the beginning of this month, the Supreme Court heard arguments in June Medical Services v. Gee, a case similar to 2016’s Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. Both cases concerned laws requiring that abortion clinics obtain admitting privileges at an area hospital, with a difference that June Medical Services v. Gee concerns a law in Louisiana, while the 2016 case concerned a law in Texas. You can read the oral arguments for the present case here.
If you do look through them, you’ll find that one of the points on which the Court’s ruling will turn is whether and to what degree the Louisiana law burdens women who are seeking abortion by reducing the number of abortion providers. The question in this respect is a factual one about whether abortion providers would be able to obtain admitting privileges at hospitals or not. If they are not able to, they would close. The fact that this question is crucial to the case puts those who are defending the law in the position of having to argue, in part, that abortion providers would be able to obtain admitting privileges just fine and would not be forced to close under the law.
This defense, that is, sees pro-lifers who wish to restrict abortion arguing that this law can be allowed to stand in part because it does not restrict abortion providers. As I noted in a previous edition, when I compared the admitting privileges laws disfavorably to the laws passed in Alabama and Georgia, this situation gives an impression of transparently ulterior motives, a sense that pro-lifers are arguing laws like this won’t necessarily close down clinics even while passing them with a hope that they will. This air of transparent trickery can hold even if there is also quite genuine concern for the health and safety of women who seek abortions on the part of pro-lifers (as of course there should be). It seems to me a false position and one that should be dropped, fully disentangling all questions about the wisdom of admitting privilege requirements from any kind of anti-abortion strategy, whether explicit or implicit.
Has the pro-life movement, as such, as we have known it, come to an end? It may seem a foolish question to ask in light of the ongoing activity around state-level abortion restrictions, the Trump judicial appointments, and “tens of thousands” of people showing up for the 2020 March for Life. But in 2018, Matthew Walther gave a yes in The Week. The 2020 election season to date, as far as it goes, is evidence in favor of that view.
There has always been a divide in the pro-life community between those who are resolute single-issue voters on abortion specifically, even if only reluctantly, and those whose actions are less settled. After the post-Roe polarization of the two parties on this issue had sufficiently progressed, what successes the pro-life movement saw subsequently* came in part from the discipline with which the movement has generally manage to encourage a bias towards the single-issue approach even amid plenty of reluctance and resentment from some pro-lifers at the way that strategy seemed to tether them to the Republican Party.
The 2016 Presidential election made this more messy, but a lot of pro-lifers either reluctantly broke for Trump or voted for Evan McMullin—or perhaps if they were, like me, especially online they went for the American Solidarity Party. It represented a mild departure from the norm, and allowed for a potential return to equilibrium. But with both Bernie and Biden, among very different constituencies, I think you will find more pro-lifers who were/are prepared to vote or even campaign Democratic than in the recent past—young left Americans who are sincerely pro-life but also sincerely left economically going for Bernie and a certain segment of sincere pro-life Gen Xers or Boomers going for Biden because they dislike Trump enough and Biden promises relative calm after Trump. (I am prescinding from value judgements one way or the other on all of this here).
The question is: If the single-issue anti-abortion logic fails on a wider scale, if the dam breaks, does that set a precedent for sincere pro-lifers to become more comfortable with going Democratic in the future, for adjusting the thresholds of what it takes to throw in with a pro-choice candidate? If so, the traditional pro-life movement, as we have known it, would be poised to erode to some degree. In his piece, Walther suggested that “something else [might] rise up to take the place of the old movement, whatever becomes of Roe.” If the traditional pro-life movement does die or weaken substantially relative to pre-2016, what might come next? More on that, perhaps, anon.
*Yes, there have been some successes even if in general the picture is one of continued legislative/judicial failure on the national level.
Off-topic: COVID-19 Survival Tips
Listen to music! Bria Sandford has a number of great playlists. Here’s one I made, a mixture of apocalyptic, ironic/humorous, and hopeful.
Lend a hand: Leah Libresco Sargeant collects some ways here, Phil Christman here.
Follow Paul Rudd’s example in Ant-Man and the WASP, playing on Netflix: pick up the electric drum kit jam, get into miniature bowling, learn close-up magic, do karaoke of theme songs of 1970s family sitcoms, read young adult literature, make origami, practice trick shots on a mini basketball hoop, do just a little bit of work, and then take a bath.
Read something that fits the mood. I’m reading St. John Henry Newman’s sermons right now, which are suitably stark, and I’m also reading E.B. White’s essays, which are soothing even though he says a lot of foolish things in them.
Get really into planking and YouTube exercise videos.
Read and implement Aquinas on the remedies of pain or sorrow in the Summa, which overlaps in at least one way with the Paul Rudd method.
Finally, turn your house or apartment in a monastic cell and achieve mystical union with Christ.