FACT CHECK: Are pro-life laws a sign of an authoritarian government?

Seda Saluk, professor of women's and gender studies at the University of Michigan, recently penned an op-ed for The Conversation in which she claimed that pro-life laws are a sign of authoritarianism. Her argument is based on a logical fallacy. Just because some nations with authoritarian governments have pro-life laws does not mean pro-life laws are "hallmark" of an authoritarian government.

Key Takeaways:

• Saluk argued that laws protecting preborn children are the "hallmark of an authoritarian regime."

• She also claimed that killing preborn human beings is a collective good that benefits society.

The Details:

The United States government has never been authoritarian and remains far from it. There is freedom of speech, a free and fair election process, a system of checks and balances, a civil society, a system of power that is distributed between federal and state governments, an independent judiciary, and a free press. A singular leader's character, perceived lack of morals, or disagreeable policies do not make an entire government system authoritarian.

Yet Saluk believes that by nominating more conservative justices in his first term as president, Donald Trump singlehandedly caused the overturning of Roe v. Wade — and as a result, the pro-life laws that quickly followed are turning the U.S. into an authoritarian regime. She wrote:

When a government erects barriers to comprehensive reproductive care, it doesn’t just cause more death and suffering for women and their families. Such policies are often a first step in the gradual decline of democracies.

She claims the U.S. is "mirroring a pattern that has happened in authoritarian regimes," yet, she says the American love of freedom is at the root of the problem. She explained:

Yet, the U.S. is different in a meaningful way. Here, abortion has historically been framed as a personal right to privacy. In many other countries I’ve studied, abortion is viewed more as a collective right that is inextricably tied to broader social and economic issues.

A Marketing Strategy

First of all, she's not totally wrong. Abortion is an industry in the United States, and every industry needs a marketing strategy. In the United States, it's all about 'freedom' because Americans love their freedom. And it's a marketing tactic that has worked well.

Not every abortion supporter wants to buy an abortion "service" for themselves, but many have been led to believe that it should be an option for other individuals in the name of (misguided) 'freedom' — the "personally pro-life" stance. They refuse to see not only the truth that abortion kills actual human beings, but also how detrimental abortion is for women, and how it's not really an individual choice but a fear response to societal, familial, financial, and relational pressures.

Dressing it up in the disguise of "empowerment" doesn't change the fact that abortion is often guided by the fear of losing the perception of control over one's own life and future.

The Pro-Life Reply to: "I'm Personally Pro Life, BUT..."

A study published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons found that nearly 74% of women who sought post-abortion counseling said they faced pressure to abort their babies. According to Feminists for Life president Serrin M. Foster, statistics show that the main reason women "choose" abortion is a lack of financial resources and a lack of emotional support.

"In other words," wrote Foster, "most women 'choose' abortion precisely because they believe they have no other choice." Women "choosing" abortion to desperately maintain their lives (financial, familial, educational, etc.) do not sound like women who live in a free and supportive society.

Zoom In:

Sulak claimed that, by debating legalized abortion as an individual right, the rights of others — like the preborn baby — will be brought into the debate. Abortion can't be about rights, because then it's obvious that someone else's right to life is being trampled on, she claimed.

To make her point, she mentioned the story of Adriana Smith, who was declared brain dead during pregnancy. She lived in Georgia, which has pro-life laws in place, and was not removed from life support until her baby could be delivered. While Sulak used this tragic story as an example of the rights vs. rights battle surrounding the "individual freedom" framing of abortion, Smith was kept on life support not because of Georgia's pro-life law (which doesn't even mention such a situation), but because of the Georgia Advance Directive for Health Care Act of 2007, which states a pregnant woman cannot be withdrawn from life support unless her preborn child is not yet considered viable, and she has an advance directive in place requesting to be removed from life support.

Smith had no advance directive in place.

Sulak argued that in other nations, abortion is "understood as a collective good that benefits all society...." This is how she believes abortion should be framed in the United States... but she's missing the fact that it already is framed this way, in addition to being sold as individual freedom.

The idea that abortion is necessary for the "collective good" of society views the 'weeding out' of certain groups — the underprivileged, the disabled, the sick, and even ethnic groups — as positive.

Sulak even says that in her opinion, "Black and brown" and "poor" women don't have enough access to abortion. "... Roe never served women of color or poor people particularly well because of underlying unequal access to health care," she claimed.

In other words, even though women of color and underprivileged women already account for the largest portion of abortions in the U.S. (Black women have the highest abortion percentage, rate, and ratio) she wants them to have more abortions.

The Big Picture:

Sulak also argued that maternal and infant mortality rates increase when preborn lives are protected from abortion. This is a complete distortion of the facts.

One of the very nations she mentioned as having "authoritarian" pro-life laws is Poland, where the maternal mortality rate is one of the best in the world. It takes fourth place with a rate of two deaths per 100,000 births. The United States, where abortion is still largely legal and has been for more than 50 years, has a rate of 17 deaths per 100,000 births.

Claims that women are dying in certain states because of pro-life laws are also far-fetched. In those highly publicized cases, the women died because the doctors failed to take appropriate action, not because they failed to intentionally kill a preborn child.

For clarity, an induced abortion is the direct and intentional killing of a preborn human being prior to delivering the dead baby. In an emergency, when a pregnancy must end, the preborn baby does not have to be intentionally killed to be delivered. Even if the baby is too premature to survive, his or her death will be the unwanted side effect of the treatment necessary to save the mother. That is not an abortion. No baby has to be intentionally killed so his or her mother can live. Delivered? Yes. Killed first? No.

As for infant mortality, The New York Times already tried and failed to blame pro-life laws for an increase in infant deaths. As noted in a Live Action News response to the New York Times (NYT):

This perspective ... fails to take into account that, prior to the enactment of the pro-life laws in question, thousands of infants each year were killed in the womb before their deaths could be counted toward an “infant mortality” rate.

Dr. Alyssa Bilinski, a researcher cited in the NYT article, explained, “The groups that are most likely to have children as a result of abortion bans are also individuals who are most likely, for a number of different reasons, to have higher rates of infant mortality.”

Those infants were the same babies that "prior to the enactment of pro-life laws, would also have been most at risk to be aborted based on historical data," Live Action News explained.

Dr. Donna Harrison, director of research for the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), told the NYT, “This means that anyone lamenting the results of this study isn’t really concerned that these babies died; rather, they wish they would have been killed earlier: in the womb.”

The Other Side:

Another failed argument from Saluk is that pro-life laws "lead to discriminatory practices in ... oncology, neurology and cardiology."

She said, "Physicians who fear criminalization are forced to withhold or alter gold-standard treatments for pregnant patients ... or they may prescribe less effective drugs out of concern about legal consequences should patients later become pregnant."

Pro-life laws do not prevent women from receiving any type of medical treatment, even if that treatment has the potential to cause death for their preborn babies. Regarding cancer specifically, the American Cancer Society notes that, although the types of treatment and the timing of treatment can differ during pregnancy and among the different forms of cancer, "[c]ancer can usually be treated safely during pregnancy."

It further states, "Most often, cancer can be treated during pregnancy. Ending the pregnancy isn't routinely recommended.... For many types of cancer, studies generally haven't found that outcomes are improved by ending a pregnancy in order to get treatment."

Regardless, there is no law preventing women from getting the treatment they need. And regardless of the woman's health status, in an emergency, lifesaving procedures do not have to "await a negative pregnancy test," as Sulak so erroneously claims.

There is not a single law that states this.

The Pro-Life Reply to: "Is Abortion Ever Medically Necessary?"

Sulak also claimed that pro-life laws are a pathway to other "kinds of restrictions to enforce and maintain them" such as "free speech limits" and "criminalizing political dissent" to "arrest... people who protest restriction on reproductive freedoms."

Yet, it hasn't been pro-abortion protesters who have faced arrest and prosecution for peaceful demonstrations; it's pro-lifers. In December 2022, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta admitted that the overturning of Roe increased “the urgency” of the Biden Department of Justice's efforts to ‘enforce’ the Freedom of Access to Clinics (FACE) Act, "to ensure continued lawful access to" abortion. Meanwhile, according to the FBI, 70% of abortion-related violence after the fall of Roe was attributed to pro-abortion activists — most of whom never faced charges.

Another complaint from Sulak was that laws preventing adults from taking minors over state lines for abortion without parental consent are uncalled for. This is an example of how the love affair America has with abortion has created an 'all bets off' approach to minors. Children can't be given Tylenol in school without parental consent, but Sulak thinks its fine for non-parental adults to take them across state lines for abortions.

The Bottom Line:

Hitler, an authoritarian, may have been against abortion for those he deemed "pure," but he supported abortion, forcing it upon those he deemed "racially inferior" — as a tool of eugenics, which he deemed to be a public good.

Likewise, China's regime spent decades forcing abortion upon women whose unapproved pregnancies were discovered; today the country's government still forces abortions upon Uighur Muslims.

Just because some authoritarian governments have at times enacted laws restricting the killing of preborn children doesn't mean that laws protecting the most vulnerable human beings are always indicative of authoritarian governments.