The goal of the pro-life movement is to protect all human life, from conception to natural death. This means that being pro-life is about multiple issues — but the largest threat to life is, currently, abortion. The goal of the pro-life movement is to end abortion; to not only make it illegal, but to make it to where no woman ever even considers it.
The Trump administration has been notably pro-life, putting into place pro-life policies and scoring multiple pro-life victories over the last year. Last week, Vice President Mike Pence attended a luncheon in Nashville hosted by the Susan B. Anthony List and Life Institute, where he said something shocking: that he hopes abortion will end soon. “If all of us do all we can, we can once again, in our time, restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law,” he said.
Actually, that’s not really that shocking, right? It’s pretty much the exact goal of all pro-lifers, everywhere. Yet somehow, it still sent shockwaves through the abortion industry and its defenders, who were outraged. The statement was roundly criticized, by Glamour, Refinery 29, Jezebel, Elite Daily, The Mary Sue, Bustle, and countless more.
The question is… why?
What is it that Pence said that is so awful? After all, it would be preferable for women to not think they need abortions. Again, the goal of the pro-life movement isn’t merely to make abortion illegal, it’s to make it unthinkable, to where a woman with an unexpected pregnancy isn’t driven, through desperation, fear, or coercion, to feel that she has no other choice but to take her preborn child’s life. This is what feminism originally believed in, and what feminists like Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul fought for. They recognized that there were societal issues that enslaved women and led them to make such a horrific choice — and that, truly, it’s no choice at all. The goal was not to preserve abortion. It was to improve women’s lives and options.
The pro-life movement is entirely in keeping with true feminism, and wanting to see an end to abortion is not shocking, terrifying, horrifying, or anti-woman. It’s something that we all should aspire to: a time when women never feel the need to consider it.
Once upon a time, this was something the so-called “pro-choice” crowd seemed to believe in. The mantra used to be “safe, legal, and rare.” While abortion should be legal, the argument went, that was only so that it could be safe, and it should be avoided as much as possible. Now, however, advocates have become practically fanatical, and “safe, legal, and rare” has been thrown out in exchange for the rallying cry of “abortion on demand, taxpayer-funded, through all nine months of pregnancy, for any reason.” Only a tiny minority of Americans agrees with this kind of extremism, but advocates of this position persist regardless, acting as if their beliefs are the majority. The Democratic Party even put these extreme views into their party platform and demanded that all Democrats support abortion. What exactly do they support without limits? This:
As for advancing options for women that don’t involve abortion, abortion advocates aren’t happy with that, either. They find the idea of adoption as an alternative to be offensive; they attack and lie about pregnancy centers every chance they can. But again, the question is, why?
Well, that answer is easy: money. Abortion is lucrative. Everything else? Not so much. Take Planned Parenthood. While it claims to be the nation’s foremost healthcare provider for women, and pretends to support all choices for women, in reality, Planned Parenthood has one priority: abortion. Over half of Planned Parenthood’s non-government funding comes from abortion; for a first-trimester procedure, they charge as much as $1,500. And with former patients testifying that getting abortions was like being part of a mass production line, with overly efficient facility staffers moving women through the paces like cattle, that can amount to huge amounts of money. Referrals for adoption? Prenatal care? Resources to help women keep their babies? That doesn’t quite rake in the big bucks.
The abortion industry and its advocates don’t want abortion to be legal because they care about women. They aren’t outraged at the thought of abortion ending because they think it will hurt women. It’s about money, plain and simple — money gained by killing innocent, vulnerable human beings and butchering the bodies of desperate, scared women.
