Mr Saletan overlooks a crucial, possibly even major or predominant factor, in this, and why the goal will never be reached.
There are people who are pro life for whom their engagement in "pro-life" agitation and politics is to prevent abortions because they understand abortion to be killing human persons. This is a moral element, and…
Mr Saletan overlooks a crucial, possibly even major or predominant factor, in this, and why the goal will never be reached.
There are people who are pro life for whom their engagement in "pro-life" agitation and politics is to prevent abortions because they understand abortion to be killing human persons. This is a moral element, and for some pro lifers -- I think a minority, but motives are mixed -- it is the primary driver of their allegiance to and support of the pro-life project.
But the energy of the movement is not about serious moral considerations. The energy of the movement is about power and identity considerations. The pro-life energy is sustained by concerted, intentional, continuing effort. The effort is rewarded, not by reaching the goal of preventing abortions, but by the money it raises, and the political and social power it creates.
For this reason the last thing a major part of the pro-life movement wants is to succeed. There are a number of conflicts in America today for which this is the case. Immigration is up high on that list. So also are "second amendment" panic, race panic, God panic, Jew panic, gender panic... Those who benefit from the anger and turmoil such problems create have no incentive to actually solve them, because problem resolution means the money and power aggrandizement the problem has guaranteed them will abate. And the power structures that have developed to feed off of a particular problem gravy train, if the train stops and they have to get off, will have to move into some other problem arena -- where they will have to jostle and jockey for space at the trough with others who have already specialized there.
So now after Dobbs we see the pro-life movement itself panicking because they forsee no longer have a working public panic to feed from. The golden stream of wealth and power from which they have drunk so deeply is drying up. In the words of a management book all the rage a few years back, their own efforts have unexpectedly moved their cheese. If they cannot keep this particular ball in the air, they will have either to shift to a new fountain of outrage, or actually go out and find honest work... and the latter is hardly to be even contemplated unless at the very last ditch. So the movement is desperate to sustain the problem, and to do this requires further and further exertions into wilder and wilder contortions of policy and absurdity, as they frantically strive to hook up pro-life-ism to life support. Effective birth control -- giving people, especially women, the means to solve this problem -- is absolutely therefore to be prevented at all costs.
Only if the battle really does go away, and people just stop giving the money and voting their gang member into office on the basis of this particular outrage tantrum, will they fold up their tents and abandon the field.
I just thought the newsletter was tone deaf for all of the reasons you cited above. It’s just tough to take arguments from the antiabortion platform seriously because they have literally done nothing to change the culture around abortion different. They care so little about other families it’s laughable.
Mr Saletan overlooks a crucial, possibly even major or predominant factor, in this, and why the goal will never be reached.
There are people who are pro life for whom their engagement in "pro-life" agitation and politics is to prevent abortions because they understand abortion to be killing human persons. This is a moral element, and for some pro lifers -- I think a minority, but motives are mixed -- it is the primary driver of their allegiance to and support of the pro-life project.
But the energy of the movement is not about serious moral considerations. The energy of the movement is about power and identity considerations. The pro-life energy is sustained by concerted, intentional, continuing effort. The effort is rewarded, not by reaching the goal of preventing abortions, but by the money it raises, and the political and social power it creates.
For this reason the last thing a major part of the pro-life movement wants is to succeed. There are a number of conflicts in America today for which this is the case. Immigration is up high on that list. So also are "second amendment" panic, race panic, God panic, Jew panic, gender panic... Those who benefit from the anger and turmoil such problems create have no incentive to actually solve them, because problem resolution means the money and power aggrandizement the problem has guaranteed them will abate. And the power structures that have developed to feed off of a particular problem gravy train, if the train stops and they have to get off, will have to move into some other problem arena -- where they will have to jostle and jockey for space at the trough with others who have already specialized there.
So now after Dobbs we see the pro-life movement itself panicking because they forsee no longer have a working public panic to feed from. The golden stream of wealth and power from which they have drunk so deeply is drying up. In the words of a management book all the rage a few years back, their own efforts have unexpectedly moved their cheese. If they cannot keep this particular ball in the air, they will have either to shift to a new fountain of outrage, or actually go out and find honest work... and the latter is hardly to be even contemplated unless at the very last ditch. So the movement is desperate to sustain the problem, and to do this requires further and further exertions into wilder and wilder contortions of policy and absurdity, as they frantically strive to hook up pro-life-ism to life support. Effective birth control -- giving people, especially women, the means to solve this problem -- is absolutely therefore to be prevented at all costs.
Only if the battle really does go away, and people just stop giving the money and voting their gang member into office on the basis of this particular outrage tantrum, will they fold up their tents and abandon the field.
Very well put. Spot on.
I just thought the newsletter was tone deaf for all of the reasons you cited above. It’s just tough to take arguments from the antiabortion platform seriously because they have literally done nothing to change the culture around abortion different. They care so little about other families it’s laughable.