The Dark Form of Control Even Anti-Abortion ‘Moderates’ Want

Abortion rights defenders were rightly concerned about bills in ten states that aimed to designate fetuses as “persons.”¹ These would have counted abortion as homicide and arguably made women punishable for their “crime.” The fear was heightened by recent stories of women like Brittany Watts in Ohio who were arrested after miscarriages.

But to the relief of many, every personhood bill this legislative year has either been stuck in committee, died without a vote (as in Georgia and Texas), or voted down when brought to the floor (as in North Dakota). And no charges were ever filed against the women recently arrested after their miscarriages.

Why, with wind of the overturn of Roe in their sails, do some abortion opponents seem to have backed off?

To be sure, the most ideologically committed abortion opponents won’t give up. And the politicians who sympathize with them may be holding off for pragmatic reasons, knowing that these recent measures are wildly unpopular.

But for others who think of themselves as “moderates,” repealing Roe may have given them all they wanted. And this should by no means reassure us. What they wanted was to exercise a dark form of control. The now obviously brazen inconsistencies of the “moderate” position bring out just how dark their motive must be.

Consider those who would outlaw most abortions without punishing women for any of them. On its face the position is nonsensical. Anyone who really thought abortion is murder should want to punish the woman who hires the abortion provider, like any murder-for-hire scheme. It raises the question: do they really think it’s murder?

Anti-abortion organizations try to rationalize the get-out-of-jail free card. A 2022 open letter by leaders of prominent anti-abortion organizations argues that women are victims of abortion.² Women in Communist China may have been victims of forced abortion. But American women come to doctors willingly, and don’t lose their free will because of unfortunate circumstances. The rationalizers have to either deny abundant evidence that most women don’t regret their abortion or see women as pawns without wills of their own.³ If they don’t take either option, do they really think abortion is murder?

These “moderates” have other, similar, inconsistencies. If abortion is murder, why allow it at all in cases of rape? They can’t argue — as they do for exceptions for the life of the mother — that killing the embryo or fetus would somehow help the woman defend herself against the rapist. And, if killing even an embryo is murder, why allow it to occur as part of IVF treatment? They wouldn’t excuse killing someone to steal his money to pay for a fertility treatment, so why would they excuse killing embryos with “rights” to expedite the lab work for the same purpose?

All of these inconsistencies make it dubious that the “moderates” really think abortion is murder.

The idea that abortion is murder is, after all, a faith-based belief that’s difficult to maintain in the face of reality. Murder is the unjustifiable homicide of an individual human being. While aborted embryos and fetuses are surely biologically human, they are not individual human beings with individual rights.⁴ They’re physically and physiologically part of another individual, the woman.

So for those who can’t consistently maintain the article of faith, “abortion is murder” is likely just cover for a motive very different from phony compassion for the “rights” of embryos. Their real motive is to control women’s (and men’s) sexual agency.

Abortion truly is the birth control of last resort. While it’s sometimes a medical necessity to prevent dangerous birth complications, it’s usually elected by women who simply don’t want to have a child.⁵ And like everyone else who uses birth control, they rightly want to remain sexually active. Because we are human beings with intelligence and free will, we are not slaves to our reproductive organs. And sexual joy is an end in itself.

But many object to sexual agency on faith-based grounds. They think pursuing sex for pleasure is a prideful sin, that it should only ever be the means to the end of procreation. And this attitude explains the bizarre inconsistencies of the anti-abortion “moderates.”

If you object to sexual agency, you can’t outlaw sex for pleasure. But you can impose restrictions on dealing with its unintended consequences. You can punish abortion doctors and work to restrict the right to use birth control.⁶

Likewise, if you object to sexual agency, you have no reason to forbid abortion to the rape victim. She obviously wasn’t seeking sexual joy from her rapist. And if you think sex should only be for procreation, you can have no objection to IVF. It obviously involves no sexual pleasure, but is aimed at reproduction.

Few who oppose abortion because they oppose sexual agency are likely to admit it or even realize it. But we know there’s a widespread Puritanical idea that sex is dirty and vicious unless it serves a procreative end. People grow up absorbing the article of faith that sex is shameful from a variety of religious traditions. And it’s influential: even secular Americans are bashful about sex compared to Europeans. So we shouldn’t be surprised if sexual shame motivates opposition to abortion and even leads some to claim abortion as murder as a proxy for it.

We should be relieved that so many abortion opponents won’t embrace the full logic of the belief in embryonic “rights.” But they get no credit for it. We should challenge them to justify their inconsistencies. When they can’t, we should call them out for their medieval hostility to sexual joy and the pursuit of happiness.