Pro-Lifers Aren’t Hypocrites

The concerted effort to end abortion is much more diverse and holistic than it gets credit for.

In any debate about abortion, someone will eventually say that pro-lifers only care about babies until birth or only care about children in the womb, not outside of it. The pro-choice advocacy group Naral even uses this ubiquitous cliché in an ongoing public campaign that encourages supporters to share memes spotlighting “pro-life hypocrisy.”

However, to make the claim of “pro-life hypocrisy,” one must intentionally ignore vast swaths of the pro-life movement. There are millions of people globally who advocate for the unborn and also support women, children, and those in poverty. They include the religious and non-religious, gay and straight people, people of all races and ethnicities, and, yes, both men and women (in basically equal numbers). The accusation of “pro-life hypocrisy” centers one group of conservative, pro-life voices and dismisses a multiplicity of others.

This cliché distorts our picture of the pro-life movement and is often used to dismiss the larger moral argument that a person in utero is a human being who deserves legal protection. Its invocation allows pro-choice advocates to hold their opponents to abstracted standards of radicalism in order to sidestep substantive debate.

As I survey the pro-life landscape, I see many American pro-life organizations and institutions that seek to bless women and children outside the womb. To name but a few, Feminists for Life is dedicated to “systematically eliminating the root causes that drive women to abortion—primarily lack of practical resources and support—through holistic, woman-centered solutions.” The New Wave Feminists, who made headlines last year after being removed as formal sponsors ...