Many commentators have noted an irony in the almost simultaneous decisions by the US Supreme Court in June of 2022 to negate abortion rights and cripple gun control. What does “pro life” mean here? It’s easy to protest hypocrisy, but that’s an empty gesture. Curiosity will always take us farther. What does “pro life” really mean? The question rarely comes up (other than rhetorically) because the pro-choice movement primarily casts abortion in terms of a woman’s dominion over her own body. Through this lens, “sanctity of life” appears as a pretext to exercise male control. No doubt it sometimes plays this role on the political battlefield, but I question whether this central pillar of the anti-abortion movement can be reduced to a mere feint. We have to account, after all, for the millions of women who’ve signed on to the cause. See for example a New York Times article about young women crusading for anti-abortion legislation.
I prefer to take these people at their word. When they speak passionately about the value they place on fetal life, I believe them. But I don’t relinquish my curiosity. Because the paradox remains. Those likable young women, after all, are seeking to unleash the full violence of criminal law on dedicated healthcare providers and, if only indirectly, on the patients they care for. In a larger sense, the anti-abortion movement is pretty much the same movement that seeks to reduce gun control, is hostile to police reform, clings to the death penalty, struggles to minimize the climate crisis, and cheers on the insurrection of January 6th.
What this adds up to is a sweeping and cavalier disregard for life. 45,000 annual gun deaths? Shrug. 1,000 people shot dead by the American police? Shrug. Executions of innocent or mentally disabled people? Shrug. Thousands already dying, and millions certain to die, from rising global temperatures? Shrug. And the four police officers who took their lives in the wake of January 6th? Shrug. All of these avoidable fatalities are stoically accepted as the price of “freedom.”
Freedom for whom and for what? The question is complex. The current conservative movement is far more enthusiastic than its liberal counterpart about restricting individual freedoms, particularly in people’s intimate lives. The one true freedom that is consistently promulgated by the right is unrestrained commercial activity — unrestrained, that is, by government regulation. That this monetary concept of freedom holds a higher value than human life is repeatedly demonstrated by the behavior of our largest corporations, from the tobacco firms to the pharmaceuticals to the oil companies.
What then of the cult of the fetus? Where does it come from, this emotionally charged passion for just one of life’s myriad manifestations?
There’s a data point worth introducing here. Research has shown that conservatives are more given to disgust than liberals. Now disgust is a primordial reflex in the human nervous system. We all have this reflex, and it’s not surprising that it’s more marked in some than others. No one is better or worse for having a stronger genetic disposition to the disgust response. But it’s interesting that this particular intensity is associated with conservative ideologies.
Scanning the field of rightwing agendas and behaviors, it’s not difficult to recognize the part played by appeals to disgust. This is the emotional color of both racism and homophobia. Anti-black and anti-gay rhetoric has always been charged with the language of revulsion. The specter of “liberal decadence” is shared between the American right and the authoritarian regimes of Hungary and Russia. Conversely, the promise to “clean up” the libraries, the schoolbooks, the movies — whatever stands in the path of conservative moralists — lies at the heart of the culture wars.
So what does this theme of dirt and cleanliness have to do with the sanctity of fetal life?
The fetus has no smell. The fetus never poops, vomits or screams. The fetus is hidden from sight. The fetus is silent. The fetus is pure life — that is life abstracted from the world. Indeed, in much conservative ideology, the fetus is completely decontextualized, conceptually torn from the womb that holds it. The mother is mere pretext, a disposable precursor to Life (even if she’s a 10-year-old rape victim). It’s this pure and abstracted Life — more ideology than actuality — that wins the passionate devotion of the conservative heart.
Once born, the fetus becomes that most viscerally challenging of objects: a living, breathing human being. Conservative passion turns to indifference. Life becomes dispensable.
None of this resolves the ethical questions raised by abortion itself. For those of us who see actual life as a continuum, emerging from primitive cellular clusters to a fully formed human being, the absolutist binary position of the anti-abortionists (personhood is either on or off) makes no sense. There still remains an important question of fetal viability and its timing, though whether it’s a question for government is another matter. That’s not what I’m trying to address here. I’m curious about what’s running underneath the public conflict.
Here’s the challenge I see. You can argue with a position. You can’t argue with a passion. What you can do is hear it, and there’s perhaps been something of a failure on this count. I believe that many conservatives are authentically zealous in their devotion to unborn Life. And this should be recognized. I also believe they are unconscious of what this passion amounts to, and of their widespread indifference — even aversion — to born life. And this should be more deeply explored.
There’s no easy upshot, no quick way out. Conservatism, and the disgust reflex in which it is partially rooted, will always be with us. In its presence, we need to celebrate life as it actually is — messy, imperfect, enchanting, loud, fragrant, smelly, confusing, conflicted… Otherwise, all we can love is an invisible purity, Life before it comes to life. And that’s a pathway to death.
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