Abortion and Dependency
by Jim Hewes
Imagine a toddler at a pool. Three lifeguards are present and on duty. There’s another person present at the pool who has been a lifeguard in the past but isn’t currently on duty. The toddler suddenly runs into the pool in the deep end and is at risk of drowning. The lifeguards immediately spring into action, but the former lifeguard by the pool doesn’t need to help, since her responsibility is lessened because of those officials on duty.
Now imagine a different situation, again with a toddler. This time there’s one lifeguard present on duty. There is a former lifeguard present, but she’s not working. There are no other people in the pool. The toddler runs into the deep end of the pool. The lifeguard is distracted by something and doesn’t realize that the toddler is in the pool. The toddler could drown. In this case, the responsibility of the off-duty lifeguard is heightened because she alone can save a vulnerable person when no one else reasonably can. If she didn’t exercise her heightened responsibility, she would have to live with that tragic inaction the rest of her life.
Dependency and Principled Responsibility
It’s true that the child within the womb is totally dependent on the mother. Nobody else can care for her pre-born child as she can. This situation has heightened her responsibility rather than lessened it. That’s why pregnant women are warned about taking certain drugs which could harm their pre-born children, where other people may not be negatively affected.
Too often in the abortion debate, dependency is treated as a negative value, rather than a natural, often temporary phase of human life. This way of thinking is pervasive in the United States on so many levels. Yet there are many situations in life where one’s responsibility is a positive factor and is heightened, not lessened. In fact, there are at times “lifeguards” present in the form of family, community, churches, and pregnancy centers.
When a baby is born, parents care for this child If they’re unable to do so for one reason or another, the child can be placed for adoption or brought to a safe haven, where others are prepared and expected to take on responsibility for the newborn. Society recognizes that dependency calls forth care, not abandonment.
Pregnancy and Shared Responsibility
Likewise, when a woman is pregnant, her child bears no responsibility for coming into existence. The responsibility rests with the mother, at least until the child is viable. Yet she doesn’t have to face her pregnancy alone. In many cases an unexpected or untimely pregnancy can become a catalyst for addressing underlying difficulties and eventually finding practical solutions. These realizable solutions can offer the woman a fuller and more stable life than she may have imagined before the pregnancy.
Leah Libresco Sargeant captures this powerfully in her book The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto (p. 2): “Women’s bodies and relationships are shaped by dependence, which makes us exceptional and unwelcome in a world that expects men and women to be autonomous (or at least pretend to be). A world that is unwilling to acknowledge dependence as foundational to human life is unable to treat women as equal in dignity.”
At various stages and circumstances of life outside of the womb, humans are also dependent upon others. Our value as human beings is not magically bestowed on us when we gain the ability to care for ourselves, nor do we lose our dignity or humanity when we cannot. Newborns, infants, conjoined twins (who depend on one another for survival), people with significant disabilities or serious brain injuries, the elderly with infirmities, especially with dementia, and people under anesthesia during surgery are all fully dependent on others for care and survival. In all of these situations—and many more—dependency increases responsibility, especially when there are no reasonable alternatives. Dependency does not diminish a person’s humanity; it reveals our obligation to protect and care for one another.
Dependency Before and After Birth
In some ways, the baby is more dependent after birth than before birth. In the womb, the child depends primarily on the mother maintaining healthy habits and attending regular medical appointments. After birth, a newborn baby is totally dependent, and their care requires many people and many actions: providing breast milk or baby formula, feeding the baby multiple times a day, purchasing and assembling a crib and placing the baby numerous times in the crib to sleep or holding them if they can’t sleep, buying baby clothes; changing their diapers several times a day, taking them to a doctor, including getting vaccines, and eventually introducing the baby to extended family members and community.
This shows that when dependency exists after birth, society recognizes a shared and unavoidable responsibility to protect life, even when biological parents cannot provide care themselves.
Conclusion: Dependency as a Human Good
We cannot assign or withdraw people’s value (in other words, penalize them) based on how dependent they are at any given moment on life’s continuum. Dependency is a fundamental feature of the human condition, present from the beginning of life until its natural end. Far from being a flaw, dependency is an ordinary and widespread part of what it means to be human.
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Other posts from Jim Hewes include:
Abortion When it Involves a Rape: See the Faces
Presenting about Abortion: Sharing Experiences
Abortion and Other Issues of Life: Connecting the Dots
Reflections from My Decades of Consistent Life Experience
Consistent Life History: Being Across the Board
Death-Hastening for Psychological Reasons: Dangers and Distractions
by Ms. Boomer-ang
Author’s Note–This essay uses the term MAID, because it currently seems to be the most common. But it includes death-hastening done not only by medical people but also by the other professionals who might also be deputized to execute it.
With the concept of staying alive until one’s body dies naturally under attack, one must be aware of developments that make doing so harder quietly sneaking in while focus is on another aspect of the issue. Could concentrating on the dangers of MAID for psychological conditions (like depression) alone detract attention from the establishment of policies that make it harder to opt out of MAID for other conditions? Although MAID for mental illness alone has serious implications, couldn’t highlighting that it can engulf young able-bodied healthy individuals give the impression that one is against not euthanasia but merely “premature” euthanasia?
To illustrate that MAID violates human rights, examples of doing it for psychological conditions on young healthy people can be relatively weaker than examples of doing it for other conditions.
For one thing, a “request” for mental-illness-justified-MAID is more likely to be self-initiated, and the death is more likely to be voluntary. But in a world where killing people before they die naturally is routine, most official death-hastening warrants would probably be initiated by a medical provider, family member, service provider, service providing agency, or insurance company’s computer. No matter who initiates the request, there’s often a risk of people complying out of resignation, expectation, and lack of escape routes rather than real desire.
If a young able-bodied otherwise-healthy person with depression requests to be killed, wouldn’t a stream of kith, kin, social workers, doctors, and counselors try to talk them out of early death and suggest alternatives? Wouldn’t insurance cover alternatives? But if a person has another MAID-qualifying condition, even if they themselves have not requested death, might some of the same people harass and pressure them to surrender to death-hastening, poo-pooing and hiding what alternatives they know about?
In addition, of the many reasons for killing innocent people, depression is the one most likely to fit the “we’re just ending their suffering the way they want” argument. Of all killings by MAID, aren’t those for self-reported psychological conditions alone likely to have the highest percentage provably voluntary?
Concentrating on the prospect of death-hastening for psychological conditions alone can play into the hands of those who promote MAID by painting an image of patient-initiated requests, discussions of alternatives, verification that — after considering alternatives — the patient still really wants to die, and the patient going voluntarily to death, often self-administering the poison, in a “loving, peaceful” setting, in the presence of only people of their choosing. This ignores the people who submit to MAID because they feel they have no alternative, are killed against their will, try to escape their killers, or are killed by trickery. It ignores the plight of people who want to stay alive but whose family wants them dead and is legally allowed to pressure or trick them into submitting to death-hastening.
Moreover, the debate over which psychological conditions and anti-social behavior qualify for death-hastening might never be settled. Will society become comfortable going back and forth over it, using it as a debating exercise? Meanwhile, couldn’t this debate hide or accept the quiet “settling of the issue” for certain specific non-psychological conditions — with death-hastening for people in those conditions becoming expected, allowed against the target’s will, or required?
Surprising as it now might seem, as late as the 1960’s, a dog care book then still in print said something like, “When your dog is old and fading, unless it is dangerous, there is no need to have it killed. It wants to live as long as possible so it can enjoy your company.” Now the idea of letting a pet live until they die naturally is inconceivable for “grown up” people. Issue settled.
It is unfortunate that the issue was settled that way for pets, and it will be unfortunate if it is settled that way for people. Will debates on fine-tuning who qualifies for voluntary MAID obscure that this is happening?
A solicitation letter from an anti-euthanasia organization in the 1990’s started with an envisioned story about a mother whose daughter one day never comes home from high school. After extensive asking around, the mother finally finds out that her daughter left school to go to a place that encouraged her to get out of her normal teenage depression by killing herself, which she quickly did, supported by professionals, without anybody telling her family before or after. Reading a story like that, one might think that is what the organization most fears. Actually, it is conceivable that laws allowing MAID for psychological reasons on some people will specifically forbid doing it for psychological reasons on otherwise-healthy able-bodied people below a certain age.
A more likely scenario, starting with the premise that the girl never came home from school and the mother had to ask around on her own to find out what happened, would have been that the girl had a disability or chronic illness, the mother’s ex-husband gave permission for her to be killed, the girl was dragged out of her classroom screaming for her life, and she was killed in the presence of her father, stepmother, and people she was told were her “real friends.”
Questioning the competence of mentally ill people to make the decision can be a double-edged sword. One must not assume the default assumption will be life. Where the law allows someone else to make the decision for a person ruled incompetent to make it, it is likely the decision will be life for healthy able-bodied people below a certain age who are willing to take psychotropic medication, and death for people judged to be too unproductive, old, expensive, uncooperative, disabled, or sick.
To back up statements about the wrongness of MAID for psychological reasons alone (in addition to it being another reason to entrap a larger percent of the population in it), how about pointing out the following:
- It can lead to MAID being enforced for other reasons. Where wanting to live while in certain conditions is a legal sign of “irrationality,” since irrationality is a sign of mental illness, a person’s rejection of MAID would be considered another reason to kill them; and since irrationality is a sign of dementia, a person’s rejection of MAID could qualify them for MAID without their consent.
- Suspicion that one’s family members might be plotting to get one’s death hastened (a reasonable suspicion in places where informed consent is not required) could be taken as sign of paranoia, another reason to kill.
- It can be used to enforce conformity. Non-conformities putting an individual at risk for MAID could range from “annoying behavior,” to refusal to take certain medication, to not smiling for a “great leader,” to holding on to “defeated, old-fashioned” principles. After all, such behavior and attitudes could be declared a sign of mental illness. (Ironic, because in the Cold War, we were told that one reason we’re better than the Communists is that they put their non-believers in mental institutions.) In raising this point, we might find allies in some activists who otherwise support death-hastening. (How to interact with those who are “with us” on some points and “against us” on other points warrants discussions of its own.)
But these three bullet points involve cases where the death warrant is not self-initiated. And attention to MAID for psychological reasons tends to focus on self-initiated death requests.
So death-hastening for psychological reasons alone does open the door to new dangers and should be a source of concern. But it must not distract attention from fighting more extensive threats to the right to live until one’s body dies naturally.
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For more of our posts on euthanasia, see:
Figuring out Euthanasia: What Does it Really Mean?
Confronting MAID: Is it Autonomy?
Assisted Suicide is Inequality, Just Like All Legal Violence
Euthanasia by Poverty: Stories from Canada
What’s Cruel for the Incarcerated is Cruel for the Terminally Ill
A Tragedy for the World: The End of the New START Treaty and What Comes Next
A Tragedy for the World: The End of the New START Treaty and What Comes Next
by John Whitehead
The New START Treaty, an important nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, expired on February 5th, 2026. Although the Russian government offered to maintain the treaty’s limits on nuclear weapons for at least another year, the Trump administration opted not to accept that offer and simply let the treaty end.
The end of New START is a tragedy for the world. The lack of the treaty’s formal limits on US and Russian nuclear weapons means either or both nations might choose to build more weapons. Such nuclear build-ups might in turn encourage other nuclear-armed nations, such as China, to build more nuclear weapons of their own.
The end of New START also has the subtler effect of undermining the kind of transparency and cooperation among nations necessary to reduce the nuclear threat. The fewer international agreements there are to limit nuclear weapons and to exchange information on such weapons, the less trust there will be among nuclear-armed nations and the less likely they will be to pursue such agreements in the future.
The United States and Russia need to negotiate a new nuclear arms control agreement to replace New START. Until such an agreement is reached, they need to maintain New START’s limits on nuclear weapons.
How Did We Get Here?
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) was signed by US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in 2010 and went into effect in 2011. New START limited the United States and Russia to each possessing 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads. “Deployed” means the warheads are not simply kept in storage but are loaded onto missiles, bombers, or submarines and can be used relatively quickly. “Strategic nuclear warhead” means the warheads have a very high (by nuclear weapons standards) destructive power.
Beyond the limits on nuclear weapons, New START also required regular information exchanges between the United States and Russia about the weapons covered by the treaty and allowed inspections within each country to check compliance.
For peace activists, New START had definite flaws. The limit of 1,550 strategic weapons still gave each country more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy humanity. Further, the treaty did not cover non-strategic nuclear weapons, which are comparatively less powerful but still enormously destructive.
Still, the treaty continued the general trend since the 1980s of reducing the numbers of nuclear weapons of world. The treaty also provided some transparency about what the two nations with the largest nuclear arsenals were doing with their weapons.
The Covid-19 pandemic led to a suspension of nuclear inspections under New START, but the treaty received a five-year extension in 2021, under the Biden administration. After that, New START has grown progressively more precarious.
In September 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia stopped sharing information about the nuclear weapons covered by New START. Early in 2023, Russia suspended its participation in the treaty. Shortly thereafter, the United States curtailed its own information sharing about nuclear weapons.
Despite the tense US-Russian relationship, maintaining New START’s nuclear limits seemed possible. Last September, Russian President Vladimir Putin extended an apparent olive branch by proposing to abide by the treaty’s limits on nuclear weapons for at least one more year. US President Donald Trump initially seemed sympathetic to the idea.
However, the Trump administration ultimately did not pursue the Russian offer. The president seemed unconcerned about New START’s end, telling the New York Times in January, “If it expires, it expires. We’ll do a better agreement…. I’d rather do a new agreement that’s much better.”
Why Did We Get Here?
Why the Trump administration did not take the Russian offer, especially given the short-term initial commitment involved—adhering to New START limits for only a year—is puzzling.
One possible reason is that the administration aspires for a broader nuclear arms control agreement that involves countries other than the United States and Russia. This could be the “better deal” Trump referred to.
Such an aspiration was recently expressed by Thomas DiNanno, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security, at a UN-sponsored disarmament conference. DiNanno said that “The next era of arms control can and should continue with clear focus, but it will require the participation of more than just Russia at the negotiating table.”
The administration may be particularly concerned with bringing China to the negotiating table. In his January interview with the Times, Trump said, “I actually feel strongly that if we’re going to do [a New START extension], I think China should be a member of the extension. China should be a part of the agreement.”
However, if the administration ignored an opportunity to maintain New START limits in pursuit of some hypothetical future arms control negotiations involving China, that was a woefully misguided calculation. Attempts to negotiate a three-nation treaty involving China are unlikely to succeed. A Chinese Foreign Ministry representative has explicitly said China “will not participate in nuclear disarmament negotiations at this stage.”
Chinese reluctance to participate in arms control negotiations is understandable. Although China has reportedly been expanding its nuclear weapons arsenal, the country still has dramatically fewer nuclear weapons than either Russia or the United States—China has roughly 600 weapons relative to the thousands possessed by the other two nations. Expecting China to limit or reduce its nuclear arsenal in tandem with the United States and Russia is, from a Chinese standpoint, unreasonable and unfair.
Another influence on the Trump administration’s refusal to accept the Russian offer may simply be a general aversion to international agreements. Trump and his associates may prefer not to have American actions constrained by treaties and may have let New START end so US nuclear weapons would no longer be subject to the treaty’s limits.
Such an attitude raises the ominous possibility that the administration’s next step will be to expand the US strategic nuclear weapons arsenal. This could involve taking weapons currently in storage and deploying them on missiles again.
Expanding the US nuclear arsenal would not only be dangerous in itself but could spur the Chinese to even more intense efforts to expand their own nuclear arsenal, thus achieving exactly the opposite of what the Trump administration says it wants. Grave as it is now, the nuclear threat could become even more severe in the near future.
What Do We Do Next?
For peace activists, our basic goal has not changed. We need to lobby for the United States and Russia to negotiate a new nuclear arms control treaty to replace New START. Until such a new agreement is reached, both nations must refrain from increasing their nuclear arsenals beyond the New START limits. That was the goal before New START’s expiration, and it continues to be the goal afterwards.
US citizens should contact their representatives in the House and their Senators to urge them both to support renewed nuclear arms control negotiations with Russia and to oppose any increase in the number of US nuclear weapons. The Arms Control Association provides a guide on how to send such messages to members of Congress.
Americans can also send messages to President Trump by email or phone (202-456-1111) urging him to pursue arms control negotiations and to abide by New START limits. Sending these messages makes it clear to the president that many people want to reduce the nuclear threat.
Nevertheless, the failure of the Trump administration to grasp even such a low-hanging fruit as the Russian offer to abide by New START for just one more year suggests we will see little positive from the president in this area. Meaningful progress on nuclear arms control may well have to wait for a different administration.
Peace activists therefore need to prepare for a long-term, sustained effort to advocate for new nuclear arms control agreements. We need to keep this issue in the public eye until a more favorable political situation emerges.
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For some of our many posts on nuclear weapons policy, see:
Reasons to Fear, Reasons to Hope: The Nuclear Threat after 80 Years
Persuading People to Act against the Nuclear Threat: Some Findings and Recommendations
Nuclear Disarmament as a Social Justice Issue
A Global Effort to Protect Life: The UN Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons
Problems with the Demand-Side Pro-Life Arguments for Making Abortion Unwanted but Not Illegal
by Jacqueline Abernathy, Ph.D. MSSW
Supply Produces Demand
As the United States approaches the 2026 election, pro-life (particularly anti-abortion) voters are faced with the same false dichotomy: vote Republican in order not to exacerbate the unjust social and economic conditions that drive abortion demand, or vote Democrat to reduce demand while safeguarding the supply of abortion options. While the former option is off the table for consistent life ethic (CLE) adherents like myself, I argue the latter should be equally unacceptable.
This is not merely a matter of principle but equally one of pragmatism. Despite how benevolent and pragmatic it may seem. “lowering abortion demand” instead of legally protecting human life is a flawed premise. Legal abortion creates its own demand! So says science, so says common sense.
As an independent voter with no loyalty to either side of the American partisan duopoly, I call out both ends of the spectrum rather equally. I have no sympathies toward either camp; rather I hold quite a bit of animus towards whatever party is in power and the opposition which fails to stop them. Yet I still can (and do) give credit where it’s due on both sides of the aisle. What I’ve found among left-leaning pro-life advocates seeking to rationalize a vote that effectively advances legal abortion in order to stop the human rights abuses from the supposedly “pro-life” right involves conveniently disregarding the efficacy of Republican-enacted state-level abortion regulations.
My pet peeve as a political scientist is when people state something factually accurate to support an inaccurate conclusion; a common one is that abortion rates go down under Democrat presidents. This is true, but to conclude that “therefore Democrats lower abortion demand” is not so simple.
When I ask how Democrats can simultaneously protect abortion access while somehow lowering the number of those who wish to access it, the answer I often get is social welfare policies.
But which ones? The first time we saw a decline in abortion rates was under the Clinton Administration, but he didn’t expand welfare at all. Instead, Clinton limited it significantly, capping it at only five years by changing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF). For many, welfare was cut off. This explanation fails. So then what actually happened that lowered abortion rates in that time period?
Answer: Abortion laws at the state level passed by Republicans after Planned Parenthood v Casey made this possible in 1991. The correlation between lower abortion rates and Democratic presidents only occurs after 1991. This coincides perfectly with political behavior that tends to elect one party at the federal level and the opposite party at the state level.
The decrease we see corresponds to Republican-enacted state laws: informed consent, parental involvement, waiting periods, regulations. Essentially any hurdle between a woman and a hasty abortion is lifesaving. We can see this decrease has less to do with demand for abortion and more to do with limiting supply despite existing demand levels.
This is human behavior 101. People respond to consequences and behave differently when they perceive less risk.
We have seen this phenomenon with emergency contraception (also known as E.C. or the morning-after pill). Before E.C. decreased the perceived risk, concern for pregnancy often meant no condom = no sex. But after E.C., those who then believed they could engage in sex without contraception and just pick up a pill in the morning meant the pill’s very existence and ease of access created its own demand. This increased as barriers to access decreased (i.e. supply increased). The demand was far less when it involved the inconvenience of seeing a doctor, and more when it became a simple trip to the corner drugstore. The consequences of an action and the difficulty dealing with those consequences are the decision-making criteria that determine human actions. When it’s easy to end an unwanted pregnancy, there’s less care to prevent it.
If you don’t believe me or think that I’m underestimating abortion as no big deal, let me tell you about something called pregnancy ambivalence. Pregnancy ambivalence is where a woman is unsure how she would feel about a pregnancy. Rather than avoiding pregnancy until those feelings become clear, many are simply not engaged much with trying to achieve or prevent pregnancy whatsoever. They instead decide to just see how they feel about having a baby after they make one. This idea of test-driving pregnancy is only possible because women know they can end it.
This assumption that people always have and always will rampantly risk pregnancy in bad situations doesn’t hold true. If crisis pregnancies were a static fact of life, we’d have the same rate of unplanned pregnancy and fewer teen or out-of-wedlock births after abortion became legal. Instead, they’ve skyrocketed. When pregnancy requires a big commitment, behavior changes. Contraception created a false sense of security and created abortion demand. Yet even after contraception became accessible but abortion was illegal, the stakes were higher if it failed. There were far fewer unplanned pregnancies when they led to a shotgun wedding.
There are millions of babies only conceived because abortion is legal, most of whom are dead. When there’s no back-up plan, people are more careful about prevention or take fewer risks in general. This is basic risk compensation theory.
This is why lowering demand for abortion is not largely possible while safeguarding abortion access. Supply for abortion creates its own demand. Women have abortions because they don’t want their children for reasons that typically existed before the children were conceived (since year after year, around 87-88 of abortions are performed on women who got pregnant while single and don’t want a child with that father or no father at all). Even if more social welfare programs could mitigate the consequences of single motherhood, they don’t change those pre-existing circumstances. Women can change this by changing their sexual behavior, but while abortion is legal, they don’t feel any need to.
The problems for which women demand abortion like “I can’t afford to raise a child alone” are problems women simply didn’t risk so often before abortion was legal to “solve.” Without abortion, many of these problems would disappear. Society would be forced to actually help those that remain because our violent cop-out would be gone. There’s no legitimate need for abortion, and any problems abortion solves can be solved without violence.
There’s no evidence that abortion can be stopped by government interventions beyond prohibition. More food stamps would be nice, but I sincerely doubt it would change the minds of 4,400 women a day or that any woman who doesn’t want to be pregnant would remain so in order to depend on a welfare check. Believing we can save lives if we just had better social welfare programs is a comforting delusion that allows people to believe there’s something they can do and that women only have abortions out of desperation. Neither are true. It allows people to sound compassionate about the unborn while not actually protecting them. For that reason, it’s incredibly cruel.
The Problem of Power
If we truly desire justice for women and children, we can’t concede to abortion staying legal, thinking that with enough government support, abortion will end. This idea forgets one fundamental factor: the power differential between pregnant women who might not want abortion and the non-pregnant people who do want them to abort. Who has more power?
While abortion remains legal, it gives negotiating power and leverage to everyone but the pregnant woman. A man can say to a pregnant girlfriend, “it’s me or the baby,” or to his stay-at-home pregnant wife, “I’m not having more kids to take care of — so I hope you have a good job and someplace to go.”
Why? Because legal abortion lets them!
A woman terrified of the possibility of being kicked out on the streets with her other children might feel she has no choice.
Likewise, disappointed parents can tell their pregnant teen, “abort or get out,” or “if you have this baby we’re not going to help you pay for college anymore,” to get what they want. Terrified teens who don’t want abortions have abortions anyway.
Why? It’s legal! And because it’s legal, others have the power.
Threats are only possible because legal abortion makes pregnancy “reversible.” When pregnancy is an unchangeable reality, this takes threats off the table.
True, people can abandon pregnant women all the same. But it’s much harder to do, and they’re more likely to answer for it.
I know women who’ve called the bluff of those making such threats, who weren’t abandoned and whose children are deeply adored by those who had tried so hard to get them killed. But these are the strong ones.
When pregnancy isn’t an “optional” condition, pregnant women are more likely to be accommodated rather than abandoned. Because of this, threats like “if you really think you’re grown up enough to take care of a baby then you’re grown up enough to buy your own car to get to work” or “if you want another baby, you’re on your own” will bully women into unwanted abortions out of fear they can’t take care of themselves or their children unless they comply. I have seen it. A lot.
As long as abortion is a legal option, a woman will be told that any problems she faces from pregnancy was because of the choice she made to remain pregnant. Therefore, it’s all on her. If women can’t end pregnancy on demand, other people will be forced to deal with it and abandonment won’t be so easy.
True concern for unborn children involves demanding their human rights as human beings, and true concern for women requires ending abortion so women aren’t constantly expected to choose between someone else’s demands and the lives of their unborn children. The only way to get women the support they deserve is to stop allowing abortion as a cop-out!
In sum, every policy to support women and families that could lower abortion rates doesn’t require keeping abortion legal and accessible. This is a trade-off that some use to rationalize their vote for Democrats in the same way others use Democrats’ championing of abortion to rationalize their vote for Republican-sanctioned violence. We must do better.
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For more of our thoughts on abortion regulations, see:
What Studies Show: Impact of Abortion Regulations
Why the Hyde Amendment Helps Low-Income Women
Abortion Facilitates Sex Abuse: Documentation
For the idea that the demand-side with poverty does also deserve attention:
Preborn Babies, Infants, and Government Programs / Sarah Terzo
SNAP Cuts? More Poverty, More Abortion / Sarah Terzo
Social Programs to Help the Poor are Pro-life
Baby Hitler
by Rachel MacNair
There’s a “thought experiment” prevalent enough to have its own Wikipedia entry: if you had a time machine and could go back in time and kill Adolf Hitler as a baby, on the idea that millions of killings would thus be prevented, would you do it? In 2015, The New York Times surveyed its readers asking if they would kill baby Hitler. Response:
- 42% yes
- 30% no
- 28% undecided
This idea has kicked off debates on ethics and philosophy (plus of course some speculation on the practicalities of changing the past, which we won’t cover here).
I consider three aspects relevant to the consistent life ethic, ending with why a mere fantasy matters at all.
Why Kill Baby HITLER?
The Military Mindset
In 2016, this question came up during the U.S. Republican presidential primary debates, and Jeb Bush responded “Hell yeah, I would!” Considering potential unknown consequences, he said he still would, because “You gotta step up, man.” He got a lot of support for this position.
The point has explored by science fiction writers, where having a time traveler go back to the 1890s fits the genre. Two of interest:
- a 2002 episode of The Twilight Zone, “Cradle of Darkness.”
A woman travels back, succeeds in killing baby Hitler, so Hitler’s mother adopts a different baby and history turns out the same.
- a 1996 novel, Making History, by Stephen Fry
This avoids killing by having the time traveler render Hitler’s father Alois infertile before he’s conceived. But a different Nazi dictator fills the slot that Adolf left empty by not existing, and he was more effective – he got the German scientists to be willing to make nuclear weapons, conquered Europe, and did a more total job of exterminating Jews.
That last thought had certainly occurred to me before I read about it. You could get someone worse than Hitler. How could you get someone even worse? Easy – someone who wrote a better book, fooled people better, didn’t use astrology for military planning, etc.
The thing is, the society was set up for Naziism to develop. World War I, resentment of the Versailles Treaty and occupation of the Ruhr, hyperinflation, and a long list of other things were putting people in the mood. If society weren’t ready, Hitler would have spun himself out and gotten nowhere. If society were ready, then if Hitler weren’t there to do it, someone else would have taken over the slot. The reason they didn’t do it was that Hitler had already taken it.
So the premise of the whole question is based on the military assumption that if you can just get rid of specific leaders, the whole thing falls apart. That’s as unrealistic here as it is in other situations.
Why Kill BABY Hitler?
The Abortion/Infanticide Mindset
At the 2019 March for Life, Ben Shapiro was asked about the thought experiment and replied:
The truth is that no pro-life person on earth would kill baby Hitler, because baby Hitler wasn’t Hitler, adult Hitler was Hitler. Baby Hitler was a baby . . .
What you presumably want to do with baby Hitler is take baby Hitler out of baby Hitler’s house and move baby Hitler into a better house where he would not grow up to be Hitler, right? That’s the idea.
In response, three companies pulled their ads from his podcast. Oh, dear.
But it goes beyond his clear exposition of a proper pro-life response. The question I most want to know is: if we’re resolving an ethical dilemma in favor of killing, and we somehow magically know that we’re not making things even worse, but at least a little better – once all that magic has been posited, why are people intent on killing him as a baby?
There’s no reason to think he wasn’t a perfectly fine baby. Or that he didn’t grow up to be as good a child as his siblings and other contemporaries. We don’t know of him committing violence before becoming a soldier in World War I. Even then, there’s no reason to think he was any worse than other soldiers. Given all the scrutiny and animosity focused on him, if there were any evidence he had been above-average in viciousness, we would surely have heard about it.
Still, if we’re strategizing within the thought experiment and assume for the sake of argument that killing him is OK, why on earth not wait until he was a soldier? Arranging for him to get killed in the war would probably be easier for the future-knowing time traveler to do and not get caught at. Then Hitler would just be one of the over two million German soldiers killed in that war. That’s just as much a disappearance for the sake of keeping him from his role in Naziism, and at least you’ve allowed him to have some life at pre-soldier times when his living is no danger to others.
But so many don’t get that far because there’s such a strong bigotry about people that “shouldn’t exist.” We start that bigotry at the beginning. This gets especially vicious nowadays when people aim the hostility at babies who’ve been conceived in rape.
Why KILL Baby Hitler?
The Violence-as-Problem-Solver Mindset
People like Stephen Colbert and John C. Reilly have taken a position similar to Shapiro’s, that getting Hitler into a loving home was a better alternative.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t know that his upbringing was the main problem. He was a soldier in World War I. He volunteered in August 1914 and was lance corporal in the Bavarian Army. He got the Iron Cross for bravery and was wounded in action.
It seems reasonable to me to think this influenced his ideology far more than just his upbringing. That along with the observation that large numbers of other people were impacted the same way by both the war and longstanding pro-military attitudes and bigotries against Jews, etc.
Of course, the biggy for stopping Naziism would have been to stop World War I. Heaven knows there were peace activists at the time who tried. But they didn’t have the time-traveler’s knowledge of what was going to happen (which the traveler has because from the traveler’s point of view it already had). Stopping the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand that triggered the war could be done by distracting or bumping into the assassin without harming even him. Actually, it was so arbitrary that it could be done even more simply by having the driver of the Archduke’s car not take a wrong turn – exactly the kind of thing a time traveler’s intervention would be good for. That would have the moral advantage of preventing a murder rather than causing one.
It would still have the danger that, given what a powder keg Europe was at the time, a delay with a different trigger might have made things worse. It’s a good thing all this is a magical thought experiment. We don’t have to find out.
Also, stopping the various humiliations of Germany after World War I would help. But there were peace activists at the time who were trying. I don’t see how a time traveler’s knowledge would have an advantage over them. (A Quaker friend of mine took issue with me on this: he thinks of convincing the people negotiating the Treaty of Versailles that one is a time traveler who really does know the future and showing it to them. Well, sure. That’s as good a fantasy as any.)
So perhaps we’re stuck with seeing what we can do about getting Hitler out of the loop. Let’s say we’re doing it with magical knowledge that it will at least help, and not put a more vicious and effective dictator in his place.
Here his ambitions as an artist provide a prime opportunity. He made clear on different occasions that being an artist was really what he most wanted. He failed to gain entry into his desired art school twice.
The time traveler has that knowledge, and could go back and give him some tutoring to help him to pass the exam and get in. Or lobby the examiners, or whatever it took – preparation by studying the situation would be needed.
That was before World War I, but if he’d had a spot at the school, or had launched a career because of it, he may well have gone back to that and left his Naziism-launching spot unfilled.
All of which is still complete fantasy. We’ll never be able to run this as a real-life experiment to see how it would have worked out.
Conclusion
As long as we have thought experiments and fantasies, why aren’t we thinking in those helpful terms, instead of in terms of killing? If the point is to make someone absent from a place, why think in terms of death rather than in terms of something more beneficial?
Violence starts in the mind. If we want to stop it, I say we need even our fantasies to be more mature about what violence can and can’t do. We should be more eager to find the real need that violence is proposed to address, and find better and healthier ways of addressing that need.
=========================
For more posts on speculations about changing history, see:
Would Nonviolence Work on the Nazis?
The Civil War Conundrum, 150 Years Later
Exploring Moral Courage and the Responsibility to Protect Life in Fiction and Beyond
Nathanial John
by Nathanial John
When Courage Is Not Loud
We are often conditioned to think of courage as something explosive—battles won, villains defeated, lives saved in the final moments. Yet, some of the bravest decisions in human history are quiet. They happen in isolation, in secrecy, and often without applause. Moral courage is not the kind of bravery that looks good in hindsight. It is the courage to choose responsibility over safety, conscience over convenience, and protection over power.
At its heart, moral courage asks a disturbing question: What are you willing to lose to protect life? Not in theory. Not in fiction alone. But in the real, complicated, consequence-ridden world.
Defining Moral Courage: Choosing the Hard Right Over the Easy Wrong
Moral courage is not the absence of fear—it is action in the presence of it. Unlike physical courage, which responds to immediate danger, moral courage operates in uncertainty. It requires a person to act without knowing whether they will be supported, understood, or even proven “right.”
It is easier to follow the crowd. Easier to obey systems. Easier to remain silent. Moral courage emerges when someone refuses those comforts and acts anyway.
This is why moral courage so often feels lonely. It is not validated by numbers. It is validated by conscience.
The Weight of Protecting Life: More Than Survival
Protecting life is not merely about preventing death. It is about safeguarding dignity, meaning, and the conditions that allow life to flourish. This responsibility becomes complicated when protection requires sacrifice—of status, security, or certainty.
In the real world, this responsibility falls on doctors making life-and-death decisions, journalists protecting sources, scientists refusing to misuse knowledge, and individuals standing between the vulnerable and powerful systems. Often, the greatest threat to life is not violence, but indifference.
Fiction as a Moral Laboratory
Fiction gives us a safe space to explore impossible choices. It allows us to slow down moral moments and examine their consequences without living them ourselves. The best stories do not offer answers—they offer discomfort.
In dystopian and speculative fiction, the responsibility to protect life often scales up dramatically. The question is no longer whether to save one person, but whether to protect a truth, a world, or an idea that could change everything if exposed.
This is where moral courage becomes most revealing—not as heroism, but as restraint.
Protection Through Restraint: A Radical Form of Courage
One of the most overlooked forms of moral courage is the decision not to act in ways that bring power or recognition. Sometimes, protection means concealment. Sometimes, it means silence.
A powerful example of this is explored in Quarantine by Kevin W. Bates, a speculative novel set in a dystopian future where a hidden community—referred to as the “One World”—harbors the secret of the Anointed One’s birthplace. The protagonist, Hunzuu, is an engineer tasked with keeping this sacred site hidden from a world eager to exploit its significance.
Unlike typical heroes in apocalyptic fiction who battle evil forces or confront overwhelming odds, Hunzuu’s moral courage lies in his restraint. His duty is not to expose truths to the world, but to shield them from harm. Quarantine challenges the modern assumption that exposure is always good, and that truth must always be shared. Instead, it asks whether some truths are better protected from the world’s hunger for power and control.
In this story, the moral courage required is not in revealing all, but in concealing what is most precious, even at great personal cost.
The Burden of Knowing
One of the most painful aspects of moral courage is the moment knowledge becomes responsibility. Once you see a threat to life, you cannot unsee it. Neutrality becomes a myth.
Hunzuu’s journey reflects a universal truth: awareness changes moral standing. Once you know, you are accountable. This is true for witnesses to injustice, environmental destruction, or human suffering. Silence may feel safe, but it is never morally weightless.
When Lives Compete: The Tragic Nature of Ethical Choice
Perhaps the most difficult moral dilemmas arise when protecting one life appears to endanger another. These are not cinematic moments of good versus evil—they are tragic conflicts between competing goods.
In Quarantine, the existence of a contagious disease threatens the safety of the “One World,” creating an ethical nightmare where the protection of one group comes at the potential cost of another’s survival. This reflects real-world ethical crises in medicine, war, public health, and environmental policy.
Moral courage in these moments is not about being right—it is about being responsible.
The Cost No One Talks About
Stories often sanitize moral courage by rewarding it. Reality rarely does.
True moral courage often leads to loss—careers destroyed, relationships fractured, lives forever altered. The people who protect life are not always remembered as heroes. Sometimes they are erased entirely.
This is why moral courage is rare. It demands a willingness to act without guarantees, recognition, or vindication.
Protecting Life Beyond Humanity
Another dimension often ignored is our responsibility to protect non-human life. Ecosystems, species, and future generations depend on moral courage today. Environmental collapse is not caused by ignorance—it is caused by deferred responsibility.
Fiction frequently understands this before policy does. Stories remind us that life is interconnected, and that protecting one form often means protecting many.
Living the Question, Not Just Reading It
The value of fiction is not that it entertains, but that it prepares us. Stories like Quarantine do not tell us what to think—they train us to recognize moral weight when it appears in our own lives.
Moral courage is not reserved for extraordinary people. It appears in ordinary moments: when we choose integrity over comfort, protection over profit, and responsibility over denial.
Conclusion: The Quiet Bravery That Sustains the World
Moral courage is not dramatic. It does not always change the world. Sometimes, it simply prevents something precious from being destroyed.
The responsibility to protect life—whether a person, a belief, a culture, or a world—is the highest ethical demand we face. Fiction reminds us of this not by offering heroes who win, but by showing us people who endure.
In the end, moral courage is not about being fearless. It is about being faithful—to life, to conscience, and to the fragile things that depend on us to survive.
=========================
For more of our posts applying fiction to moral courage, see:
Jasmine, Aladdin, and the Power of Nonviolence
The Violence That Didn’t Happen (Stranger at the Gate)
Making an Activist of the Witch of the West in “Wicked for Good”
The Movie “Wicked”: Making a Real Person of the Witch of the West
Seeing the Humanity of “the Enemy”: Movies to Provoke Thought and Discussion
Lots of Activities Around March for Life 2026
Lauren Handy
Day of Horror and Hope: Unity Brunch at the Capitol
“we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”
–Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
This quote resonated deeply within me as I looked out across the room. After 8 months of coalition-building, the Day of Horror and Hope Planning Committee saw the fruits of this work. We came together inside the United States Capitol to kick off our Day of Action on the twin anniversaries of Roe vs Wade and the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons officially going into effect. A diverse group of more than forty people came together to hold the grief of the moment we are in while also grounding ourselves in hope.
With the cascading images of live-streamed genocide, kidnappings happening in our neighborhoods, and our cities under occupation, the room was heavy with helplessness. But as each speaker shared their vision for a more just world, a rebellious hope started to grow. Looking around that room, I truly felt the mission of the Horror and Hope Planning Committee come to life. We were weaving a garment of justice that included us all. The challenges we are facing are not isolated problems; they are interconnected in ways that shape our shared future.
The speakers included Brian Lohmann from the Vulnerable People Project, Destiny Herndon-de la Rosa from New Wave Feminists, Bernadette Patel from Feminists Choosing Life of New York, Mary Rider of the Father Charlie Mulholland Catholic Worker House and Consistent Life Network, and Constance Becker, an Afro-Indigenous pro-life speaker and activist.
As everyone left the brunch, the excitement and renewed energy overshadowed all despair. This gave us momentum through the rest of the weekend and will keep us moving forward after retuning home.
Vigil at White House
In the afternoon, a large group of us gathered outside the White House to hold a vigil concluding the Day of Action. Through music, poetry, testimonies, and more, we each shared a piece of ourselves. It was beautiful to see people of all ages coming together with our signs and banners to hold space for the most vulnerable among us.
There was also an event in Chicago
March for Life
The following day, friends and supporters of the Horror & Hope Planning Committee joined a large group of other “alt” pro-life groups to march together to the Supreme Court ahead of the National March for Life. Spirits were high as we walked together, joining arms in this fight for justice.
I created a sign for the March for Life that stated, “Justice for the Five is justice for Congo, Palestine, Sudan.” What is happening in Congo, Sudan, and Palestine, and in the womb, is all interconnected. Hyper-individualism driven by consumerism and supremacist ideologies is going after the most vulnerable in our societies. We have seen time and time again how children are the collateral damage in the colonial extraction of resources.
Seeing children being exploited in the mines in Congo, dying of starvation in Sudan, blown to pieces in Palestine harkens intimately to my experience of handling the remains of the 115 murdered children. Broken bodies. Shattered dreams.
But what do we do to combat this? How do we find hope again? I believe in the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, South African anti-apartheid leader, “The only way we can ever be human is together. The only way we can be free is together.”
Together we are bound together in a single garment of destiny. Together we will advance justice for all.
Bill Samuel
Thursday and Friday activities sort-of flowed together. The four events I attended – Unity Brunch, Vigil, Democrats for Life of American (DFLA) Breakfast, and alt-life rally and march – had a lot of common participants. They were all multi-issue (DFLA not quite as much, but folks did talk about more than the legislative initiative they’re currently promoting). They were quite energizing. Most everyone got to reconnect with some people and make some new connections.
A distinct difference with the alt-pro-life gathering from prior years is that it did its own march to the Supreme Court rather than being a contingent in the main March. We got to the Supreme Court long before the main March, and there were “pro-choice” demonstrators there. One of the things they were trying to do was say that other things were important, but they hadn’t counted on us coming with signs that addressed all the other issues.
It was a contest of chants, but there were no overtly hostile interactions while I was there, which hasn’t always been the case. The inclusion of the Vulnerable People’s Project in some events was valuable, because they view themselves as conservative ideologically which none of the others do, yet they are clearly consistent life ethic proponents.
Alt-Pro-Life Gathering 2026
Christy Yao Pelliccioni
The brunch on Thursday was very nice. Lauren did a great job of having it be truly a “Unity” brunch. Many different people who focus on many different issues were there, such as Brian Lohmann from the Vulnerable People’s Project, Destiny Herdon-de la Rosa from New Wave Feminists, and Kristen Day from Democrats for Life. I got a chance to talk to Kristen Day, and figure out what I was going to say at the breakfast on Friday.
The Democrats for Life (DFLA) breakfast was a lot different than it has been in the past. It was much more like a press conference and less like the networking event it’s been before. Luckily my sister came with me and was able to be with the kids.
Christy speaks for CLN at the DFLA Breakfast.
Saturday at the Cardinal O’Connor Conference went very well! We gave away some cards. I gave a few Problems with Planned Parenthood books (see bottom of page) to people from other organizations.
Richard Stith reported his friends handed out cards, as planned, to the lit table staffers at the National Pro-life Summit, and they were well received. (Cards were about our Peace and Life Referendums website, Grassroots Defunding – Finding Alternatives to Planned Parenthood, and Problems at Planned Parenthood).
========================
We’ve previously reported:
Roe Anniversary Protests, 2019
(We actually participate every year, but don’t always do a blog post on it)
Mother in a Condition and Baby Inside
by Ms. Boomer-ang
When a pregnant woman has or develops certain medical conditions or suffers certain injuries, conventional attitudes too often dictate either she or the baby must die. Actually, treatments that spare the life of both the mother and the child exist, and these approaches should be pursued more frequently.
In addition, when treatment supposedly intended to save the baby results in the death of at least the mother, public voices often blame right-to-lifers. But actually, sometimes the treatment used could suit the pro-abortion viewpoint at least as much as the anti-abortion viewpoint, and the right-to-life treatment would have been very different than the approach used.
Angela Carder
One tragic example of this, leading to the death of both the mother and the baby occurred in Washington, DC, in 1987. As narrated by Jennifer Block, in the book Pushed:
28-year-old Angela Carder, after “fight[ing] off cancer since puberty…. believe[d] she [was] in remission and beg[an] a much-wanted pregnancy.” But at 25 weeks gestation, she had “severe symptoms,” checked into George Washington Hospital, and learned she had a malignant “inoperable lung tumor.” Carder and her family “wage[d] a battle for medical treatment to save her life.” They and “her doctors all agree[d] that they should do whatever they can to keep her alive.” And if she died anyway, they started to discuss the possibility of doing an emergency C-section to save the baby. (pp 254-255)
Then they found out that a judge had ordered Carder to get a Caesarean section immediately. A neonatologist, without first talking with Carder, her family, or her doctor, had gotten a lawyer to declare Carder “as good as dead.”
Carder’s doctor argued that the operation strain could hasten Carder’s death. Her obstetrician told her he would do the operation only if she consented. Though on a respirator, “she clearly mouthed to him, ‘I don’t want it done!’ ” A judge ordered the operation done anyway. Since all the obstetricians present refuse to do it, another surgeon did it.
Although many babies born at 26 weeks survive with neonatal care, Carder’s baby died in 2 hours. Carder died in two days.
Although elsewhere in her book, Block makes valuable points against the over-medicalization of childbirth, for Carder’s death she disappointingly blames claims that the doctors and lawyers considered the life of the baby more important than the life of the mother, because they had heard right-to-life talk too many times.
Actually, the 26-week caesarean could just as easily be the result of pro-abortion and duty-to-die attitudes. They delivered the baby so early its chances of surviving were low. And they proceeded as if Carder had already died and subjected her to an operation they knew could strain her into dying more quickly.
What action would have been taken if the priority had been the mother’s life? The baby’s life? Both of their lives? Conforming to the mistaken doctrine that at least one had to die? What about comparing each of these four directions to each other and to what was actually done?
When the priority is the mother’s life, there are actually several options. In case of cancer, x-rays, chemo, and sometimes surgery have the medical gold star. Other approaches include removing stresses, stopping discomforting medications, letting nature take its course, and/or trying alternate and medical luddite approaches. Was Carder’s condition so “bad” that the only reason to use gold star treatment was for doctors, family, and/or Carder to feel they were doing something? Could Carder have lived at least as long using other approaches?
None of the treatments, gold star or other, would have required removing the baby. From the save-the-mother standpoint, reasons given to remove the baby include: that pregnancy is a strain on the mother; that some treatments work unpredictably, or differently-than-standard on pregnant women; and that ‘dealing with a new baby will threaten the mother’s recovery.’
But the strain-on-the-mother reason must be weighed against the strain that the operation to remove the baby causes. With Carder, doctors admitted the strain of caesarean probably sped her death.
From the right-to-life position, the best course of action would have been the one that would maximize the chance of both the mother and the baby surviving and living as normally as possible.
Pregnancy Strain?
Unfortunately, Carder’s case is the only one I know about where the strain of the operation was admitted to the public. Usually the strain of pregnancy argument is used to perform abortions on injured women without their permission, especially if they have never had an abortion before, manifesting the attitude ‘how can one bypass an opportunity to bring this woman into the club of those who have had at least one child deliberately killed by good guys?’ But would Carder have lived any longer if, before lifting her baby out of her womb, they had strangled, stabbed, cut it up, or sucked out its brain?
In addition, as much as pregnancy puts a strain on the woman, the baby inside her sometimes helps her. A woman “who suffered kidney failure for 22 years was kept alive during her pregnancy by her unborn child, whose kidneys” cleaned her “blood as well as his own . . . This shows [that] . . . the welfare of a mother and her unborn child are . . . intertwined. They contribute to each other’s health. When we help one, we help both; [and] if we hurt one, we hurt both.”
Furthermore, pregnant women have undergone gold star medical treatments and survived, while their baby was born alive. Even with cancer of reproductive organs.
And when baby must come out, would inducing labor and seeing how it progresses really put more strain on the mother than a Caesarean? Moreover, though it is “hard” to handle a new baby at the same time as undergoing treatment or recovery for an illness or injury, (especially without non-resentful help), cannot the joy of watching one’s new child help the recovery?
The Baby
When the priority is the baby’s life, the best thing is to keep it in the mother. Doctors have said that each week more inside the mother means more than a week less in the NICU.
Until labor starts naturally, the best incubator for a human baby is the mother’s body.
During this time, probably the best for the baby is for the mother to take as little medicine as possible. Some non-gold-star care for the mother is better than most gold-star protocols for the baby inside.
However, aggressive gold-star treatment need not be ruled out, because babies have survived it with no obvious damage. In fact, between 1973 and 2003, Dr. Agustin Avilés in Mexico City treated 84 pregnant cancer patients with chemotherapy, and all their babies survived – only 5.8% with birth defects. In a follow up study on 43 of these children, when they were between 3 and 19, “all had normal physical . . . and psychological development.” They “did fine in school.”
So one can weigh the benefits of staying in the womb with the benefits of moving into a medical incubator to avoid the risks of x-rays, chemo, anesthesia, and maintenance medicine.
Of course, if the mother becomes so close to dying her organs are in pre-death shut down, then the baby must be gotten out.
Block and others accuse too much attention to putting-baby-ahead-of-mother ideas for Carder’s treatment. But actually, if the priority had been for putting the baby first, they would have kept it inside, and kept treatments and care to things least likely to harm the baby. At least they would have kept the baby in until 28-weeks gestation, after which the survival chances for premature babies is considered good.
In 1997, Dr. Elyse Cardonick, a perinatoligist, faced a pregnant patient with Hodgkin’s disease who ‘was afraid not to be treated for cancer, but [also] . . . afraid to expose her fetus to drugs,’ and did not want the recommended abortion. Dr. Cardonick did research, found out about Dr. Aviles’ work, and successfully argued to her hospital ethics panel that, “It’s not a choice between you and your baby; we can take care of you both.” As a result, “her patient gave birth to a healthy child.”
Assumptions
Obstacles to maintaining the lives of both the mother and the baby include two unfortunate assumptions that are so widespread that even some right-to-lifers cannot avoid falling for them.
One is that pregnancy and childbirth are or ought to be the most dangerous and suffering-causing thing that can happen to a woman. The other is that in some circumstances somebody must die to give the other a chance of surviving.
One can note that to find cases where a pregnant woman was treated for cancer and her baby survived, a US doctor had to look at results from Mexico. At that time, abortion was illegal in Mexico. As killing babies becomes part of medicine in more countries, will fewer places be willing or even allowed to try save-both treatments?
How can the aim of both the mother and the baby coming through the situation alive be restored to medical attitudes? Bringing up some examples in the references would not hurt. But that might not be enough. What else can be done?
Even when a pregnant woman is injured or ill, the goal should be for both the mother and the baby to survive. Some cases show that this is possible, sometimes with both living normally ever after. A challenge is to publicize and remind people of these cases and to convince courts, policy makers, and medical people to allow and encourage trying to repeat or improve their results.
==================
For another post on this topic, see:
Creating a Loophole on the Life of the Mother Exception
For more posts from Ms. Boomer-ang, see:
“Shut Up and Enjoy it!”: Abortion Promoters who Sexually Pressure Women
Asking Questions about Miscarriage and Abortion
The Danger of Coerced Euthanasia: Questions to Ask
Conviction When Real Guilt is Irrelevant
The complete list is on the Author Page with authors listed alphabetically.’
Abortion and Rape: What Does the Research Say?
by Sarah Terzo
This article originally appeared on Sarah Terzo’s Substack. You can read more of her articles here. Sarah is a member of the Board of Directors of the Consistent Life Network.
Rape is a horrific crime and a terrible act of injustice. A person who is sexually violated suffers a lifelong trauma.
Pregnancies through rape are statistically rare. Most women can only become pregnant 2-3 days out of every month, around ovulation, so the assault would have to happen during that fertile time. Also, many are on long-acting hormonal birth control that would prevent pregnancy.
But pregnancies through rape do occur. And they understandably cause great upheaval in the victim’s life and the lives of those around her. But do rape victims really benefit from abortion?
Many people believe that a pregnant rape victim would automatically want an abortion. They think that having a baby conceived in rape would add to the victim’s trauma. The child, they say, will be a constant reminder of the rape. And how could a mother possibly love a baby conceived in such a violent, traumatic way?
The belief is that an abortion in these cases is compassionate because pregnancy as a result of rape will destroy a person’s life.
Research on Abortion and Rape
Surprisingly little research has been done on the psychological outcomes and aftermath of rape pregnancies. Even less has been done comparing the psychological sequelae of abortion with those of giving birth.
In fact, I’m only aware of three studies that have ever been done on the issue. A set of two studies by a researcher named Dr. Sandra Mahkorn2 was published in 1979 and 1981.
And then there was a survey conducted by David Reardon, Amy Sobie, and Julie Makimaa, herself a birth mother through rape, in their book Victims and Victors, which compiles the testimonies of women who became pregnant after rape and either aborted or had their children. It is the only book collecting such stories that I know of. It was published in 2000.
The results of these two research projects may surprise you.
Most Rape Victims Chose Life
For one thing, all three studies found that a large majority of rape victims rejected the option of abortion and chose to have their children and either raise them or make adoption plans.
David Reardon, Amy Sobie, and Julie Makimaa1 found that 73% of pregnant rape victims chose life. Sixty-four percent raised their children, and 36% placed their babies for adoption. Sandra Mahkorn2 found similar results – 75% of the women in her studies decided against abortion.
It should be noted that during the time these studies took place, abortion was legal in every state. Mahkorn’s studies were published before the court case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which made it possible for states to enact pro-life laws such as waiting periods, parental notification, and informed consent. There were, then, almost no restrictions on abortion in place at the time of the studies.
When all three studies were conducted, abortion was legal at least up to viability in all 50 states. So, one cannot say these women were unable to choose abortion because of legal barriers. They weren’t prevented from having abortions – they chose to have their babies.
Why Did the Women Choose Life?
So why did they reject abortion? Mahkorn gave the following reasons:
Beliefs that abortion involves violence, killing, or was immoral were the reasons most frequently reported for clients’ decisions against abortion. Client viewpoints such as abortion is a “violent way of ending a human life,” or abortion is “killing” were noted.
Others expressed the belief in an intrinsic meaning to human life, reflected in opinions such as “all life has meaning” or “this child can bring love and happiness into someone’s life.” One pregnant victim related that she felt she would suffer more mental anguish by taking the life of the child.2
Reardon and his co-authors also wrote about the reasons why more women in their study did not abort:
First, approximately 70% of all women believe abortion is immoral, although many may also feel it should be a legal choice for others. Approximately the same percentage of pregnant rape victims believe abortion would be a further act of violence…
Second, many of these women believe that their children’s lives may have some intrinsic meaning or purpose which they do not yet understand . . .
Third, victims of assault often become introspective. Their sense of the value of life and respect for others is heightened. Since they have been victimized, the thought that they in turn might victimize their own innocent children through abortion is repulsive.
Fourth, the victim may sense, at least at a subconscious level, that if she can get through the pregnancy, she will have conquered the rape
. . . Giving birth, especially when conception was not desired, is a totally selfless act, a generous act, a display of courage, strength, and honor. It is proof that she is better than the rapist . . . While he destroyed, she can nurture.1
So right off the bat, we see that the assumption that all people who become pregnant because of rape want to have abortions is false. In both these studies, it was not the chosen answer for most of the women.
Giving Birth vs. Abortion
But what about the emotional aftereffects? Did those who carried their pregnancies to term suffer further trauma?
Mahkorn interviewed therapists who worked with rape survivors. She had them measure qualities such as self-esteem, anxiety, fear, satisfaction with present life situation, loneliness, depression, and contentedness. The therapists were asked to rate the intensity of these feelings.
A measurement was done when a woman first contacted the counselor and then later in therapy.
Mahkorn found that, across the board, the women who gave birth scored better in the later evaluations. They showed improvements in positive traits and decreases in negative ones. This indicated that the women were healing and adjusting. According to Mahkorn:
[This study illustrates] that pregnancy need not impede the victim’s resolution of the trauma . . . rather, with loving support, nonjudgmental attitudes, and emphatic communication, healthy emotional and psychological responses are possible despite the added burden of pregnancy.2
The Reardon survey took a slightly different approach. Rather than asking a third party about the women’s adjustment, surveys were sent out to the women themselves. They were asked whether they regretted their choice and how they felt about it now.
According to the answers, 88% of women who had abortions regretted them and felt they had made the wrong decision. Out of the remaining 12%, just one woman expressed only positive feelings about her abortion and was sure it was the right choice.
The remaining women were ambivalent, feeling they may have made the right decision but acknowledging that the abortion was traumatic for them. They said things like, “It bothers me a lot, but maybe it was for the best.”1
The responses of the women who had their babies stand in strong contrast to those who aborted.
Of those who carried to term, none regretted having their baby or wished they had aborted instead. Over 80% explicitly expressed happiness about their child and their situation. Only one woman expressed any regret, and that was about her choice regarding adoption – she was glad she had her baby. All of them were.
Pressure to Abort
In addition, 43% said that they felt pressured to choose abortion by their family and/or by abortion workers. Family members were deeply uncomfortable with their pregnancies and weren’t supportive about continuing them.
Rape victims do not need reminders that they were raped. The trauma is with them every moment of every day – they will not forget, no matter what happens to the baby.
Often, instead, the pregnancy is a reminder to those around the woman – her family and friends – that she has been raped, and this reminder makes them very uncomfortable. A lot of people cannot understand why a woman would want to continue a pregnancy associated with rape.
They believe abortion will help her “get over” the rape, and that once the pregnancy (the outward sign) is gone, things can return to normal. In reality, it can take many years to come to terms with trauma from sexual assault, and most people are never the same afterwards – the trauma doesn’t disappear if the pregnancy “goes away.”
People’s discomfort and their assumptions can manifest as considerable pressure on the rape victim to conform to what those around her (and the greater society) find acceptable, and “choose” abortion.
Abortion as a “Solution” to Rape?
What about their opinions about what other women should do in the same circumstances? Ninety-three percent of the rape victims who aborted said they would not recommend abortion to someone else who was pregnant due to rape. Only 7% felt that abortion could be a good solution in cases of rape.
Ninety-three percent of the women who had abortions, then, would encourage other rape victims not to make the same choice they did.
Of the women who gave birth, 94% said that abortion wasn’t a good answer to a pregnancy conceived in rape. Of the 82 women in the survey who chose to have their babies, only four said that abortion “might” be a good solution in some cases – even though it wasn’t in theirs. The rest said that abortion would never be the right choice for someone who was raped.
This survey by David Reardon and his colleagues is 25 years old. The Mahkorn studies are even older. It would be good if more studies were conducted. But even though the research is older, it challenges the common assumptions about rape and pregnancy.
According to this research, abortion after rape doesn’t help a rape survivor heal. It only robs an innocent child of life and further traumatizes the victim.
Sources
- David C Reardon, Julie Makimaa, and Amy Sobie. Victims and Victors: Speaking out about Their Pregnancies, Abortions, and Children Resulting from Sexual Assault (Springfield, Illinois: Acorn Books, 2000)
- Sandra Kathleen Mahkorn, MD, and William V Dolan, MD. “Sexual Assault in Pregnancy,” Thomas Hilgers, Dennis Horan, and David Mall, Eds. New Perspectives on Human Abortion (Frederick, Maryland: University Publications of America, 1981); Sandra Kathleen Mahkorn, “Pregnancy and Sexual Assault,” David Mall and Walter Watts, Eds. The Psychological Aspects of Abortion (Washington, DC: University Publications of America, 1979)
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For more of our coverage on abortion and rape, see:
Abortion When it Involves a Rape: See the Faces
Abortion Facilitates Sex Abuse: Documentation
The Message of “Never Rarely Sometimes Always”: Abortion Gets Sexual Predators Off the Hook
How Abortion is Useful for Rape Culture
A Pro-Life Feminist Critique of the “Rape and Incest Exception”
Painful and Disorienting: The Shooter of Two National Guard Members
by Brian Carroll
Department of Justice photo of Rahmanullah Lakanwal
I don’t believe that Rahmanullah Lakanwal drove from Washington state to Washington DC, and then to within two blocks of the White House, only to fire on two young members of the West Virginia National Guard.
I do think the accusations about who did or didn’t vet Lakanwal miss the point completely. Both the Biden and Trump administrations had vetted the shooter. The Biden vetting occurred during the collapse of Kabul. There was a bipartisan race to save the Afghans who had served with US forces. We all understood that our partners and employees would be tortured and slaughtered by the incoming Taliban. Indeed, that was the sad fate of those we failed to get out.
Last year the Trump Administration again vetted Lakanwal, before granting him asylum. Even earlier, I assume the CIA vetted Lakanwal before hiring him at age 15 or 16 for their ‘Zero Unit.’ As much as partisans on each side want to lay blame, nobody scores any points over the vetting.
Vetting can never serve as a crystal ball. Vetting can spot bad associations and poor habits, but identifying the person who is six months away from cracking is only slightly more likely than RFK, Jr. being able to read someone’s mitochondria as they hurry through an airport.
I haven’t spoken with him and don’t know Lakanwal’s mindset, but I do have observations from my own experience.
By definition, a refugee is going to experience great psychological stress. This does not in any way excuse the man or lessen the evil of his crime, but it can reduce some of the silliness that we have seen in response. A refugee or asylum seeker has suffered trauma, lost everything familiar, and arrived in a strange place and culture. I have neighbors who have never been outside of California’s San Joaquin Valley, or maybe as far as Pismo Beach. Many Americans have never experienced culture shock or the trauma of forced relocation.
The closest I can compare came in 1995, when I evacuated from Colombia during their civil war. I had been teaching school at a Bible translation center. Then in short order I lost a lakeside house and garden I loved, the most rewarding job I will ever have, and the kind of close circle of friends that can only develop in a tight community that exists as an island in a foreign country. At the same time, my eldest kids left for college and my father-in-law died. I’m a pretty resilient and optimistic guy, but I responded with about five years of depression. And yet, for me, I was returning to the state where I was raised. I came back to family and friends. I owned a house that I’d rented out while I was gone, I spoke the language, and I held valid professional credentials. I hate to even imagine the experience of arriving without any of that.
The Biden Administration set up Services to Afghan Survivors Impacted by Combat (SASIC), a program that provided job placement, medical, psychological, and social work help to arriving Afghans. A family member of mine worked in this briefly and recalls the frustration over trying to find a trauma therapist who spoke either Pashto or Dari, the most common languages in Afghanistan.
However, soon after taking office, President Trump suspended federal funding for refugee resettlement agencies. This halted several kinds of help to those already in the US and stranded nearly 1,660 Afghans in intermediate countries, even though they had had already been approved for entry into the US. A portion of the 1,660 are family members of US military personnel or have a family relationship with Afghans already in the US. Trump eliminated the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts (CARE) office, the Enduring Welcome program, and the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of thousands of Afghans. They could now be deported for no violations of law.
The Zero Unit, in which Lakanwal had served for about a decade, used Afghans to do the dirty jobs that Americans didn’t want to get caught doing (read: extrajudicial killings). Lakanwal’s friends have reported that memories from this work had left him with emotional distress.
I can imagine. I have a friend who served the US military by training soldiers from Central America to, as he was told, ‘Save Democracy.’ Later, he discovered that he had been training death squads. His whole outlook on life changed, as he channeled his feelings of guilt and betrayal into anti-war activism. Lakanwal’s experience would be even more painful and disorienting.
Rules to live by:
Never double-cross the assassins you have trained yourself.
And: Overseas wars never stay overseas. We always bring them home with us.
I don’t believe Lakanwal held any grudges against either of his victims, nor even against the National Guard. His grudge was against — primarily — his experience in Afghanistan while he served with the CIA, and secondarily, against the treatment that Afghans have suffered since his arrival in the US. I suspect he drove across the country hoping to gain access to the White House and the President.
Our Egocentrist-in-Chief was asked whether he would attend the memorial service for Specialist Sarah Beckstrom. Trump responded that he hadn’t thought about it, but then quickly pivoted to how much West Virginia loves him, and how that state voted strongly for him in 2024. Like all of the National Guard personnel in Washington, young Sarah served only as an expendable prop in Trump’s political drama. She was in uniform and took a bullet for Trump, but he didn’t think to order flags to be set to half staff.
Trump also promised to “permanently pause migration” from “third world countries,” and to “end all federal benefits and subsidies to non-citizens.”
In the larger picture, U.S. Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom and Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe should have been home celebrating Thanksgiving with their families. Soldiers are not trained for police work, and US District Judge Jia M. Cobb had already declared that Trump’s National Guard deployment in DC was unlawful.
Crime could better have been addressed by restoring funds to the police budget.
Funds for the DC police force had been reduced through several Trump/GOP actions. A cut to FEMA’s Urban Area Security Initiative left the city about $20 million below 2024 payments. The termination of DOJ grants made it less likely that DC could have qualified for a share. During Congressional Budget Freezes in past years, DC has been granted an exemption, but not this year. The hit might have meant $1.1 billion for the city. During their stay in the city, National Guard personnel were put to tasks filling in for furloughed city workers, doing park upkeep and such. Less expensive for the government. However, recall that these are people who were pulled away from their families and from regular civilian employment.
Sarah Beckstrom’s former boyfriend reported her describing the National Guard assignment in Washington, D.C. as “pointless.”
Beckstrom and Wolfe were chosen at random as targets. Any of the many National Guard members could have been at hand when Lakanwal began shooting. He did not know either one of them. I think he was shooting, instead, at something — or somebody — they represented. Arguing about how or by whom he was vetted misses the point.
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For more of our posts on perpetrators being traumatized, see:
PITS and Operation Southern Spear
“I Became Like a Soldier Going to Battle”: Post-Abortion Trauma
Healing for the Perpetrators: The Psychological Damage from Different Types of Killing
and see the website: