Poor Pro-life Argument #3: "Abortion bans don't 'force' people to do anything"

Even after all this time, anti-choicers have no real response to the fact that banning abortion forces people to gestate and give birth

Oct 22, 2024

Read Poor Pro-life Arguments #1 and #2.

Poor Pro-life Argument #3: "Abortion bans don't force people to do anything"

Like the dog that caught the car, opponents of reproductive health autonomy, rights, and justice are in a bind. On the one hand, the Antis are loudly championing abortion bans that force people to continue pregnancies and give birth against their wills. On the other hand, the Antis don’t want you to think or to say that they support forcing people to continue pregnancies and give birth against their wills. It’s a real conundrum.

One way that Antis attempt to square this circle is by insisting that abortions bans don’t actually force anyone to do anything at all.

What is perhaps my favorite example of an Anti attempting this feat of mental gymnastics is found in an article at National Review by the ever brash anti-reproductive-rights writer Alexandra DeSanctis Marr. — She states, “Abortion restrictions don’t require women to give birth”; instead, Marr insists, abortion bans “require pregnant women not to prevent birth” (emphasis mine).1

Mmm-kay.

The purpose and means of an abortion ban

The purpose of an abortion ban, according to Antis, is to “save babies.” The means by which an abortion ban effectuates its purpose is forcing individuals to continue pregnancies and give birth against their wills. Antis’ attempts to convince others that they do not support forcing people to gestate and give birth are transparently in service of Antis’ own desires to avoid acknowledging the means by which the purpose of abortion bans is effectuated, and to avoid wrestling with the serious implications for equal protection which arise from governmental control over human reproduction and individuals’ health.

The reality is that, even after all this time, Antis have no real response to the fact that banning abortion forces people - who would have otherwise had an abortion - into the involuntary work of gestation, which culminates in the arduous process of giving birth.

Compelled action vs compellled inaction

Some opponents of reproductive health autonomy, rights, and justice, when arguing that abortion bans don’t force a pregnant person to give birth, insist that abortion bans simply compel people to not do something, to “not kill.”

[A brief note: Setting aside the fact that beliefs differ from individual to individual regarding when life begins and, thus, whether or not the majority of abortions - which are carried out very, very early in pregnancy - involve killing, it's important to note that, “strictly speaking, abortion does not even require killing. Physicians can perform labor induction abortions as early as 12 weeks…, using the same medications as they would in a full-term pregnancy to kickstart labor and delivery of the fetus. When done without feticidal agents, labor induction abortion does not destroy or directly damage the fetus’s body— the fetus dies because it cannot survive without the constant use of another person’s body and resources.”2]

However, an abortion ban does not, as Antis claim, merely stop someone from doing something; it does not simply require inaction. To the contrary, an abortion ban demands action. It demands doing.

Gestation is a months-long, laborious process requiring the continuously increasing exertion of a pregnant person’s cardiovascular system, pulmonary system, endocrine system, excretory system, and digestive system, etc., culminating in the arduous process of giving birth.3 Birth is “the process of bearing young”;4 it is “to bear or bring forth (a child).”5

When a person is forced to gestate and give birth, this constitutes forced birth.

Communal force

Some Antis will try to avoid this fact by focusing on a person’s sexual choices, but how a person became pregnant does not alter the fact that abortion bans force people to continue pregnancies against their wills and give birth.

As explained in Stanford Law Review, “Abortion-restrictive regulation is state action compelling” gestation and childbirth, “and this simple fact cannot be evaded by invoking nature or a woman's choices to explain the situation in which the pregnant woman subject to abortion restrictions finds herself.”6 Put simply, “a pregnant woman seeking an abortion has the practical capacity to terminate a pregnancy, which she would exercise but for the community's decision to prevent or deter her. If the community successfully effectuates its will, it is the state, and not nature, which is responsible for causing her to continue the pregnancy.”7 — “A woman's choice to engage in sexual relations is no longer significant as a cause of [the continuation of] pregnancy, if she would terminate that pregnancy, but for the interposition of communal force.”8

“A woman's ‘choice’ to engage in… sex… does not absolve the state from responsibility for compelling the [continuation of] pregnancy of a woman it prevents from obtaining an abortion.”9 Appeals to “nature or a woman's ‘choices’” as “justifications for imposing” continued gestation and childbirth upon her, are attempts to “obscure the fact that the state's decision to enact abortion restrictions rests on [gendered] social judgments about the pregnant woman” and “the fact that such restrictions are an act of communal force against her.”10

That the majority of abortion bans include no exceptions for survivors of rape - even raped children - betrays this fact.

“States that have banned abortion ignore their pregnant citizens’ moral rights to control their own bodies, and many even have laws that explicitly condone forced pregnancy. Missouri, which has outlawed abortion in nearly all cases, defines the procedure as either the intentional killing of a fetus or ‘termination of the pregnancy […] with an intention other than to increase the probability of a live birth or to remove a dead unborn child.’ Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming have similar legal definitions of abortion. By defining abortion as the voluntary ending of pregnancy, even without intentional killing, and then banning abortion in nearly all cases, these states use the threat of punishment to force citizens to stay pregnant against their will.”11

“Antiabortion activists and lawmakers must understand the full implications of this infringement of the moral right to control one’s own body. If the government can commandeer pregnant citizens’ bodies to promote the health and well-being of others (their fetuses), then consistency demands that the government use this power in other cases as well.”12

Furthermore, multiple state abortion bans currently in effect force “pregnant women [experiencing medical emergencies] to submit to surgical delivery” and labor induction “for the benefit of the unborn,” as opposed to being treated using far safer procedural abortion.13 This legislative language establishes a physician obligation to, whenever possible, deviate from the established standard of care by ending a pregnancy in a way that is less safe for the pregnant patient - at a moment when the patient's life and health are already imperiled.1415

Forced birth is, quite literally, codified in abortion bans and fully supported by opponents of reproductive health autonomy, rights, and justice. This reality cannot be avoided through repeated denials, nor by appeals to nature, physiology, or individuals’ sexual choices.

The truth of the matter is that, even after all this time, Antis have no real response to the fact that banning abortion forces people - who would have otherwise had an abortion - into the involuntary work of gestation, which culminates in the arduous process of giving birth. Transparent, self-serving denials can not obscure the facts.

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