Fantasy and reality after Roe
One can imagine an anti-abortion politics that started with economic solidarity or righteous fury at male sexual license. But the thought experiment only demonstrates its own absurdity.
When the Supreme Court struck down its own precedents and opened abortion to effectively unlimited regulation, the exuberance in some quarters of the anti-abortion movement was tempered with a sense of opportunity and responsibility for the future. In a column that begins with praise for the grassroots-driven victory of anti-abortion forces, Ross Douthat acknowledges that they have allied with “various toxic forces on the right.” The future of any anti-abortion consensus will depend, Douthat claims, on whether the movement embraces “a punitive and stingy politics, in which women in difficulties can face police scrutiny for a suspicious miscarriage but receive little in the way of prenatal guidance or postnatal support” or whether it instead prods red states toward more serious and generous family and health policy.
This is clearly the hope of Leah Libresco Sargent, who professed a goal of “material support” for pregnant women and young children as a way to, essentially, hold women financially harmless while eliminating the injustice of abortion.
The welfarist version of anti-abortion advocacy favored by Douthat and Sargent even has some adherents outside the New York Times opinion pages, according to a recent Atlantic profile of multiple anti-abortion figures. Maybe, as they hope, “abortion opponents who oppose a social safety net may come around to the idea that more social spending is the best way to reduce abortions.”
