Secular Pro-Life has published an article of mine on their blog.
Since I wrote the article on July 8, I have learned about some further developments that had occurred even before that date, along the same lines as discussed in the article, and there have also been some further developments since that time. Here I’ve cataloged all those developments, and at the end of these notes there is a little further discussion of pro-life feminist history as well:
Just after the release of the Dobbs opinion on June 24, Marjorie Dannenfelser was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times and said:
We’ve been working on a particular program for the last few years [Her Pregnancy and Life Assistance Network, or Her PLAN, which aims to help pregnant women find the medical and material support they need to continue pregnancy]. I’ve talked to, so far, 22 governors about the need to meet women where they are and make sure that we are comprehensive in how we serve them.
What we’ve done so far with our allies in four states [Georgia, Mississippi, Virginia and West Virginia], and hope to do in 30 in four years, is comprehensive and massive inventories to make sure that women and children in the first two years of the child’s life have access to seven different points of care. They include serving her if she is addicted, serving her if she has no housing, serving her and her child if she has no healthcare or childcare.
Serving what her particular needs are, without taking the life of her child. Affirming her life and affirming the life of her child by believing in her and helping her build instead of undermining her life.
Also on June 24, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida released a statement:
Lawmakers and the pro-life movement have the responsibility to make adoption more accessible and affordable, and do everything in our power to meet the needs of struggling women and their families so they can choose life.
In an interview just a few days after the June 24 decision, Catherine Glenn Foster, a lawyer and President and CEO of Americans United for Life,
said at 49:34 – . . . we have to work harder than ever before to put into practice what we’ve been doing for decades as a pro-life movement – loving people and providing them every necessary resource, not only to choose life, but to achieve a life of thriving. And so our work at AUL has tripled, quadrupled, plus, because . . . and to put those resources in place so that… women have what they need – they have the support, they have the options, they have the true choice that was lacking for so many of us
And in Congress on July 14, she said, at 1:50 (referring to the idea “Make birth free for all Americans”) – “And I agree . . .pregnancy, childbirth, post-partum care – they should all be free for all mothers.”
In an interview on July 1, Lynn Fitch said at 4:33 –
They [opposing side] definitely want the people to believe that the post-Roe America will be hostile to women. So what we have to continue to act as we have always with humility and respect and compassion, and the hope is that we can all reach across the aisle, and start focusing on empowering women.
Later, at 12:20, she was asked, “How can pro-life individuals across America be a part of creating a culture of life in their own state?,” and replied:
Well, it is an opportunity for us all to step in, to be there in providing certainly love, support, compassion, and prayers, but there are other areas. We have to have some conversation about , and then actually step in and provide support to these pregnancy centers. We have over 30 in the state of Mississippi, and so we’ve been already looking at ways that we can be supportive of them, how we can get people engaged to help them on every level, to help these women, help these children. We had a tax credit that was passed in this last legislative session to entice people to make donations and receive a tax credit, we’ll be looking for other ways we can do that, we’ll certainly be looking to talk with our legislators about other laws that can be passed that’ll be beneficial to the [C]PC’s, and then actually looking at other ways that we can step in, whether it’s upscaling these women, again, talking about the childcare, how we can make that connection, how we can give them more flexibility, and then looking at every avenue that really will empower women, because they’ve just not had that capability, and now everyone can be a part of that, to empower these women and these children.
From a July 6 article by Marjorie Dannenfelser:
Within days, at least a dozen states have moved swiftly to enact broad protections for unborn children and mothers, and more are poised to follow.
In a July 8 video, we learn that “Pennsylvania is stepping up”:
A July 11 article from Ohio:
Senate Bill 226 would allow those who are pregnant to sue those who caused the pregnancy, regardless of the circumstances. A judge could award at least $5,000.
Sen. Tina Maharath, D-Columbus, said this bill is particularly important after Roe v. Wade was overturned, forcing people either to leave the state for abortions or deliver babies from unintended pregnancies.
. . .
The average cost of childbirth in Ohio is $15,000, Maharath said. “Too often, this cost is solely the mother’s to bear, especially in the case of an unintended pregnancy. However, the father shares equal responsibility for the pregnancy and it is only right that he pays equally for it.”
On Friday, Center for Christian Virtue President Aaron Baer announced that his organization agrees.
. . .
Maharath said she was pleased to see that the Center for Christian Virtue supports her bill, which is intended as an immediate solution to a much larger problem: access to abortion in Ohio. “We just have to have something for individuals right now.”
But everyone isn’t on board. Ohio Right to Life President Mike Gonidakis called the bill a “gimmick” with “a zero percent chance of passing.”
“Instead of wasting our time and tax-payer resources, abortion supporters should work with Ohio Right to Life to provide actual solutions that protect women and children or simply walk away from the statehouse,” Gonidakis said.
(So though not on board with the bill, Ohio Right to Life too wants to support women and children.)
On July 13, Sen. Lankford introduced a bill and tweeted: “Dads need to step up & provide for their kids—Period. I am working to help moms in every state have access to child support throughout the entirety of their children’s lives, not just after they are born.”
According to this July 15 article, following up on promises that Sen. Rubio first made nine days after the leaked Dobbs draft, Senators Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and Kevin Cramer (R-North Dakota) introduced a bill Wednesday that would allow mothers to collect child support beginning at conception.
And according to another July 15 article, “Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) introduced legislation seeking to offer expanded resources to pregnant people Thursday, including a website that provides information on the risks of abortion and alternatives to the procedure.”
In this list of developments, we are seeing evidence that the anti-abortion laws made possible by Dobbs, which are reducing abortion on the supply side, have had as concomitants laws on the demand side that have eased the pressure to abort. Hopefully the list will become so long and taken-for-granted that the point will have been made and there will be no need to maintain the list.
Pro-choice and some pro-life feminists agree that women are disadvantaged in the workplace and thus economically if they face the possibility that they may need to gestate a child, and may be under pressures to raise it as well. Feminists of the 1960s divided among themselves on how best to address this potential disadvantage for women.
For the group who became pro-life feminists, this was the solution:
demand a greater sharing of the child-raising role (which would mean in part that women on a more widespread basis would be giving their newborns for adoption), and demand greater rewards and respect for the child-bearing and child-raising role, which would be one way of bringing them equality with men
For the group who became pro-choice feminists, this was the solution:
redistribute the oppression they had historically suffered, and turn their unborn children into a new oppressed group, by legalizing and to an extent normalizing abortion, and as part of the latter option, beginning to refer to the unborn children they sacrificed as “tissue” or “a clump of cells”, in order to justify the practice of abortion.
Since gestation, once conception has occurred, represents the normal functioning of the female body, pro-life feminists say that a society that supports and honors gestation is the goal that is truly feminist. They feel that pro-choice feminists took the bait of a far less desirable solution, a solution that imitates the never-pregnant male body, and employs violence against the creations of their own power in order to achieve it.
Today the legal successes of the pro-life movement seem, as de Jong and others predicted, to be goading society in the direction of the long-ago championed pro-life feminist solution that was never given a chance to be tried.