Occam's Razor

There are millions of “prolifers” out there. They believe that abortion should be illegal. Most believe that all pregnancies should be carried to term, regardless of the circumstances that led to pregnancy, such as rape or incest.

There is a lot of evidence though that virtually all of these so-called prolifers are really just pro-birthers. They want all pregnancies to be carried to term. What happens to the child after birth they don’t seem too concerned about. At least it’s not the focus of their efforts.

There are about 7.6 billion of us on the planet. Nearly 3 billion of us live on less than $2.50 a day, which is the basic test of poverty. 1.3 billion of these live on $1.25 or less a day, which is categorized as extreme poverty. It’s pretty rare to see a prolifer advocating for improved living standards for these folks. If they do, it’s not with the same passion that they advocate for children coming into this world.

In any event, 40% of humans live in poverty. Thus, any child has a 40% chance of living in poverty. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone living in poverty claiming to enjoy it. That’s why they spend much of their lives trying to escape their poverty, usually without much success. But hey, they’re alive! That’s a blessing, isn’t it? Living a life of misery is better than not being born at all, isn’t it?

If every life is truly sacred then I think by definition we must care at least as much about those already alive than those on their way to being born. It’s either that or you are not really prolife. So I ask you again: are you really prolife or just pro-birth? Which of these arguably prolife positions do you support too?

• A universal basic income
• No death penalty
• Quality health care for all
• Free education for all
• Food stamps
• Heating and cooling assistance for the poor
• The U.N. Declaration on Human Rights
• Housing as a right
• Restrictions on gun ownership and possession, so fewer of us die from gunshot wounds
• Free contraception for all women

I hope you can put a checkmark next to all of these. If you can, great, you sound truly prolife to me. But I also have to ask a harder question: are you willing to pay more in taxes to ensure that everyone can exercise these rights?

On the last question, I’m guessing probably not. And I’m betting that in spite of being prolife you don’t want to raise your taxes just to provide for high quality neonatal care for all pregnant women that don’t have it, or for a law that would give new mothers a paid year off from work after giving birth so they can take care of their child as only a mother can.

So I ask you again, are you really prolife? Or are you just pro-birth? Do you notice that there might be just a wee bit of inconsistency between making it unlawful for a pregnant woman to have an abortion and your refusal to bear any of the costs of raising that child if the mother cannot choose to legally terminate her pregnancy? Is there something more sacred about an innocent fetus compared to an adult who has transgressed enough laws where he is put to death by the state? Is it a newborn’s innocence that you find sacred?

And given that our population is increasing at unsustainable rates in spite of abortion being legal in many countries, leading to what looks like an ecological catastrophe along with an increase in poverty and war due to the mass migration of people fleeing these effects, maybe we need fewer people on the planet rather than more if we are truly prolife?

Being prolife strikes me as more pro-death than anything else. In the United States there were about 650,000 abortions in 2014, the vast majority of them in the first trimester, mostly chemically induced and occurring long before the zygote or fetus has developed beyond the size of a chicken egg. Worldwide there were plenty more than that. How much worse would our ecosystem be today if all these pregnancies had been carried to term? And how many of these women who had abortions would be dead if they had received back alley abortions instead?

I guess I don’t believe you when you say every life is sacred, since most prolifers are indifferent to the suffering of children after birth and are particularly tone deaf to the suffering of people all around them. A true reverence for life would manifest itself in all aspects and phases of life. But the most sincere reverence for life would also acknowledge that our current population trajectory is unsustainable and ultimately both anti-life and cruel for, well, at least 40% of us alive. With a complete destruction of the ecosystem, make that 100%.

But hey, at least in that event there would be no more abortions. Win!