Why Pro-Life is Really Pro-Control

The USA is one of the very few remaining Western countries that has abjectly failed to deal with what used to be a hot-button issue elsewhere: abortion.

In the USA the divide is between strident anti-abortion campaigners whose grasp of reality is at best highly tenuous and whose tactics are frequently repellent, and those with more adequate intellects who recognize that it’s a difficult topic with many potential solutions.

When we look at the so-called “pro-life” group we don’t actually see people who care very much about life. They are almost always also pro-gun, happy to accept 33,000+ gunshot deaths and even more injuries per year. They are also generally happy to remove social support for single mothers and their small children. They are happy to defund education, which is often the single most important way out of poverty. They love to incarcerate people, believing that the worse the punishment the better things are for “ordinary decent” people. They don’t mind unarmed black people being killed by the police but they do hate people who protest about unarmed black people being killed by the police. Such protests are apparently “unpatriotic.”

Here’s what a rational pro-lifer would support: easy access to a wide range of contraceptives, so as to ensure that unwanted pregnancies rarely occur. But we don’t see this in the USA because pro-lifers are also deeply uncomfortable with sexual activity.

Here’s what a rational pro-lifer would support: removal of all guns from…