Over the last couple days, ProPublica has reported on at least one woman and one teenage girl who have died in Texas as a result of the state’s strict anti-abortion laws. The teenage girl went to the emergency room three times, waiting at least 20 hours before being admitted, and doctors insisted on two ultrasounds before they would help her.
Reading these tragic stories, I was reminded of the church’s 2024 statement on political neutrality. In addition to the ordinary language about the church generally not getting involved in politics, the Newsroom site included a paragraph on ballot initiatives on abortion. That paragraph reads
“With respect to several current U.S. state ballot initiatives relative to abortion and sanctity for life, the Church affirms that its position on abortion remains unchanged. ‘As states work to enact laws related to abortion, Church members may appropriately choose to participate in efforts to protect life and to preserve religious liberty.'”
In light of the tragic consequences in Texas, I have to say: I could not agree more. Members of the church in one of the ten states with a ballot initiative on abortion need to think very carefully about protecting life.
But protecting life is clearly not the same thing as banning (or criminalizing) abortion. (In fact, reducing abortion is not the same thing as banning abortion; more on that later.)
Texas law represents the worst spectrum: through criminalizing abortion unless doctors have a level of certainty about fetal demise that makes it likely that the mother-to-be will face death or significant injury, the law that purports to value the life of a fetus harms the life of the mother. And not that it matters, but in cases like the ones reported by ProPublica, it’s not that the fetus is going to survive: it just took the doctors too long to prove that the fetus wouldn’t. So instead of saving a potential life, the law cost two lives.
But that’s not the only risk of draconian anti-abortion laws. As a result of its post-Dobbs abortion restriction, Idaho lost roughly 22% of its OBGYNs between 2022 and 2023. During that same time period, two OBGYNs moved in. That means degraded care both for pregnant and non-pregnant women in Idaho, which will affect both adults’ and babies’ health and well-being.
And to the extent abortion bans reduce abortions, it’s not clear that they increase the number of viable babies. Since the Texas ban went into effect, infant mortality has increased by about 13%, an increase not reflected in the US as a whole. Babies who died in the first 28 days of life increased by 23%, while their deaths actually fell in the rest of the US.
And do abortion bans reduce abortions? Maybe in the short-term. But in the long-term they don’t seem to. At best, they shift the locations of abortions and whether they are performed legally or not.
So what to do? As voters, we need to take the issue of abortion seriously. And we need to take life and health seriously. So, as we think about how to vote, I think we need to ask ourselves a series of questions:
- What is my goal? If the answer is to ban abortions, then you probably do want to vote for a strict abortion ban. Ditto, I suppose, if you want to reduce abortion in the near term and are indifferent to the long-term abortion rate. If, however, you want to reduce abortions, enacting an abortion ban doesn’t seem to help, and it comes with significant costs to both individuals and society.
- What policies will accomplish that goal? I suspect, with others, that policies that reduce the need for abortion will be more successful at reducing abortions than policies than policies that ban abortions. So as we’re voting, maybe we should think about providing more robust sex education, access to contraception, and pre- and postnatal medical care.
- If I care about preserving life, are there other areas I should be worried about? Like poverty, the death penalty, prison conditions, the homeless, immigrants, access to medical care, stuff like that. That is, when I approach questions of abortion, am I segregating it in my mind as a separate issue, or is it part of an ethic of preserving life all around?
Like the church points out, questions of abortion are important. But questions of the legality of abortion aren’t simple black-and-white questions that can be answered by supporting (or opposing) any prohibition on abortion. We don’t get a get-out-of-thinking-free card on the issue. Like the church’s statement says, we’re dealing with a complicated issue that requires balance and careful thought. And if we get it wrong, we risk hurting babies, women, and society at large.
Photo by Maxim Tolchinskiy on Unsplash