“Sir, you are giving a reason for it, but that will not make it right.”
—SAMUEL JOHNSON in Boswell’s Life of Johnson271
I want to consider an argument for the pro-choice position that marches behind the banner of realism. This argument concedes that abortion is an evil, but it’s the lesser of two evils. It goes like this: there’s something worse than an abortion, and that is destroying the emotional and personal life of the mother. This argument is typically made not by the woman having the abortion but by a third party defending the woman’s right to have an abortion. People who make this argument usually say something along the lines of “We can’t really understand what she’s going through. We can’t really fully grasp her situation. She’ll make the best decision for her circumstances. Admittedly, she might have made decisions that have put her in this predicament, but we aren’t perfect; people make mistakes. Women shouldn’t have to live with a mistake. No one should be made to raise children against their will.”
I hear this argument from friends in my everyday life as well as pundits and hosts of talk shows, like podcaster Dave Rubin, host of The Rubin Report, who has described himself in the past as “begrudgingly pro-choice.”272 I have also heard this from atheist Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine. These men argue that the fetus does have a claim to life, but they say that when weighing the claim of the fetus against the claim of the woman, the woman takes precedence. The argument is that the woman’s life should be prioritized over the child’s. They give the benefit to the person who was “here first.” So, you have two lives pitted against each other, and they acknowledge that abortion is not ideal, but they believe that forcing the woman to go through emotional pain is bad. She may not be ready to cope with the pregnancy or with a child. After all, they say, she knows herself better than anyone. We must leave this up to her.
So, the woman’s right not to be forced to complete her pregnancy has greater weight than the unspoken claim of the fetus to live. It reminds me of the old conundrum of two people in a lifeboat. The lifeboat is not strong enough to hold both. One person has to go overboard. It’s not going to be easy, but you try to choose the lesser evil. It may seem shocking that pro-choice people compare life in this way. It seems like a heartless and crude utilitarian calculus. How can you really weigh the value of one life against another? We employ utilitarian calculus all the time, weighing one thing against another, and very often we assign numbers to these things. Maybe we rank how we are feeling on a scale of 1–10. We try to rank certain options in order to prioritize what we care about most, and this helps us make decisions and exercise personal preferences. But the problem with applying this type of utilitarian calculus to human life itself, or even to basic human dignity, is that it can lead to atrocious results.
Think, for example, of Aristotle’s famous argument defending slavery. Aristotle acknowledges that slavery is a kind of injustice, but he argues that it’s necessary. Why? He says that society needs it because there’s dirty work to be done and someone has to do it. If you don’t have people to do that kind of dirty work—the menial work, the sort of hard labor that is necessary to build a civilization—then you’re not going to have a civilization that enables other people to be able to focus on contemplation or to pursue art or anything else involving higher culture and higher thinking. So, in this sense, slaves free up other people to take an interest in science and philosophy, which ultimately builds a better civilization. There’s something chilling about his argument—an argument that stands on subjecting human dignity and human welfare, human life itself, to that kind of calculus and, ultimately, subjugation. When someone says, “I choose to side with the person already here,” they are saying they choose the woman because if the child is aborted, then the woman is freed up to do other things. Favoring her, the argument might go, is better for society.
But this utilitarian comparison, often invoked by those who are pro-choice, is not a fair comparison. First, this is not a lifeboat situation where there are two people and only one can survive. There are instances where that would be the case, as in the case of a pregnancy with medical complications in which the fetus is a deadly threat to the life of the mother and there is no way both can survive. In that case, we are comparing one life with the life of another and making a valid comparison. It is quite different when we are talking about a pregnant woman who is perfectly healthy and are purely referring to her emotional state in coping with pregnancy. We’re not in a “death-guaranteed scenario” where one party must die. We are not comparing the death of the mother, on the one hand, with the death of the fetus, on the other. We’re comparing the emotional pain of the woman, on the one hand, with the death of the fetus, on the other. That’s what’s on each side of the scale.
We can all acknowledge that death is a far worse consequence than emotional pain. Everyone in human history has acknowledged this because whenever we’re facing death, we try to avoid it. It’s human nature to preserve our lives, no matter how horrendous the situation. Even if you’re holding on to a rope on the side of a cliff, you’re going to hold on to your life, despite all the pain you’re in, in a herculean effort to save your life. Aside from the rare case of suicide, no one wants to die. And we know from those terrible ultrasound images of babies in the womb recoiling from the abortionist’s death needle that even this tiny life instinctively reacts to danger.
But what about the woman whose reason for having an abortion is that she is not ready to have a child? This feeling is true of almost every woman, every couple, and every family. Because you’re never truly ready to have a child until you have one. You’re never ready to be a parent until you are one. Feeling like “I’m not really ready to have a child” makes complete sense because having a child is something that turns your world upside down. It changes your life forever. Most young parents aren’t ready to take care of another human being. Most older parents aren’t either. If you’re young, maybe you have more energy, but you’re also still figuring out your life. If you’re older, you may be more financially stable and have a secure career, but you might not have as much time for child-rearing, be more set in your ways, and think a child would be exhausting and interfere in your life. The fact that someone doesn’t feel ready to have a child doesn’t mean that the child should die.
Keep in mind, most parents aren’t ready to take care of their one-year-old, either, or their two-year-old. And many parents aren’t emotionally capable of handling their teenagers either. People can’t emotionally handle themselves sometimes, let alone another person. This is true of many of life’s transitions, not just parenthood. No one is emotionally ready to hit middle age, for example. The loss of youth, the wrinkles, all of it is something that causes many older women emotional pain because their identity is so tied to how they saw themselves in their youth. We aren’t ready for a lot of stages in life, but this doesn’t warrant killing another person.
Every woman in America has the right to know that women have been sold a flat-out lie, which is that having an abortion is no big deal and that the emotions you feel after having an abortion will pass. But the reality is the opposite: the fear and feeling of “not being ready to have a child ” are actually what will pass.
A familiar refrain from the pro-choice side is “You could never understand her situation” or “None of us can understand what the woman is going through except her.” Of course I agree that no one can fully understand any other person on Earth, in the sense of true and complete understanding, because we are not in fact that person and cannot physically and mentally be that person. Someone would best understand another who perhaps went through the same thing; however, they may only have that one experience in common and have many differences in other ways, including how they think about that common experience they share. But this does not mean we cannot relate to one another.
Humans have traditionally related to each other by showing empathy, which allows us to put ourselves in the shoes of another. We may not have experienced exactly what someone else has experienced, but we’ve experienced something that has generated a similar emotion. For example, if you have lost a parent, this may clearly help you relate to someone else who has also lost a parent, but that experience of pain and the loss of someone dear and familiar may also allow you to relate to others in pain because they lost their child, their childhood friend, their home, or something else that had great meaning for them. You may empathize with someone who feels left out of a certain friend group because there have been times when you felt unwelcome or uninvited or excluded, albeit in different circumstances. We can all relate to human emotions, even if we experienced them due to a different catalyst. Loss and pain are things we all understand through different experiences.
Experience and empathy allow us to have a sense of what something else feels like, even if we don’t know exactly what another person is going through and they haven’t even shared all of the information with us. If a woman is having a difficult time with an unexpected pregnancy, I agree that it’s impossible for us to have complete knowledge of her innermost thoughts combined with the way she was raised, where she is living and working, what her relationships are like, and all of the things that have come together to make her the person she is.
But we often do not need to have full knowledge or complete understanding of another person’s situation to be able to look at the information we do have and take meaningful action to alleviate it. When we say, “I know how you feel,” we really don’t know entirely, but we know enough to motivate us to take action.
Whenever the emotional pain argument is invoked in the case of abortion, it often only applies to the woman. Maybe you have not had an abortion yourself, but maybe you have been through a situation that you didn’t think you could handle or cope with. Maybe you have even been through an unwanted pregnancy. Maybe one of your children was a surprise. Maybe you have had the feeling of it being too much to bear. But none of us has been the one to be killed. None of us can truly understand what it’s like to have someone target your heart and pierce it with a needle that will kill you or be suctioned through a vacuum. When we empathize, we must remember to empathize with both the woman and the fetus. There are incredible survivors of abortion (babies who lived through it), but most of us have not experienced it. Ironically, this makes it easier for us to empathize with the woman in a difficult situation because we have all been through difficult situations but harder for us to empathize with the targeted fetus. Most of us have not been brutally targeted and maimed or killed. But this does not mean we should not care. The victims of the Holocaust, the survivors of immense torture and pain, as well as the unborn babies in the womb, the most vulnerable in our society today, are people we must attempt to understand. When we see their pain, we need to try to empathize, even if we have not experienced it, and ultimately stop it.
So, what about the emotional pain of a woman with an unwanted pregnancy? The problem when we hear this argument is that it examines one type of emotional pain—the emotional pain of having a child—but doesn’t compare it to its counterpart, which is the emotional pain of having the abortion itself. Let’s compare adoption and abortion, since those are the two options women typically consider in the case of a truly unwanted pregnancy. Should anyone be forced to raise a child against their will? Of course not. No one is forced to because there’s always the beautiful option of adoption.
Frederica Mathewes-Green, a writer and former pro-choice feminist herself, wrote, “No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg.”273 Many women who get an abortion choose to do so because they feel they have no other option. Abortion clinics everywhere do a terrible and dishonest service to frightened women who are in a desperate situation and looking for answers by not promoting adoption more. Some women don’t even know how to go about giving their child up for adoption because clinics don’t bring it up. If you go into a Planned Parenthood looking for answers, they will not counsel you on adoption options. They just offer the abortion.
When it comes to abortion, many women tell themselves they just want to get in there, get it done, get it over with, and forget it ever happened. But this is nothing more than the memory trying to erase itself, almost as if through consumption of alcohol or drugs to numb oneself and blot out reality. Of course, memory doesn’t disappear in this convenient way. It stays with many women for the rest of their lives, even when they don’t want it to.
If you take away another person’s life, if you become their judge, jury, and executioner, that is going to be a source of deep, emotional pain, far more emotional pain than if you had birthed the child and given it up for adoption. If you know that you are choosing the death of your child intentionally and directly for your own benefit, just think of the emotional burden you will bear for making that choice. And I know many women live for the rest of their lives with this shameful skeleton in their past. It is purely tragic.
At least after nine months of pregnancy, you can know that in giving up the baby for adoption, it is going to people who want the child. Even if those nine months are the worst of your entire life and you truly believe you are enduring deep emotional suffering, this will likely produce less emotional pain for you than killing the child. Socrates says it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong because the “doing-wrong” harms your soul. If you are not the wrongdoer, at least you can rest easy in knowing that you made the merciful decision. When we look at women who have given their child up for adoption, almost none would say they wish they had aborted it. Some would say they wish they had kept it, but never aborted it.
Of course, the Left tries to deflect attention away from this. They love to celebrate abortions, to parade women who have had abortions, women who say they feel completely happy about it, and portray it as a purely logical decision. This kind of propaganda, pushed by the media, is an attempt to normalize the procedure to women who haven’t had one, and it is intended to silence the sense of regret experienced by women who have had one. The little voice inside that says, “This is not something I should have done. I could have carried the baby to term and given up for adoption. Instead, I carried it to the grave.” This sentiment is something the Left will never acknowledge; they will never print it in any piece they run on abortion.
As a result of this lie, the emotional toll associated with abortion is often buried deep or hidden behind closed doors. The Left doesn’t want to talk about women who suffer emotionally from abortion because they don’t want anyone to think too much about what abortion actually is. If you do suffer emotionally, the Left will say that’s just your personal feeling and it doesn’t bear any weight on the issue itself. It doesn’t change a woman’s “right to choose.”
Is it ethical for abortion doctors to lead women through those doors and into that operating room without explaining the emotional toll of the procedure? Abortion doctors send women home—women who leave the abortion clinic not just in physical pain but with a deeper sense of emotional pain that something has been lost, something you can never get back. This is far too much of a burden for one person to bear alone. And for the media and the abortion industry to be working in tandem to mislead women is truly an atrocity.
This is why we must console and help women heal from abortion because so much hurt is left behind. So many amazing pro-life women help others heal through organizations like Sisters of Life and Focus on the Family. While the Left does not accept women who deeply regret having had an abortion, we love them and welcome them into our hearts and homes with open arms. We have all made mistakes in life and are no better than anyone who has made this particular mistake. We have all been through deep pain, regret, and loss. While the life lost can never be brought back, love and purpose can surely be restored in the woman who struggles with this.
A woman who finds herself pregnant and unable to fathom caring for a baby thinks about abortion versus adoption. While they both provide an answer, these two options have entirely different results. While abortion leads to death for the child, adoption results in life. Abortion takes the woman’s current situation, already difficult, and makes it worse by leaving her emotionally scarred. Adoption allows for light at the end of the tunnel and for a solution for both mother and child. While abortion is punitive and involves permanent loss, adoption is redemptive and allows for the child to have a better life. If we think about both situations, abortion and adoption, they both tug on the heartstrings and are emotionally difficult for the mother. I do not deny this. Even if we put aside the difficulty of abortion, adoption isn’t easy. It takes strength to give up your child to another family and to say goodbye. In both situations you are separating from your child. But taking away the child’s life is entirely different than giving it a better life. At least in sending it to a family that will care for it, you know it is in good hands.
If we think about what love really means, it is that you wish the best for the other person. Love isn’t “I feel happy around this person ” or seeing a person as serving your needs. Love isn’t merely a fleeting feeling but a decision to put the other person first. Love is sacrificial in that you genuinely put that other person’s welfare above your own and want to see them happy. Maybe you’re a teen mom, maybe you need to finish school, or maybe you are older but just know that you can’t care for the child. The most sacrificial thing you can do is to put your child in the arms of a family who will give it that love and care that you know it deserves.
I have a good friend who is adopted. She has known she was adopted ever since she was a kid. She’s grateful that her birth mother gave her up for adoption. She was adopted by remarkable people, a couple who raised her and understands that her birth mother was not in a position to do the same. She now has a relationship with her birth mother, although distant, but she views her birth mother as somewhat of a hero. Why? Because her birth mother had the option to abort but chose not to. My friend is grateful that her mom chose to give her a loving home instead of ending her life. My friend is a smart woman. She has a great job. She loves her family that raised her, that she has grown up with all her life. And there’s no doubt that she’s happy she is alive rather than being dead. She is grateful every day because her mother chose life.
Adoption is a form of love because it involves self-sacrifice. Whenever we look at situations of adoption, we see that many people were putting thought into this child : the mother who chose to have the child and sought out a plan for its future, the adoption agency or organization that facilitated the process, and the family that adopted the child and awaited its arrival. So we see that lots of love and thought were poured into this child and its welfare.
The fact that there are thirty-six families waiting to adopt a child for every one child available shows that there is a vast desire for adoption.274 While abortion is on demand, adoption is at least a yearlong process. It’s sad that adoptive parents wait so long to adopt a child, hoping that a mother picks them. In the end, many of these parents never get to adopt because there is such a shortage of children being given up for adoption. The CDC states that over 57 percent of families that struggle with fertilization treatments consider adoption.275 This doesn’t take into account the many families that are seeking to adopt not due to infertility but due to a desire to grow their family or other reasons. Families seeking to adopt undergo financial, criminal, and medical background checks. Their home is subject to inspection. Mothers can often handpick the family they want to give the baby to, look through countless profiles of the families in need, meet them, and interview them. They can make another family’s dreams come true. If organizations like Planned Parenthood were truly focused on “parenthood” as their name suggests, as well as women’s health, then they should be promoting adoption instead of performing abortions.
In sum, abortion is not the lesser of two evils. Whether it is due to inconvenience or insurmountable emotional pain, a woman who does not want her child does not have to choose between raising it and killing it. Adoption is a beautiful option because you allow the child to be raised by someone else who desperately wants it, intends to give it the best care, and is willing to do so. Let yourself make this decision with the full knowledge that you did what is best for your child, spare yourself the emotional pain of abortion, and then go forth with gratitude.