To be clear, I'm questioning people's subconscious motivations, not accusing people of consciously lying. Politics, on all sides of all issues, is surely full of people who don't have a clear understanding of why they believe what the believe. So even though this particular post is about pro-lifers, I'm not claiming this basic type of problem is unique to them. I personally struggle with what to believe about the ethics of abortion, and there are good arguments for being pro-life.
6 pro-life mysteries
Mystery 1
Consider this thought experiment from Patrick Tomlinson. You're escaping a fire in a fertility clinic. In one room, you see a 5 year old child crying for help. In another room, you see a frozen container labeled "1000 Viable Human Embryos". You only have time to save either the child or the embryos. Which should you save?
I suspect most pro-lifers believe you should save the child. But that would mean they do not truly feel that an embryo's life is nearly as valuable as other human lives. What is the amount of embryos that would be worth saving instead of a child? What if the frozen container said 5555 instead of 1000? According to the CDC, 1 in 5,555 pregnancies kill the mother in the U.S.. If you value 1 born human's life greater than 5555 embryos, then the expected value on life of an average abortion in the U.S. is positive, because the risk of killing the mother outweighs the moral worth of the embryo.
Mystery 2
Consider what the president of the March for Life said: "No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion". If you believe abortion is murder and therefore should be illegal, why would you feel that a murderer should face no punishment? And what does it even mean that something should be illegal, if there should be no punishment for doing it? Do you think this is because most pro-lifers don't want murder to be punished, or do you think it's because they don't really believe abortion is murder?
Mystery 3
In polls, 68% of pro-lifers say that abortion should be legal when the mother's health is endangered (arguably, pregnancy and giving birth just is a danger to your health). And 59% of pro-lifers say that abortion should be legal when the pregnancy is caused by rape or incest. Why would you believe those things if you believe it is murdering a baby? Does anyone think it's ok to kill a baby after birth if the above scenarios are true?
Mystery 4
Part of U.S. foreign aid goes to family-planning NGOs. The MCP is a rule that prohibits a family-planning NGO from receiving U.S. money if they so much as provide information about abortion to those who receive their services. Whenever a Democrat is President, that rule is removed. And whenever a Republican gets elected, it is put back into place, and pro-lifers cheer. However, when the rule is removed, abortions decrease, and when it is re-instated, abortions increase (link). Why? Because it effectively reduces funding for family-planning in general, which leads to less access to other family-planning services like contraception, which then increases unwanted pregnancies, which obviously increases the number of pregnancies that the parents want to abort. So why do pro-lifers support the MCP rule? Do you think, when considering this evidence, most would change their mind, and become upset with Republican presidents for it? Or, perhaps, is reducing abortion not really the motivating goal?
Mystery 5
The ACA mandated that health insurance cover contraception. As mentioned above, increasing access to contraception is an effective way to reduce unwanted pregnancies, and therefore reduce abortion. If you cared deeply about reducing abortion, this would be one of your favorite government policies. However, this was overturned by the Supreme Court in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. Is that case reviled by pro-lifers, second only to Roe v. Wade? If someone truly believed abortion was murder, they should. But AFAIK, the average pro-lifer cheered this abortion-increasing Supreme Court decision. And the people who brought this to the Supreme Court in the first place were pro-lifers!
Mystery 6
The most pro-life group in the U.S. is evangelicals, who officially only accept the Bible as the sole authority on God. But as far as I can tell, the Bible is not pro-life. Here are the 2 parts of the Bible which come the closest to directly addressing the morality and legality of abortion:
- Exodus 21:22-25 declares that the punishment for killing someone else's fetus in a fight is only to pay a fine. You may object that the punishment is so light because it's probably only referring to accidental killing of the fetus. But notice that it doesn't suggest going light on punishments for any other accidental harms that are caused by the same fight. And other passages, like Exodus 21:28-32, are quite willing to prescribe the death penalty for negligent homicide. This pretty strongly indicates that fetus' lives were not considered nearly as valuable as other human lives.
- Numbers 5:11-22 says that when a woman cheats on her husband and gets pregnant, a priest should give her poisoned water to abort the baby.
Possible explanations
The above mysteries lead me to believe that something else, other than a belief that abortion is murder, is what motivates most pro-lifers to be pro-life.
Some pro-choicers like to say that the pro-life movement is really just about misogyny. But I don't know how that can be reconciled with the fact that there's basically no gender gap on this.
The following 2 alternatives seem like a better fit.
Ring-bearers vs. freewheelers
I heard about this on the Rationally Speaking episode with Jason Weeden.
Basically, suppose you broadly categorized people into two groups with regard to attitudes about sexuality: ring-bearers and freewheelers. Freewheelers are people who have more sexual partners throughout their life, have fewer kids, wait longer to have kids, etc. Ring-bearers are the opposite. This is highly predictive of one's view of abortion, perhaps even more so than political affiliation (link). It also predicts a person's opinion on the ethics of similar topics like birth control.
Weeden proposes that people mostly vote out of self-interest, and abortion is no exception. Freewheelers want a society that enables of their preferred lifestyle, such as having the option of an abortion in the case of an accidental pregnancy. But ring-bearers want a society with less freewheelers, and so they want laws that are less conducive to that lifestyle.
This would explain some of the pro-life mysteries, especially the question of why pro-lifers tend to oppose increasing access to contraception. If their motivation is to decrease abortions, that doesn't make sense. If their motivation is to have a society less conducive to freewheelers, then it does make sense. It also would explain why the average pro-lifer thinks abortion is OK if the mother is at risk or if it was the result of a rape. In those situations, the abortion is no longer about freewheelers.
So, this solves a big piece of the puzzle, but gaps still remain. For example, I can't imagine that this motivation would lead to abortion being as major of an issue as it is for some people. Why would so many pro-lifers be single-issue voters just because they want freewheeling to be less convenient?
A rallying flag for political tribalism
Suppose you are a politically tribal Republican. You are loyal to your tribe, and you hate the other tribe. You don't care for a careful assessment of issues and facts on a case-by-case basis; you'd really prefer to not even listen to the arguments from the other side. It'd be nice to have an issue where the other side is clearly extremely evil, so that you can feel justified in supporting your team no matter what. For example, imagine a hypothetical scenario where your party's presidential nominee is a corrupt ignorant celebrity conspiracy theorist. You may feel uncomfortable throwing your full support to your team. But you can simply say "the other side supports murdering babies" and feel good with your tribe again! You don't need to think through the implications of that; the point is actually not to have to worry about thinking too much. You just want to feel good rooting for your home team and booing the away team.
This is similar to what Scott Alexander calls a rallying flag in tribalism. What's different compared to how he talked about it is that this rallying flag is formed after the tribe is formed, rather than before.
The advantage of this theory of what motivates pro-lifers, over the ring-bearer theory, is that it explains why many people seem to care so much about being pro-life, even though the pro-life mysteries suggest they don't actually care much about abortion itself. It also explains why evangelicals in particular are so pro-life, compared to other religious groups, and despite the Bible not giving much to support being pro-life: it's just because evangelicals happen to be more Republican.
So...
Do I think these two things are the only motivations for pro-lifers? No. I just think they are both significant subconscious motivations to varying degrees for many pro-lifers.
