Pro-life austerity: good luck with that

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Pro-life austerity: good luck with that

Phoebe Maltz Bovy

6 - 7 minutes

Phoebe Maltz Bovy is the author of "The Perils of 'Privilege.'" She has a newsletter, Close-reading the reruns, and is co-host of the Feminine Chaos podcast.

In the New York Times, conservative columnist Ross Douthat reminds us that the Court overturning Roe v. Wade did not make abortion illegal in the United States, but merely opened up the legal possibility of states doing so: “While the pro-life movement has won the right to legislate against abortion, it has not yet proven that it can do so in a way that can command durable majority support.”

Douthat warns against a post-Roe landscape that’s pro-life for fetuses but not babies or their mothers:

    You can imagine a future in which anti-abortion laws are permanently linked to a punitive and stingy politics, in which women in difficulties can face police scrutiny for a suspicious miscarriage but receive little in the way of prenatal guidance or postnatal support.

For Douthat, this outcome would be a problem. For those who would prefer for women to hang onto our reproductive rights, it is, conversely, a glimmer of hope. Because “stingy politics” is not so much an imagined future as what the right is, in fact, offering.

As long as Roe stood, hypocrisy accusations could only go so far. Maybe in some theoretical America, without abortion, conservatives would embrace a broader pro-baby, pro-family agenda. Maybe the occasionally gestured-at “culture of life” was simply waiting for this go-ahead from the Supreme Court.

But in the wake of Dobbs, right-wing activist Christopher Rufo tweeted the following:

Behold, a stale, moldy scrap. But a bargain!

That sterile (yes, intended) phrase “cost neutral” refers of course not to the cost for new mothers, for whom this offering certainly does have a cost, but to the taxpayers generally. Among the numerous problems with such a plan — first proposed in 2018, then again in 2021 — is that it would impoverish elderly women for having, decades prior, taken time off for a newborn. And symbolically, it disincentivizes having a baby perhaps even more than not having maternity leave at all. “You can have leave now, as long as you work until you’re 80” is a way of telling women that procreation puts you in direct debt to the state. Practicalities aside, there’s something sinister about it.

Yet cost neutrality is the plan’s whole selling point. Mitt Romney, quoted on Marco Rubio’s website, said, “We are reintroducing the New Parents Act in order to give parents the flexibility to take time off from work with pay during the first weeks of their children’s lives, without growing our national debt, raising taxes, or creating a new entitlement program.”

The meagerness of the offerings is striking. Consider “the first few weeks,” and then match that up against the American Academy of Pediatrics’ advice to breastfeed for “two years or more.” Whether or not new parents nurse (and assuming they’re able to locate formula if not), recovery from childbirth takes months, not weeks. If conservatives want Americans to have more babies, or rather, do not want Americans having fewer babies, why go this route?

Might it not be simpler to just suggest paid maternity leave, without the bit where you have to pay it back? And what of other programs, from universal health care, including for babies and new moms, and free or not outrageously expensive childcare?

It’s tempting to chalk it up to American exceptionalism, or the fear that the moment you allow an “entitlement” you end up in some kind of communist free-for-all where no one aspires to anything, and everyone wears identical potato sacks. Let the state help out with newborns, goes the thinking, and the next thing you know, we’ve retroactively lost World War II, the hamburger has been outlawed, and every child will be sent off to a drag-queen-run kibbutz. It’s not austerity or a lack of political courage, it’s “freedom.” As an American living in Canada, whose childbirth fees were the takeout ramen my husband picked us up afterwards, I sometimes want to shout south of the border, “It doesn’t have to be like this! You can have freedom and also not do co-pays at the pediatrician!”

Another possibility is partisan inertia. Even if it’s what Republican voters want, paid parental leave is deeply off-brand. The right wants to venerate traditional motherhood but also maintain its own tradition of categorizing women in need of state assistance as welfare queens.

But whatever the explanation for Republicans’ commitment to stopping their pro-life agenda the moment the life in question exits the womb, it’s certainly a missed opportunity for them, if their goal is not just overturning Roe but reducing abortions nationwide. American women often seek abortion for financial reasons, which is also why many families have fewer children than they’d like. Even the best safety net in the world doesn’t eliminate all reasons for abortion. But a pro-life movement that is focused on being sad when women don’t have babies they want might make more headway than one that tells women who don’t want (more) babies that they’re wrong.

But that’s where we’re at. Right after Roe was overturned, Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance offered a very of-the-moment traditionalist take:

The time-honored pro-life strategy of dividing women into cat ladies and moms, doubtless extremely useful for persuading abortion-seeking women, most of whom are mothers, that the procedure should be banned.

And then there was the pro-life activist couple, holding a (much-memed) “We Will Adopt Your Baby” sign. Well. A woman who finds herself a few weeks into an unwanted pregnancy can simply wait the nine months, give birth, and hand the resulting baby over to them, if they’re still standing there with that sign when that day rolls around. A culture of life, of sorts. But at least handing your baby over to a well-dressed couple is a solution that doesn’t cost the American taxpayer a cent.