I was recently listening to an anarchist whose views on many important questions I agree with when they touched on the question of abortion. And I was disappointed by the cavalier — and somewhat careless — remarks they made on the subject. They were emphasizing the importance of ‘bodily autonomy’, which raised my attention. When people — anarchists or not — use the term ‘bodily autonomy’ they generally can be alluding to either 1. the right to refuse certain medical treatments (e.g. vaccination), or 2. the ‘right’ to abortion. As soon as the gentleman in question referred to ‘reproductive freedom’ his meaning in this context became clear. ^[1]

Continuing in his (implicit) defense of abortion, he implied that anti-abortion laws are tantamount to ‘violence’ upon women — whether such violence is manifested through imprisoning those who are party to the act of an illegal abortion, on the one hand, or through preventing the woman from having the abortion in the first place on the other. But — as all those who defend abortion do — he wholesale ignores the violence done to the unborn child. As anarchists, we have to speak out against all forms of violence and all forms of domination — including (or perhaps even especially) those committed upon the unborn.

The attitude adopted by ‘pro-choice’ advocates, essentially, is that a foetus has no sentient existence of its own and is therefore unworthy of inclusion in the moral considerations. ^[2] Or, if they begrudgingly acknowledge its sentience, they portray its existence as that of a parasite — an unwanted and unwelcome ‘burden’ on the mother; an ‘intruder’. In any case, they will employ whatever mental and moral gymnastics are necessary to refuse to acknowledge that — in every pregnant woman — a separate expression of life (distinct from that of the mother) is being brought in to the physical world, and that that life needs nurturing and protection — not a forceps or a lethal injection.

Regarding the insinuation that critics of abortion have taken it upon themselves to ‘tell a woman what to do with her body’: it’s not so much that they seek to ‘tell her what to do’ with ‘her body’. They seek to emphasize, rather, that there is a separate life developing inside her — and that what she chooses, in this special instance, to do ‘with her body’ has irreversible consequences for either the survival and potential flourishing of that life — or its premature termination.

Many skeptics of abortion (myself included) could — in general — not care less what a woman ‘does with her body’ — until she becomes pregnant. Some religious pro-life people may indeed condemn certain lifestyles or, e.g., consensual adult relationships which have little or no relation to the issue of abortion, but as I have tried to emphasize elsewhere in this article these issues should be considered separately.

There is no contradiction, in my mind, between being an anarchist and being ‘pro-life’. To be an anarchist means to reject manmade law (not just ‘for the sake of it’ — but when it is opposed to morality) and to embrace the moral framework associated with Natural Law instead. Within this framework, the difference between right and wrong can be framed quite simply: a ‘wrong’ is something which causes harm (either directly or indirectly) to another sentient being. Once, then, we acknowledge that a foetus has at least the capacity for or at least some level of sentience — or perhaps more importantly the capacity for a level of sentience equal to our own in the not-so-distant future — how can we categorize the act of abortion as anything other than a wrong? As anything other than an act of violence?

As it stands many so-called anarchists reject this line of reasoning. They carelessly parrot slogans about ‘bodily autonomy’ while ignoring that there is a second being involved — a second life — within the pregnant woman’s ‘body’. By and large their attitude is cavalier and dismissive — wholesale ignoring the presence of another life which (if granted the opportunity) will surely one day aspire to its own ‘autonomy’.

I am aware of a handful of anarchists who have spoken against abortion. Mark Passio, for example, has touched on the subject in his podcasts. He regards abortion as being against Natural Law. Jana Espiritu Kimble — also a Natural Law anarchist — has created a video series on abortion and its relation to the philosophy of eugenics. The series can be found here. Shout out to these people for their outreach and for being philosophically consistent!

There is a tendency to conflate abortion with other moral issues and to assume that pro-life views are held mostly by ‘right-wingers’ or adherents to conservative religious ideas. An impression has been formed in the public psyche that pro-life advocates hold oppressive and dogmatic views on, for example, same-sex relationships. There are, of course, many pro-life individuals whose views on abortion are part of a broader religious outlook — and who in some cases may indeed harbour prejudices against people of, for example, a certain sexual preference or orientation. However, we should not turn from a noble and moral cause (speaking out for the unborn) just because some proponents of that cause have ‘archaic’ beliefs on other contentious moral issues.

As it stands, there are already people speaking out publicly who are both pro-life and supportive of LGBT individuals. One such group, for example, is LGBT Pro Life Ireland.

Abortion and the rights of the unborn are not ‘religious’ issues; they can be examined on their own. We need to examine each moral issue separately, and not shy away from speaking out on vital topics (such as abortion) just because others speaking out hold views (on other moral issues) that we disagree with (perhaps even profoundly). ^[3]

A typical defense of ’moderate’ pro-choice advocates is that abortion should be available to victims of rape — if not for women going through ‘unwanted pregnancies’ in general. In recent years certain jurisdictions have tried to introduce legislation which allowed abortion even up until birth. This disturbing state of affairs has led some such ‘moderate’ pro-choicers to air their opinions publicly. A well-known independent media host in the UK, for example, recently discussed on his podcast an abortion bill tabled by extreme ‘pro-choice’ advocates. He took pains, in doing so, to emphasize that he was not opposed to abortion per se, and (in so many words) that he would ‘never tell a woman what to do with her body’ — especially (leading to the typical example of a ‘hard case’) a ‘14-year-old girl who had been raped’.

But — not ignoring the seriousness of such a situation — such remarks strike me as ultimately disingenuous. They are disingenuous because — as has been evident for some time now, to anyone who even briefly examines the history of pro-choice organizations such as Planned Parenthood, for example — the wider ‘pro-choice’ movement has never really truly been about alleviating the trauma and suffering of victims of sexual assault. They might pay lip service to the goal of helping girls and women in such situations — in an attempt to shame and silence critics — but if this was their primary goal they would have settled for abortion to be legalized only in such cases. But they didn’t stop there; they went much further.

Certain conservatives who speak out vocally against abortion hold deeply problematic — even repugnant — views on other social and moral issues. This is starkly evident from their attitude on perhaps the greatest modern social problem — homelessness. They are all too quck to attribute the predicament of those who find themselves destitute to personal failings or ‘bad life choices’. They cavalierly (and completely unscientifically) use terms like ‘mentally ill’ in referring to the homeless. When they are being honest and forthcoming they openly disclose that they would like to see these ‘bums’ rounded up and locked away, since — after all — such people have ‘no interest in contributing to society’ and — even if they did — are not necessarily ‘fit to do so’. Even when these critics are more circumspect in their language, it is not difficult to infer what their ‘solution’ is by reading between the lines.

Such conservatives view homeless people themselves as the ‘plague’. They wish to remain thoroughly oblivious to the true underlying causes of the housing crisis, and will not bring themselves to acknowledge that the real ‘plague’ is the attitude, worldview and behaviour of wider society — and often those within society who are held by the public in the highest esteem, including many conservatives.

From my view, ‘rounding people up’ and locking them away (which certain ‘pro-life’ conservatives view as the ‘solution’ to homelessness) is a stone’s throw away from euthanasia. Carting homeless people off to an institution to be ‘rehabilitated’ — particularly when done under the pretext that the person is ‘mentally ill’ — is difficult if not impossible to reconcile with a truly ‘pro-life’ ethos. Many people who have entered such institutions have remained there indefinitely; or even if they were released it was within a chemical strait-jacket (i.e. they were forced to take psychiatric medication). Such an existence — confined to an institution or chemically lobotomised — can hardly be described as a ‘life’ at all, not in the fullest sense. And for an ostensibly ‘pro-life’ individual to endorse such a treatment of homeless people — to preach about the rights of the unborn while remaining more-or-less oblivious to the suffering of those outside the womb and those who have reached in to adulthood, to ignore what is necessary for life beyond the womb to be able to reach its fullest potential, and to sanction (implicitly or otherwise) social arrangements which ‘hold life back’ (such as grossly unequal access to land) — smacks of galling hypocrisy.

Maybe some religious people hope that their ‘pro-life’ advocacy will earn them ‘brownie points’ with God in the afterlife, but it’s not enough to speak only about the right of the unborn to be born; it is necessary to consider and speak about the rights of the individual more generally also.

To clarify what I mean when I talk of affirming life ‘outside the womb’: I am not referring here to Government social programs. Nor do I condone mandatory taxation as a means of subsidising such programs. We first and foremost need to acknowledge the land problem — i.e. that the overwhelming majority of people don’t have access to any — as this is the root cause of the housing crisis. And, just as a home is a fundamental prerequisite for all aspects of a truly fulfilled life, to talk about being ‘pro-life’ without acknowledging this problem is to be only half-hearted in one’s advocacy. It’s largely a cop-out.

Neither the political left nor right are happy to acknowledge this. Henry George understood the problem, at least to a large extent, and wrote about it in Progress and Poverty — though it seems to me he was off the mark when he proposed taxation as a solution to the problem. Many of the land agitators in 19th century Ireland understood it also.

But we can do much more besides acknowledging the land issue. We should support any and all forms of voluntary mutual aid — exploring alternatives to the competitive, ‘capitalistic’ market economy, on the one hand, and the neo-Marxist social policies promoted by many leftists on the other. Both of these paradigms — ‘market fundamentalism’ on the one hand and neo-Marxist and extreme collectivist ideology on the other — are actively hostile to life in my view. And if we want to be ‘pro life’ in the broadest sense of the term we should — indeed must — repudiate both of them.

Some readers might object that I refer myself as ‘pro life’ at all, since I am not calling for abortion to be made ‘illegal’ (or at least that is not the focus of my outreach on the subject), and not demanding that there should be legal consequences for those party to abortion. But anarchists, by and large, don’t appeal to the legal system in the pursuit of morality at all, because to do so is to confer legitimacy on the state — which is itself rooted in violence and domination. And as I try to convey elsewhere, just because we don’t seek legal recourse does not mean we can not ensure that there are other consequences for such individuals.

Likewise, some readers may feel that my proposals regarding what we can do when confronted with abortion campaigners and the act of abortion itself fall short, and don’t go far enough. ‘Excommunication and severing relationships is not enough’ they might say. Or ‘we need something with more teeth — something that will really make people think twice [about having or assisting in an abortion]’. But I personally wouldn’t be quick to downplay the impact that (personal) ‘excommunication’ can have — especially if this policy is adopted by large numbers of people.

In any case, I’m not particularly concerned about whether or not my views as outlined here qualify as ‘pro life’ according to everyone’s definition of the term. I am simply trying to convey my views on a contentious moral topic in as clear and comprehensive a way as possible. And, unless someone provides a very compelling reason for not doing so, I will continue to use that term — not only to advocate for life inside the womb but also beyond it; for life at all stages.

I strongly recommend Jana Espiritu Kimble’s presentation on abortion and eugenics. It is a four-part series. Links to the videos can be found on her website.

The ‘intersectional pro-life’ subreddit on Reddit.com might be of interest to some people.