This post is a response to Michael Stokes Paulsen’s article, “The Pro-life Case Against Trump,” found here and here. I encourage my audience to read this post first, since this post will make little or no sense without being familiar with it.
There is no reluctant "pro-life" case for Trump. Anyone who thinks so is just fooling themselves. Indeed, Paulsen is fooling himself in thinking you can have forced gestation without the authoritarianism Trump represents. The "pro-life" cause is entirely compatible with the authoritarianism represented by Trump and cannot be successful without it. The "pro-life" camp does not want a functioning constitutional republic, or at least not one where anyone other than white cisgender heterosexual men has a fair say. It is not about compassion, respect for others, and valuing all human life. It does not care that the political and legal gains on abortion are likely short-term. Finally, they either do not believe or do not care they are making a deal with the Devil.
A core goal of the "pro-life" movement is enslaving pregnant people. It fundamentally sees people with uteruses as less than fully human. We see this in the fact that every argument put forth by the slave mongers has to either (at best) ignore the person with a uterus entirely or resort to rank misogyny in the form of slut-shaming. You cannot make a case for forced gestation by applying the same rules that apply to everyone else to the pregnant person and the prenate, so the slave mongers have to invent special rights for the prenate to the detriment of pregnant people. Where is the compassion, respect for others, and valuing all human life when it comes to the pregnant person? Nowhere. This in itself shows that the prenate’s right to life, if it indeed has one, is not the real point of the "pro-life" movement.
The real point of the "pro-life" movement is to keep women "in their place," to subsume their pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to that of men. What people with uteruses must not be allowed to do is pursue their own lives on their own terms. This is why the "pro-life" movement not only opposes abortion, but usually also oppose the most effective methods of birth control on the supposed (and unproven) ground that they are "abortifacients." People with uteruses have to live under a double-bind: to either give up the right to bodily autonomy or forfeit their right to bodily autonomy. Either do not have sex at all or be forced to carry a pregnancy to term. But even if the person with a uterus did not choose to have sex, they will still be forced to carry a pregnancy to term.i
So the fact that Trump is a misogynist and a serial sexual abuser is not a bug for the slave mongers, it is a feature. For the slave monger, women are not people, they exist only to serve men’s pleasure. Men get to do what they want, and women are kept in their place. That's the point.
It is also a feature of all the yeses in Paulsen’s "yes, but" cases. Forcing gestation on pregnant people is just one piece of the puzzle in the "pro-life" case for Trump. This can be seen in the fact that the vast majority of the "pro-life" camp not only supports Trump when it comes to forced gestation, but also his racist statements and policies. Trump's racism is also just as much of a feature for the "pro-life" camp as its misogyny. Think of this in terms of Trump's slogan "Make America Great Again." Well, when was America great according to them? Almost to a person, it harkens back to a time when white male supremacy was not just systemic, but systematic. Exactly how far back they want to go may vary, but it is always a time before the Civil Rights Movements.
In other words, we are talking about a time when people of color, women, LGBT+ people, and other "undesirables" were forced to stay in their place. Seen in this light, Trump's incompetent and dismissive attitude toward COVID-19, which disproportionately affects poor people of color, is also a feature and not a bug of Trump's rule. This is what the "pro-life" camp is ultimately working toward: the supremacy of white men and forcing everyone else to serve that goal. This is also why “pro-lifers” also tend to support immigration restrictions, especially from “shithole”countries (read countries whose population is predomninently nonwhite). This is also why they tend to support the Muslim ban. This also why they tend to support voter restrictions that mainly affect people of color. This is also why they tend to want to roll back LGBT+ rights, including overturning the right to marry. Finally, it’s also why they tend to defend police brutality and either identify the Black Lives Matter movement with terrorism or try to dismiss the movement by responding “all lives matter.”ii
Ultimately, you cannot have white male supremacy in a constitutional republic, at least not one where everyone gets a fair say. So of course the "pro-life" camp is willing to excuse Trump's narcissism, his authoritarianism, and his willingness to do anything necessary including using violence to stay in office. At the end of the day, they are getting what they really want.
i Let's not be fooled here. If a slave monger allows abortion in cases of rape, it is done reluctantly to make their stance more palatable for the general public, not because they really think abortion in these cases is morally permissible. Without the need to make their stance more palatable, the rape exception will quickly go away, to eventually be followed by the life of the mother exception.
iiCountering Black Lives Matter with the pseudo-argument “all lives matter” has more than a little resonance with the slave monger’s argument about the prenate’s “right to life.” Ultimately, both stances work to reinforce white male supremacy by erasing the people most affected by systemic racism and forced gestation. This is not a coincidence.
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