Pro-Natal vs. Pro-Life

Why the Right needs to choose

Like many, I was disturbed by Madeline Peltz’s coverage of Turning Point USA’s Young Women’s Leadership Summit for several reasons. The rise of pronatalism on the Right has been more than subtly detectable over the past several years, but reading these quotes shows it’s on full display now.

I largely feel like a political orphan, disillusioned by the utter lack of charity and cohesive policy on both sides of the aisle. I know these feelings aren’t unique, particularly among my generation, but one reason I’ve tended to lean conservative is because of a passion for the pro-life cause. There are many flaws to the conservative pro-life agenda, including a historical lack of care for actual mothers themselves, but reading Peltz’s piece about the rhetoric employed by TPUSA makes a contradiction obvious to me that has perhaps been obvious to others for a long time.

The Right has long touted that Republicanism is the “pro-life” party, which is disputable based on one’s definition of what it means to truly be pro-life—but that calling card is in direct conflict with the anti-feminist, pro-natalist rhetoric it seems so fond of these days. If young women are supposed to be focused entirely on obtaining the “MRS. degree,” then the pro-life movement will inherently suffer.

Part of the Right’s “thin, fertile, and conservative” ideal for women assumes that the way to reverse radical feminism’s dedication to abortion is to uproot feminism wholesale, and for young women to simply get married and have lots of babies. Anti-feminism sees itself as the solution to abortion, but it can actually cause the issues that women cite as reasons for obtaining abortions to only deepen. If the Right insists that women become mothers younger, faster, and to have more children, then abortion-vulnerable women’s fears about what motherhood means are confirmed. The pro-life movement has only made serious strides when it cares about the dignity of women alongside care for the dignity of the unborn, and empowers women to believe they are capable of motherhood, despite difficult circumstances—and offers support in those circumstances. If the feminine ideal constantly vocalized by the Right and its personalities is to be anything but where a great deal of women find themselves—educated or seeking education, working, financially unstable or uncertain, unmarried—then we cannot blame women if they scoff at the conservative pro-life movement's efforts to speak to them when they are in crisis.

The pro-life movement that I align with is the one that recognizes a majority of women do not seek abortion out of selfishness or because they believe propaganda---it recognizes instead that a great deal of women seek abortion because of crisis, fear, trauma, duress, or other circumstances in which their agency is anything but free. These women deserve access to care and support throughout the duration of a pregnancy, and long after. If the conservative picture of motherhood is founded upon anti-feminist ideals, we lose any real evidence that we are not just willing, but enthusiastic to support all mothers. We do not reverse the demand for abortion by shoving marriage and family life down young women’s throats—we risk confirming it.

Anti-feminism and being pro-family are not synonymous, though the Right seems to think so. I’m in support of encouraging marriage and family life, and not falling into mindsets that make mature and willing young people believe they must wait for perfect conditions in order to get married and have a family. But I also believe we can do this effectively without misogyny, for one, and without ostracizing women who find themselves as mothers through a different and unforeseen route. If we want the pro-life movement to be authentic and effective, there has to be a recognition that the Right’s espousal of pro-natalist anti-feminism is a destructive obstacle. To see the same personalities speaking this way, then advocating for an end to abortion only causes whiplash. It doesn’t convince women of anything, except what they already believe: the Right does not have their good in mind.