Abortion and The Clash of Moral Visions

Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing, by Ryan Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis, (Regnery Publishing: June 2022), 256 pages.

Almost ten years ago, Ryan Anderson, then a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, appeared on Piers Morgan’s CNN show to debate gay marriage. The appearance was memorable, both for the bizarre seating arrangement–Anderson was inexplicably seated in the audience, while Morgan and pro-gay-marriage interlocutor Suze Orman were seated on-set–and for the poise with which Anderson handled the hostile occasion. Anderson courteously, succinctly presented the case against the redefining of marriage from the bench. The viral video was no surprise to anyone who has read Anderson’s prior work on marriage defense. Anderson is a master of reasoning when it comes to defending the conservative view on social hot topics.

It didn’t matter. The Supreme Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act in the Windsor case three months later, and redefined marriage with its sweeping ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges two years after that. Just last month, even a sizable number of Republicans joined with Democrats to advance a radical redefinition of marriage that was alien to human civilization before the 21st century. Anderson’s argument was not as important as it ought to have been.

But now, on the heels of a very different Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Anderson has written another tightly argued book on a contentious topic: abortion. Tearing us apart: How abortion harms everything and solves nothing , was co-authored by Alexandra DeSanctis of National Review HTML3. This book enters into a different political moment than the one that has received works about gay marriage and transgenderism. Although American attitudes to abortion are complicated, a large number of Americans want restrictions on access. The legal protection for unborn Americans is dependent on their votes in the respective states. Roe has been repealed. It is therefore urgent to get more votes for the pro-life cause.

This is the job of Tearing Us apart . The introduction states that the book was written to help readers defend life. Anderson and DeSanctis set out to explore the many facets of public life which are affected by abortion. As the book progresses, it becomes stronger. Anderson and DeSanctis successfully refute standard pro-abortion arguments that deny fetal personhood in Chapter 1. This is an essential statement that opens the book. However, it does not break new ground for pro-life activists.

By Chapter Five, Anderson and DeSanctis point where the pro-life movement may go post-Roe. These authors go beyond abortion’s principal actors–the unborn and women who are abortionists- to discuss the sociopolitical consequences of abortion. The first is an engaging look at the ways in which abortion has affected the rule of law:

Most objectionable is that the Court took abortion from the democratic process in order to decide the issue the wrong way; if the Constitution can be read to apply to the question of abortion at all, it is in the sense that abortion is an unconstitutional denial of due process and equal protection of the laws to the unborn.

The passing reference to the “14^th Amendment argument” that would declare abortion unconstitutional illustrates how uneasy the post-Dobbs settlement on abortion could be. Anderson and DeSanctis have rightly stated that abortion had an enormous impact on the foundational elements common to life, such as our media and culture, and our judiciary system. The moral vision of our ruling class shows how important terminating a pregnancy is. This is where pessimism can set in. Tearing Us apart arguments on this issue may prevail.

The abortion debate is a fiery topic because it is the most visible manifestation of two opposing moral visions pulling at our bodies politic. Anderson and DeSanctis wrote in their introduction that “pro-lifers believe every human being is intrinsically worth and valuable.” This belief is at the core of classical Christian morality: Man is made in God’s image and created with his rights and obligations. All of us are equal in human dignity, which is important to note, but not in social outcomes or in the role we play in society. This moral vision is not exclusive to Christians.

The pro-abortion position is built upon a completely different moral vision. These are the factors that determine moral value. The best thing is the one that is free to choose. Man derives his moral agency and his dignity from his ability to exercise autonomy. The will is able to choose what is best for you, regardless of whether it is from tradition or natural. Therefore, the moral agency of the woman (or of the woman who chooses to identify as a man) necessarily trumps any claims the embryonic baby may have, and abortion becomes an essential guarantor of her continued autonomy.

This framework shows how abortion can be both the greatest affront to classical morality and the foundation of progressive thinking. The baby still in the womb is the most innocent, so it’s not a more grave attack on humanity than its murder. On the other hand, there is no clearer impediment to autonomy than the obligation to live with the natural consequences of promiscuous choices and to care for an unwanted child, and therefore no more essential right to protect than the right to abort that child when needed.

Sometimes Tearing Us apart may appear to be making concessions to the progressive moral view. This is understandable, considering it’s those on the pro-abortion side who will need to be persuaded in a post-Dobbs world. The success of this approach in convincing the skeptical remains to be determined.

Take, for example, Chapter Three, “Abortion Harms Equality and Choice.” Anderson and DeSanctis illustrate how “pro-choice” is a misnomer by arguing that the hatred of pregnancy resource centers from abortion activists “can be explained only by the reality that they are pro-abortion, not pro-choice.” It’s certainly true that the abortion industry seeks to discourage women in crisis pregnancies from making any choice besides abortion. It’s also true that abortion opponents discourage women from having an abortion. The authors admit that the pro-life pregnancy resources centers will not facilitate abortion, and they are open about it. But this shows that in some cases, “choice” should be “harmed”. The classic moral vision says that it doesn’t matter which item is selected, but whether the choice is good.

In Chapter 2, Anderson and DeSanctis claim that abortion is harmful to women. The authors try to distinguish the push by feminists for more social roles for women (which they praise) from legal abortion access, which is something they denounce:

Rather than climbing the social ladder and witnessing the gains promised by pro-abortion women’s-rights activists, women are more embittered than they were decades ago. There have been positive developments, such as the ability for women to be independent, more flexible in their employment and greater support from their spouses, but none are due to legal abortion.

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The scores of Fortune 500 companies lining up to pay for their employees to travel across state lines to abort their children in the wake of Dobbs would seem to say otherwise. Employers of women know that advancement in a female career is tied to accessing abortion.

But this should be a reason to caution and not criticize. Tearing Us Apart is precisely the book for the post-Dobbs moment. Dobbs allowed abortion politics to start. There is a window of opportunity to convince our citizens, who most often operate in a progressive moral vision which values autonomy and choice over all else, that abortion has been declared an abomination. It’s a tremendously valuable task if Tearing Us apart could play a part in this mission and bring these fellow citizens closer towards the classic moral vision shared with its authors.

Let us just pray that any victories will not be too pyrrhic. If we are to avoid future Obergefells, sweeping legal rebuttals of hard-earned social conservative gains through the democratic process, we’ll need more than reasoned debate on CNN. We may need to confront the dominant moral vision of this country and return it to God sooner or later.