This piece was published by Quillette shortly before the U.S. Supreme Court repealed the Roe Vs. Wade decision
Talk about abortion is dominating the US culture wars, again. A leaked US Supreme Court majority opinion foreshadows the overturning of 1973’s Roe vs. Wade decision protecting a woman’s liberty to terminate a pregnancy without excessive government restriction, sparking joy among anti-abortion campaigners and dread among choice advocates. Anyone naive to the last 50 years of abortion politics might think the sides are concerned with two entirely different phenomena. One advocates a woman’s right to reproductive and bodily autonomy, whereas the other condemns what it considers to be a form of homicide.
Many self-declared “pro-lifers” consider the termination of a pregnancy the moral equivalent of taking a newborn life. Their strategies, including the endless debates over when a fetus becomes viable, seek to blur distinctions between aborting a fetus and killing a newborn child. So much so that few on the pro-choice side welcome discussion about the relationship between abortion and infanticide. I argue here that an understanding of that relationship—drawing on evidence from centuries of history and millennia of evolution—leads to the conclusion that abortion is the most humane alternative to infanticide, adding to the case for safe, legal, accessible abortion for women who need it.
Read the full article in Quillette.
