The superficial perception of abortion as compassionate for people in difficult situations is precisely what the pro-life community must pierce.

T he thorny problem of how to transmit the pro-life message has not gone away just because Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. While the president has enacted excellent pro-life policies in his first month in office, Republican concerns about the political palatability of the pro-life position have not gone away. Trump’s turn toward promoting IVF raises troubling ethical questions for the ongoing defense of innocent life.

JD Vance was incredibly insightful when he candidly admitted in the vice-presidential debate that the Republican Party had lost the confidence of the American people on the question of abortion and that it needed to demonstrate compassion and respect for the needs of women who are struggling. I believe he is correct. The challenge of pro-lifers in the post-Roe era is to reshape American attitudes about the burdens of pregnancy and to argue forcefully that authentic compassion requires rejecting abortion.

For decades, many pro-lifers believed that “science” would win the abortion debate. Advances in sonography, genetics, embryology, in utero health care interventions, and neonatal care would reinforce the inescapable, undeniable humanity — and, therefore, equality — of the unborn, demolishing the ethical arguments for abortion. Much of pro-life messaging still revolves around this paradigm: social media posts about, for example, when a heartbeat or brain activity is detected, the distinct changes that occur at the instant of egg-sperm fusion, and legislative proposals to limit abortion after certain in utero developmental milestones.

That strategy for broadly shaping public opinion has not worked. Scientific advances have been made, but Americans over the past 20 years have become less pro-life, not more. Certainly there is variation in their opinions on abortion, depending on policy specifics, but in general far more Americans identify as “pro-choice” than not.

The abortion debate is not a biology question about whether the embryo or fetus is a unique human organism. While some partisan hacks will still trot out canards about the embryo as a “clump of cells,” few seriously deny that a preborn human is a unique, living human being separate from his or her parents. Frankly, that question was settled in the 1800s when scientists demonstrated that egg cells and sperm cells combined to form a zygote, the first cell of a new organism.

Both at the level of public policy and for an individual woman facing a challenging pregnancy, the debate as it stands today centers far more on the burdens of pregnancy. Most people are accepting of abortion if they deem that the burdens a woman faces are weighty enough. Certainly Americans have their limits: They don’t like late-term abortions, and they are uncomfortable with public funding of abortion. But most, wanting to be compassionate when they see a young woman struggling, think of abortion as a compassionate choice. Breezy, girl-boss messaging from pro-life organizations — “She can have her baby and her dreams, too!” — is often unconvincing to people who understand that pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing often require enormous self-sacrifice.

The “alleviating burdens” paradigm is a crooked framework through which to view these questions. It accepts the premises of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “violinist analogy,” the famous bioethics argument whereby she compares the burdens of an unwanted pregnancy to having one’s essential organs forcibly hooked up to those of a stranger — in this case, a critically ill world-class violinist who could not otherwise survive. While the violinist has human dignity, the argument goes, it would be morally acceptable to detach oneself from him, even if that resulted in his death. His life does not outweigh the burdens he unfairly imposes. Analogously, neither does the life of a child in the womb.

The argument hinges on various flawed assumptions, but chief among them is that unborn children are strangers to us and that the burdens they represent are unfairly imposed. The unborn are not strangers to their mothers. Nor are they strangers to their communities, and the burdens they impose are not unfair. Families, private associations, and ultimately political communities should do everything possible to shoulder such burdens.

In his brilliant book What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics (2020), Carter Snead, a bioethicist and law professor at Notre Dame, has argued that debates about abortion and other bioethics questions should be reshaped around respect for human vulnerability and mutual dependence. I believe that Snead’s arguments must become a cornerstone for effective pro-life messaging.

The case for “alleviating burdens” via abortion is also extremely superficial, offering a cheap form of compassion. The organization I lead, Right to Life of Central California, works directly with women and couples walking into the local abortion clinic. We offer them alternatives and resources. I remember the case of a young woman who felt she needed to have an abortion because of her circumstances: poor financial resources, with little to no support from her partner. She also declared that she could not broach the subject with her mother, who, she said, would be extremely disappointed. After some encouragement, she gave her mom a call. My employee’s jaw hit the floor as she heard the mother exclaim her joy at her impending grandchild and commit to doing whatever she could to help her daughter make things work. This woman’s whole life took a 180-degree turn because of one person committing to love her.

I ask: Was it compassionate to offer that woman an abortion? No — it was the easy way out. It would have addressed none of this woman’s underlying problems: risky behavior with an uncommitted partner, lack of community, deteriorating family connections, lack of financial support and access to health care, etc. Genuine compassion was what her mother showed: a willingness to respond to natural obligations to love and care. So often the difference between an abortion and choosing life is simply whether there is a community of love and support — even if that “community” consists of one person — that enables a woman to choose life.

Women facing an unplanned pregnancy largely feel like they have little choice but abortion. Approximately 70 percent of women report that their abortion was against their personal preference, something they felt forced into because of finances, lack of partner support, or, in certain cases, physical coercion. Hundreds of thousands of women every year conclude that they lack the support needed to carry to term a pregnancy even though they would like to. It makes a mockery of a movement supposedly premised on “choice.”

At a glance, the abortion issue shows a struggling young woman or couple, and abortion as a way to alleviate the suffering. Many think it is compassionate. They do not see how abortion reinforces the decline in quality of care for lower-income and minority women in this country. Authentic compassion, on the other hand, rests in a political community banding together to help those in need, not papering over the need or adding more trauma on top of it.

This superficial perception of abortion as compassionate for people in difficult situations is precisely what the pro-life community must pierce through its messaging. I see it when I speak about the topic to young people and adults throughout the San Joaquin Valley of California, a region with high levels of poverty and glaring disparities in health care provision. When I share that my organization founded a nonprofit OB/GYN clinic to alleviate the disastrous gaps in the provision of prenatal care in Fresno, where almost a quarter of women in poor neighborhoods receive none , I see hardened faces and attitudes soften. Pro-lifers cannot win this debate unless we are seen to be walking the walk, not just talking the talk.

I believe that pro-lifers do walk the walk. I think our stories, our approach of loving moms and babies, need to be front and center. I think that conservatives should seriously consider the merits of policy proposals like the Make Birth Free legislation sponsored by Americans United for Life, which could provide a concrete way to build a political community that aids pregnant women in their time of need. Advancing the pro-life movement from pro-life pregnancy centers to full-scale, pro-life OB/GYN clinics committed to serving Medicaid patients would be another way to advance a message of authentic compassion.

The pro-life cause faces an uphill battle, but it is not impossible. Intelligent and effective messaging, strategy, funding, and policies can enable us to recapture the “compassion” high ground.