It infuriates me to hear people sing the praises of the Good Samaritan. The only thing he did was to save some guy from death and pay for his immediate recovery—as if that’s all it means to be pro-life. Notice that he didn’t lift a finger to do anything for this man down the road. His kindness was one and done. Sayonara, friend. Have a nice life! Did this so-called Good Samaritan bother to pay for the beaten man’s safe transport to Jericho? No. Did he offer to cover any medical expenses he might incur from future attacks or injuries? Nope. Did he at least secure for the victim a good job that would offer him a living wage and paid paternity leave? Again, he did not. He didn’t care at all about this beaten stranger once he’d recovered. He simply abandoned him to his own devices. And yet we celebrate this man for his supposed love of neighbor. It’s outrageous.

In case you missed the irony, let me assure you that everything I’ve said to this point is complete and utter rubbish. The Good Samaritan is the Christ-ordained model of who your neighbor is and what it means to love them. It’s the story that prompted me to devote most of my vocational life to combatting abortion. Because rescuing marginalized strangers from pending death is held up as the very ideal of what it looks like to love your neighbor as yourself. So criticizing the Good Samaritan for not doing enough would be like criticizing someone for gifting you a new house but not paying for the ongoing cost of lawn care. When someone gives you the greatest gift, you don’t demand of them all the lesser gifts too. Unless you’re a psychopath.

It’s not that I’ve actually heard anyone criticize the Good Samaritan. There’s not much in his behavior to complain of, but I’ve heard a related complaint over and over and over. It goes like this. Pro-lifers don’t care about children after they’re born. I’ve dealt with the vacuousness of this complaint before, but I’ll do so again by asking a simple question—after a bit of context. Democrats almost unilaterally support abortion; most Republicans do not. So even though the abortion debate doesn’t divide perfectly along party lines, it’s close. The question, then, is this. Which party is more likely to argue for the virtue of having and raising children? And which party is more likely to argue for the virtue of not having children? It sort of answers itself, right?

I don’t see that there's any debate as to which partisans consider the bearing of children a good thing and which ones consider the avoidance of children a good thing. In other words, the people who care most about children before birth tend to be the same ones who care most about children after birth. But even if it were true that abortion opponents stop caring about others' kids once they’re born, it wouldn’t matter. Not at all. Because if a stranger were to jump into a river to save a drowning child from death, he or she would be a hero. Full stop. Even if that stranger never did another thing for that child, their pro-life bona fides would be indisputable. No sane person—or society—would then demand that the stranger financially support the rescued child for the rest of their lives. No one would suggest that “all this person cares about is saving drowning children” or complain at their not supporting socialist welfare programs for all. It’s only in the context of abortion that such criticisms become par for the course—and it’s only gotten worse in post-Roe America. Case in point, Alabama.

The Free Press published an article this month highlighting the recent closure of a maternity ward in rural Alabama. It was the fourth in the state to shutter within the last year—creating “a vast maternity-care desert in [Alabama’s] southwest corner.” The reasons for the closures are fairly straightforward. Rural maternity wards are hemorrhaging money, and the article explains why. In Clarke County, where the hospital is located, annual births have fallen more than 40% since 1990. That owes to both a shrinking population and a shrinking birth rate. And according to an obstetrician who formerly worked in the county, as many as 80% of their patients are on Medicaid. Why does that matter? Because the average Medicaid reimbursement for each birth is $1,800, but the average birth costs the hospital $5,600. Do you see the problem? You can only spend money you don’t have for so long. Or as the article puts it, “you can’t keep a maternity ward open if there aren’t enough babies to sustain it or enough money to pay for it.”

The federal government launched a program in 2023 to help rural hospitals climb out of debt, but it includes a caveat that essentially requires them to first disband their labor and delivery units. Each hospital is entitled to upwards of $3 million in annual aid, but to qualify they must limit their average patient stay to less than 24 hours. “In practical terms,” according to The Free Press’s Olivia Reingold, “this means that the hospitals have to shut down everything besides their emergency units to be eligible for the money.” Whether or not the federal government has any business subsidizing state hospitals is open to debate, but since they’re spending the money anyway, their no-overnight-stay requirement is a perplexing one. I don’t know what the intended purpose was, but the practical result is quite clear. No more maternity wards. And as Stafford Beer so astutely observed some years ago, “the purpose of a system is what it does.”

In light of all this, you may be surprised to learn how The Free Press decided to frame their article. Here’s the title they went with: “Alabama Is a Pro-Life State. So Why Is It So Hard to Give Birth There?” As we’ve already seen, there are four basic reasons why rural hospitals are increasingly abandoning birthing services. 1) Decreasing populations 2) Decreasing birth rates 3) Increasing reliance upon Medicaid 4) Increasing federal incentives to eliminate maternity wards. Now I ask you this. Do any of these reasons stem from the fact that Alabama no longer permits mothers to terminate their offspring in the womb? Because that’s what the headline implies. So let’s look at them in turn.

Does eliminating abortion reduce the population or reduce the birth rate? No, it does the opposite. Does eliminating abortion increase reliance upon Medicaid? It might, but what if Medicaid itself is the problem? Welfare, after all, is a two-edged sword, and I’ve heard from people all over the world who didn’t get their lives together until after they had an unplanned child. Giving people too easy an out rarely prompts the kind of reflection and responsibility that’s needed to right the ship. It tends rather to yield more of the same. But when people—and communities—stop relying upon the government to solve their problems, the solutions they find are far more sustainable. Finally, does eliminating abortion lead to an increase in anti-natal federal programs? Here again, I suppose it’s possible that Medicaid’s tacit 2023 attack on maternity wards was a sort of “F-you” to the Supreme Court for their 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade. But that wouldn’t be the fault of pro-life lawmakers in Alabama. That would be the fault of the anti-life administration in the White House.

After reading the first half of Reingold’s article, I couldn’t see how she was going to pivot away from the clear and obvious culprits to somehow place blame on Alabama’s anti-abortion policies. There didn’t seem to be a pathway. And though we’ve seen plenty of stories coming out of Georgia where abortion-caused deaths have been erroneously blamed on anti-abortion laws, I expect more honesty from The Free Press. As it turns out, Reingold took a less explicit route to her conclusion which you could sum up like this. Because Alabama doesn’t allow mothers to kill their babies, Alabama should be paying for the births of babies. Which is to say, even though pro-life laws aren’t to blame for the demise of small-town maternity wards, they at least mandate that the state step in to foot the bill.

I suspect Olivia Reingold would balk at calling any of this her conclusion—since she’s fairly careful not to editorialize. This was the opinion of the people I spoke with, she’d likely counter. But it’s also true that she doesn’t offer any counter narrative or feature anyone who pushes back on the assertion that banning abortion obligates a state to subsidize maternity wards. “What many residents don’t understand,” Reingold offers, “is why the state government won’t step in.” Especially one, she continues “that professes to be pro-life and has gone to extraordinary lengths … to prevent abortions from taking place on its soil.” It’s in that last sentence where her own convictions seep through—specifically in the words “professes” and “extraordinary.” Reingold asserts that the “one politician locals blame for the closure of their maternity-wards is Alabama governor Kay Ivey, whose pro-life credentials include signing the strictest abortion bill in the country.” Reingold says this as an accusation, not a commendation, but I ask again. How does the governor’s opposition to abortion make her responsible for maternity ward closures? It’s a non sequitur. Outlawing abortion causes abortion clinics to shut down, not delivery units.

I don’t know how many Alabamans Reingold spoke with before concluding that “people in America’s Deep South [blame pro-family’ politicians] for closing their maternity wards,” but she names four in the story: two moms, a physician, and a pastor. The physician macabrely warns that because women will now have to travel further to give birth, “babies and mothers are going to die.” One of the mothers interviewed says she feels forgotten by her lawmakers. The other says it’s unfair for her not to be able to have as many children as she and God would like. Finally, the Baptist preacher—who Reingold describes as “a staunch pro-life advocate” asserts that it’s hypocritical for the state to say it’s pro-life, “and then not fund the healthiest outcomes for children.” In times past, churches took it upon themselves to open hospitals, schools, and universities. In the present, it’s easier to just let the government handle all that—and then complain when the state doesn’t sufficiently embody the hands and feet of Christ. As if that’s even its job in the first place.

Few political positions subject someone to more finger wagging and lecturing than opposing abortion. It almost always incurs a steep social cost, which is just as true for states as it is for individuals. And now, because Alabama has deigned to protect the lives of its citizens before they’re even born, it faces attacks that are no less irrational than the ones I opened with. Saving a child’s life from abortion, apparently, is not enough. Instead of making you a hero, it merely makes you liable. It punishes you for a deed well done—as if you have to pay for the right to oppose executing the smallest and most helpless members of the human community. Though it may sound reasonable to expect pro-life families to adopt children and pro-life states to pay for maternity services, compelled charity is not a virtue and entirely ignores a crucial reality—one Doug Wilson reminded me of this morning.  “If you want to do a good deed,” he observed, “you have to have the resources.” It’s easy to demand that the state pay for more things without ever reckoning with the how or why. Because no matter how worthy the cause, every dollar the government spends is a dollar the government first takes. We seem to forget that the money spent on new programs must actually come from somewhere.

Maybe Alabama should be subsidizing rural maternity wards. God knows there are worse things states spend money on. But stopgap measures aren’t long-term solutions. If you want the state to pay doctors and nurses to staff mostly empty maternity wards, that means the state isn’t paying firefighters, teachers, road workers, or police officers somewhere else. They’re robbing Peter to pay Paul—and almost certainly servicing fewer people in the exchange. The first of the mothers interviewed by Reingold ironically professes to understand that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” but then proceeds to argue that “when you have people in a position of power that stand up there and say they’re pro-life [but then] put mothers and babies at risk, it’s complete hypocrisy.” The second mother asserts that “there’s nothing [we] can do to make a change, because we’re not the governor.” Are you starting to see the pattern?

Independence and self-reliance were once bedrocks of rural Americans. But you wouldn’t know that from this article. The people interviewed have assumed a posture of helplessness—sacrificing their own agency to the god of government handouts. They’ve cast themselves as the victim and placed Alabama’s matronly governor in the role of villain. Wouldn’t their ancestors be proud? You know, the ones who left the comforts of city life behind for the freedom it afforded them from government interference. Did they not know, perhaps, that living off the beaten path might preclude free maternity care? Or not know they’d have to travel further for the amenities afforded to their urban and suburban counterparts? “What can we do?” the second mother laments. Here’s something. Move—if you’re unwilling to live in a county that doesn’t offer hospital births and unwilling to secure the services of a midwife or family physician. For my part, I was born on a sofa bed in the lobby of a Culver City office. And you know what, here I am. Over the course of human history, it turns out, lots of us have been delivered outside the confines of government-subsidized maternity wards.

The real problem facing rural America is one of the problems facing all of America—and all of the developed world: too few families and too few children. It shows up in rural America first because there are fewer people there to begin with. First the maternity wards close. Then the schools. Then the number of vacant houses starts to metastasize. I read a few months back that there are close to 10 million vacant homes in Japan. In fact, buying abandoned Japanese houses has become something of a cottage industry amongst foreigners, though there aren’t anywhere near enough. Buyers, that is. It used to be that these houses were confined to rural locales, but now—as CNN reports—they’re popping up in Tokyo and Kyoto. Fourteen percent of all residential properties in Japan now lie vacant. Just think about what that does to the value of the homes still occupied. Houses have traditionally been one of the few things you could buy and use without stripping them of value, but that ceases to be the case whenever supply outstrips demand. No neighborhood or city can survive widespread property abandonment. You can subsidize infrastructure for a time—in locations with an insufficient tax base—but the root cause must eventually be addressed.

Why are maternity wards in Alabama closing? It’s fairly simple, actually. It’s because we’ve rejected the biblical sex ethic. We have embraced and normalized fornication, adultery, divorce, homosexuality, pornography, birth control, and abortion. All of which leads to fewer families, fewer children, and more poverty. That is the problem; implementing a solution is more difficult. But it starts at the individual level. Graduate from school. Get a job. Get married. Have children. And don’t mess around with the order. If you don’t have a job and you’re not married, you have no business having sex. Intercourse is not a human right. It’s a privilege reserved for those who meet the requisite qualifications. Because even if you’re an atheist or agnostic who entirely rejects the notion that sex is a sacred spiritual act, there are still profound real-world consequences for treating it casually. The Pilgrims Progress and The Magician's Nephew both depict scenarios in which persons trespass upon a private garden by climbing in over the wall—rather than entering through the gate. And though they ostensibly get away with it, they soon discover that in rejecting the proper pathway, they turned what would have been a treasure into a curse. Secret gardens are not anyone’s for the taking.

My youngest son was born in Alabama—five and a half years before I met him. He is a treasure of unspeakable worth, so I am exceedingly grateful to lawmakers in the Heart of Dixie for promoting adoption by prohibiting abortion. That is the government’s proper role, you’ll remember, to protect the lives of its people. That’s why for them and for us, saving children from abortion is enough. Even if we never did another thing for these children down the road, that would do nothing to impugn the value of rescuing them from a premature death. Compared to saving someone’s life, everything else is superfluous. That’s why being anti-abortion is not something to apologize for and not something you have to contextualize or earn the right to. And this is true no matter what left-leaning politicians—or evangelical pastors—might say to the contrary.