Abortion has never been more important to its proponents than it is right now. Nor less important to those who oppose it. I suppose that makes sense in the aftermath of Dobbs. Roe was a cancer that had to be removed, but even the best surgeries don’t leave you whole. Two years in, the recovery has been nothing if not painful. According to Gallup, abortion supporters are now twice as likely to only vote for likeminded candidates as abortion opponents—marking the third consecutive year in which one-issue voting has tilted firmly towards abortion. It used to be that abortion opponents were the more ideologically committed, but that equation has flipped since President Biden took office. And though polling results should always be taken with a grain of salt, this is one I’m inclined to believe—for no other reason than this. Politically speaking, I have never cared less about abortion than I do right now, and I care about abortion a lot. I’ve devoted almost the whole of my vocational life to fighting it. 

The problem is this. There are so many heretofore unimagined threats crouching at our collective doorstep that abortion has become less important by comparison. It must now compete alongside a cadre of other abominations. It’s also been deemed a political liability by many who can’t stomach the thought of a Kamala Harris presidency—Donald Trump included. And because the cost of living has increased so dramatically, people suddenly have less money to devote to philanthropic engagement—which I’ve experienced from both sides of the equation. Abortion is a billion-dollar business; combatting abortion is a money pit. Making matters even worse, virtually all of these emerging threats serve to make abortion a more common and expected outcome. Social distress is the fuel; abortion is the fire. 

When you look at the polling data, a few things stand out. Over the last five years, men and women have changed places on abortion. In 2019, 51% of surveyed women identified as “pro-life” compared to 48% of men. By 2024, only 33% of women still identified as such, alongside 49% of men. So while men have essentially stayed put on the issue of abortion, women have become radically more bought-in. We see something similar happening along political lines. “A decade ago,” according to Pew Research, “roughly two-thirds of Democrats favored legal abortion.” Today that number stands at 84%. Gallup notes that “the shift toward more public support for abortion rights has occurred exclusively among Democrats, while the views of Republicans and independents are statistically unchanged.”

On the one hand, yes, America is more divided over abortion than it’s ever been. On the other hand, this isn’t because the two sides are pulling away from each other. It’s because one side is staying put, and one side has left the building. I’ve talked about this before. Public intellectuals like to pretend that both sides are extremists and both sides are becoming increasingly unhinged. All the reasonable people, it’s argued, dwell in the middle. They don’t like abortion, but they know it’s necessary. There are many things I like about Bret Weinstein, but his take on abortion is not one of them. He said the following this month to Joe Rogan, after Rogan asserted that you shouldn’t tell women what to do with their body, and you shouldn’t be aborting 8-month fetuses:

Yeah. I mean, the funny thing—and I've been saying this forever—is that almost everybody agrees on the basics on abortion. We're supposed to not be able to even talk about it. But most people believe that abortion is negative, that if you've got a blastula—a clump of cells that doesn't yet have a nervous system, that you have the right to terminate that pregnancy. And that the farther you go through that pregnancy, the less right you have. And most people are incredibly queasy about it, I think as they should be in the third trimester. And, you know, that's what we agree on. And so it's really the extremists on both sides that we are up against. 

Rogan and Weinstein both suggest that there’s actually broad consensus regarding abortion. It’s only the crazies on the fringes—those trying to protect blastocysts and those trying to protect partial-birth abortion, who are failing to fall in line. These are the extremists we’re up against. But Weinstein’s contention that everyone should agree with pro-choicers when it comes to terminating human blastocysts and agree with pro-lifers when it comes to terminating third-trimester fetuses is not nearly as profound as he imagines. Here’s the problem. No surgical or even medical abortions are performed during the blastula stage, and less than one percent of all abortions happen in the third trimester—so his hypothetical framing has no bearing on abortion in the main. 

Intentionally or not, Weinstein has misrepresented the abortion landscape and thereby exaggerated the consensus he supposes to exist. On the one hand, he minimizes the moral case against early abortion by dehumanizing the victims—making them out to be less developed than they actually are. On the other hand, he implies that the only definitively unallowable abortions are the ones that rarely occur. In the end, his ostensibly middle-ground position winds up justifying more than 99% of all abortions. Not even Planned Parenthood would have much to complain about. But because Weinstein has called out the activists on both sides, he imagines himself to be a moderate on the issue—much as Pontius Pilate imagined himself a moderate on the crucifixion. But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t privately wash your hands of culpability and then publicly condone the violence. 

For my part, I believe it is wrong to destroy a human blastocyst—because it is still ending the life of a distinct human being who did nothing to deserve death. One of the reasons I don’t support hormonal birth control methods, or the morning-after pill, is because they make it harder for the blastocyst to implant by depleting the uterine lining. And though you might argue there’s a moral difference between making the uterus hostile to implantation and actively killing a blastocyst, that doesn’t get us any closer to solving the abortion problem. Because, here again, this is not the point in pregnancy at which either surgical or medical abortions occur, and there is nothing passive about either one. Weinstein references the blastula, no doubt, because it’s easier to justify killing a human being when it’s still a blastocyst than when it’s an embryo or fetus.  

Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein are at least right about this. A plurality of Americans are noncommittal when it comes to abortion. Pew Research reports that 38% of respondents say abortion should be mostly but not always legal while 28% say it should be mostly but not always illegal. In other words, two-thirds of Americans are unwilling to say that abortion is definitively right or wrong. To varying degrees, they are both uncomfortable with abortion and uncomfortable with outlawing abortion—so they hedge their bet by formally embracing indecision. It’s the pathway of least resistance. Though, strictly speaking, if uncertainty exists, shouldn’t we error on the side of not doing fatal harm to an innocent human being?

When the average American faces the question, Is abortion wrong? the average American answers, I don’t know. And because they don’t know, they tend to lean towards the more acceptable and convenient position. Ie, the one that quietly erases problematic pregnancies and has near universal support among celebrities, media personalities, and big corporations. They’ve accepted the notion that there’s more chance abortion is right early in pregnancy and more chance it’s wrong late in pregnancy, but the one thing they fastidiously refuse to do is identify the point at which abortion goes from being amoral to immoral. This, of course, is because they can’t. There is only one objective line of demarcation and it’s crossed before a woman even knows she’s pregnant. 

Here’s something else that survey data reveals about abortion in America. People who aren’t married, people who aren’t parents, people who aren’t religious, and people who aren’t white are all significantly more likely to support abortion than their demographic counterparts. It’s not something I’ve considered before, but one of the things we can expect to see as America becomes less married, less procreative, less Christian, and less white is an increase in public support for abortion. And that, in fact, is what we are seeing. I should emphasize here that while I consider the trend away from marriage, children, and religion to be unequivocally negative, there is nothing inherently wrong with a nation becoming less white. Nor is it true globally that opposition to abortion is a uniquely white phenomenon. In fact, among countries surveyed by Pew Research, none are more anti-abortion than Kenya and Nigeria, where 89-92% of adults oppose abortion. Brazil and Indonesia aren’t far behind at 70% and 82% respectively. On the other side of the ledger, Sweden and the Netherlands are exceedingly white and exceedingly pro-abortion. None of the surveyed countries come close to Sweden’s 95% support for abortion. 

It is only in America that whiteness is a predictor of opposition to abortion. Cynics will say that’s simply because whites don’t need abortion. We live lives of privilege and affluence. And birth control. It is the marginalized and oppressed who need abortion to stay afloat—or get ahead. But if that were the case, wouldn’t decades of aborting their children at 3-4 times the rate of whites have left the black community in a better position than it actually finds itself? What if its disproportionate reliance upon abortion is not empowering but decimating? What if abortion is contributing to the near total demise of the black nuclear family in America? There are plenty of prominent black Americans who’ve come to celebrate abortion, but Planned Parenthood was helmed by an old white man when it first entered the abortion business. And isn’t it possible that their relentless efforts to infiltrate the black community were motivated by something less than altruism?

Kamala Harris argues that you don’t have to abandon your faith to embrace abortion (though she won’t even say the word), and the black community seems to be listening. According to Pew Research, 75% of white evangelical Protestants oppose abortion, compared to just 28% of black Protestants. Both numbers strike me as scandalously low for anyone who bears the name of Christ, and yet the gap between white Christians and black Christians is fairly astounding. This is how Tony Dungy, a Hall of Fame football coach and black man of faith, responded to Harris’ appeal to faith in defense of abortion:

Dear VP Harris: I hear you make this statement all the time. Exactly what “faith” are you talking about when you say you don’t have to abandon it to support abortion?  Are you talking about the Christian faith that says all babies are made in the image of God (Gen 1:26), that God places them in the womb (Jer 1:5) and that we should not take any life unjustly (Luke 18:20)? Are you talking about that faith? Or some nebulous, general “faith” that says we’re good enough and smart enough to make our own decisions? 

Tony Dungy has summed up the problem quite succinctly. We think ourselves good enough and smart enough to throw off God-ordained restraint—which has been our downfall since the beginning. And even if you’re too enlightened to accept the notion that God ordained anything, we are at the very least thumbing our noses at structures and conventions that have served us for thousands of years. Because we know better. Because unlike the old faith, this new and nebulous one allows us to be as depraved as we want to be, without guilt or judgment. So we dismantle society and dismember children and call it virtue. One of my favorite observations from Catch 22 speaks to this very phenomenon. The one first warned against in Isaiah 5:20. “Anybody could do it,” the narrator opines, “turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice.” In fact, “it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.” Or in the words of Kamala Harris, it only requires being “unburdened by what has been.”

If there is one thing that unifies most all Americans in the run up to November, it is genuine concern about the future. And the fears are almost entirely the same. It is only the direction of the threat we can’t agree on. We are united in apprehension over what the other candidate will do to our country. Those who will vote for Kamala Harris and those who will vote for Donald Trump both see the other as a threat to democracy, a threat to freedom, and a threat to American prosperity. But is either candidate much of a threat to abortion? Donald Trump, whose first term in office did more to combat abortion than any administration in history now boasts how great his second term will be for “women and their reproductive rights.” Remarks like this have caused many abortion opponents to publicly wonder if they can even vote for someone who seems to be no longer pro-life. As Doug Wilson puts it, the Democratic Party is evil, and the Republican Party is compromised. 

The first thing to point out is that Donald Trump is in a difficult position. Because support for abortion has metastasized with such disturbing speed, publicly opposing abortion costs far more in 2024 than it did in 2016 or 2020. The second thing to point out is that Donald Trump has never been a man of much conviction when it comes to abortion. He supported abortion before he opposed it—and before he supported it again. It served his political interests to be pro-life the first time around. Now he’s not sure it does. Donald Trump, you’ll remember, is a pragmatist first and foremost. Winning the presidency is far more important to him than eradicating abortion, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Because I can say this with near certainty. A Harris presidency would be catastrophically worse for unborn children.

When James Davison Hunter spoke to Al Mohler earlier this month, he argued that law cannot do the work of culture—which is the same sentiment that prompted the launch of Abort73 twenty years ago. Namely, the conviction that there can be no legislative solution to abortion apart from widespread cultural reform. The law alone can’t save us, because legal victories rely upon cultural shifts. This is what made the Dobbs verdict possible—almost fifty years of engagement by a small but faithful remnant, coupled with the timely and courageous appointments of the least-likely president in American history. But what has followed in the two years since has been a painful reminder that the law cannot do the work of culture. Nor can you strike down a sacred cow without incurring the wrath of those who worship at its alter. When Roe fell, a sleeping giant awoke—and it has no intention of going quietly into the night. 

We’ve already looked at some of the demographic reasons why support for abortion has ramped up so quickly. Here’s another one. The percentage of Americans with advanced degrees has increased by more than 50% over the last decade—and Americans with advanced degrees are the most pro-abortion of all. College undergrads are the next most fervent for abortion, and their numbers are increasing as well. Pew Research reveals that the longer you stay in college, the more enamored with abortion you become. If you think that’s a point in abortion’s favor, you may not have noticed what a racket higher education has turned into. For a lot more cost, you get a degree with a lot less value. That’s what the average university offers today—along with an army of administrators, a steady clamp down on free speech, and a heavy dose of socialist propaganda.

Children instinctively know that abortion is wrong. But with enough “education,” many of them eventually become convinced that killing the most innocent and helpless members of the human community, en masse, is actually right and noble. That, as they say, is being educated to death. But even as the number of Americans who are demographically-inclined towards abortion goes up, the most fundamental reason for abortion’s dramatic surge since 2020—despite its elimination in more than a dozen states—is a far more pragmatic one. Life has simply gotten harder. Things have gotten so bad on the ground, in fact, that even the incumbent party is campaigning against the last four years. “We just need to move beyond the failed policies that we have proven don't work,” Harris proclaimed last week. Her solution? More of the same. So when you see the side-by-side comparisons of food prices, gas prices, and  home prices from four years ago compared to today, understand this. Every one of those increases makes abortion more likely. Because when the cost of life goes up, the relative cost of ending life goes down. And I’m not just talking finances.

More crime leads to more abortion. More censorship leads to more abortion. More insecurity leads to more abortion. More illegal immigration leads to more abortion. More inflation leads to more abortion. More unemployment leads to more abortion. More poverty leads to more abortion. More gambling leads to more abortion. More debt leads to more abortion. More state dependence leads to more abortion. More ill health leads to more abortion. More medicaid leads to more abortion. More substance abuse leads to more abortion. More suicide leads to more abortion. And according to GLAAD, more LGBTQIA+ women leads to more abortion. We may think these are independent issues, but they are all driving us in the same direction. All bad roads lead to abortion.

Jordan Peterson has frequently observed that people have little capacity to care about the environment so long as they’re struggling to even survive. Carbon emissions are the last thing on your mind when you’re just trying to keep your head above water. The best way to get more people to care more about the planet, he argues, is to get more people out of poverty. Not by affixing them to the government teat (or massively increasing the price of energy, as “green” policies tend to do), but by rewarding industry and responsibility. It strikes me that something of the same thing could be said of abortion. So here’s my premise. The most practical thing a president can do to strike a blow against abortion is to make America a better place to live. Because anything that makes life better leads to fewer abortions. And anything that makes life worse leads to more. That means, unless you think everyday life is better under Biden/Harris than it was under Donald Trump, you already have a solidly pro-life reason to vote for someone who is less than solidly pro-life. 

There are no perfect candidates, it’s worth remembering. But in a two-party system, there is always a better candidate. And sometimes, keeping the worse candidate out is every bit as important as getting the right candidate in. That’s certainly how Democrats have operated through the last two election cycles. It was never about electing Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. It was always about not electing Donald Trump. That, in itself, is worth considering. Because if the party who loves the things you hate also hates one particular candidate, maybe that in itself should be endorsement enough. I heard Andrew Klavan say just this morning that the left doesn’t hate Trump for his vices, which are many. They hate him for his virtues—which is quite an astute observation.

I’ve wondered a lot about Abort73’s future in the post Roe landscape—now that “73” has been aborted. I’ve wondered if we’ll be able to financially survive four more years of Bidenomics. Both are open questions, but one thing has become increasingly clear over. The importance of a resource like Abort73 is as timely as it’s ever been. Because until we have a more sophisticated cultural understanding of what abortion actually is and does, the legislative victories we long for will be fewer and further between. Changing the way culture votes about abortion still depends on remedying the way culture thinks about abortion. Which means the road ahead remains long and daunting, but that doesn’t minimize the significance of November 5. Abortion feeds on cynicism and fear—not joy, no matter what the vice president says. Birth, by contrast, is a declaration of hope in the future—and that’s what we need. A president who will make America into a happier, healthier, and more hopeful place to live than it is right now.