Critical Abortion Theory

Typically, the side that tries the hardest to obscure what is being argued about is the wrong one. For example, abortion supporters, having largely lost the scientific and constitutional battles, are turning now to Critical Theory talking points and claims of victimhood. The strategy is to portray abortion as a justice issue and anyone who opposes it as an oppressor.  

A recent short film from The New York Times dramatizes the struggles of abortion clinic workers and patients against the supposed scourge of pro-life laws and protesters. The video by Lynne Sachs is entitled “Contractions,” and it features bizarre sequences of mostly African American women in hospital gowns milling around an abortion clinic parking lot covering their faces, while Planned Parenthood staffers deliver breathy, dramatic narration.  

“Your character gets attacked just going into the building to do your job,” an employee says. “It’s war every day.”

“So many freedoms are being taken away every day,” says another.

“I feel like I’m on the new underground railroad,” says a patient who identifies as a woman of color.

“These changes, it’s really just about control.”

“They’re taking our power from us.”

And finally, a grimly ironic question, asked from a place that promotes the killing of preborn children:  

“Why do we have to keep proving that we are humans?”

In the Times video, the so-called “procedure” is mostly obscured. The word “abortion” is barely mentioned. Front and center instead are imagery and wording meant to imply that pro-lifers are like Jim Crow supporters—powerful oppressors bent on controlling women (especially minorities) and denying their humanity. 

In another example of obscuring abortion’s reality, this one from The View, actress Anne Hathaway tearfully explained that “abortion can be another word for mercy.” For young women starting out their career, she said, “reproductive destiny matters a great deal” since a pregnancy can irrevocably change her life. To legally treat all “conceptions” as the same is, she argued, to take away the freedom and flexibility “we need in order to be human.” She ended by declaring: “This is not a moral conversation about abortion. This is a practical conversation about women’s rights.” 

Here, Hathaway’s framing is intentionally hazy. The conversation is very much moral, even if she doesn’t want it to be about the morality of abortion. The idea that women, whether rich celebrities or poor minorities, are oppressed by legally recognizing the humanity of babies in utero is a clear instance of a Critical Theory mood that’s permeating this issue. In fact, it is a quiet admission that neither science nor the U.S. Constitution grounds a “right” to an abortion. Instead, it appeals to a reductive worldview that divides everyone into categories of oppressor or oppressed and decides issues accordingly.

This is the new “civil rights” language and imagery of pro-abortion propaganda. This is why anyone who wants to protect small human lives is bizarrely portrayed as oppressive and why The New York Times and Hathaway both claim women aren’t fully human in law unless they can terminate a pregnancy. Huh? 

According to this topsy-turvy moral reasoning, the most vulnerable party (the child) must be sacrificed for the designated victim class, those supposedly without power. Anyone who disagrees is wrong, not because of any clear moral reasoning or scientific facts, but because simply the oppressed cannot be wrong. This isn’t an argument, so much as a tactic of manipulation. 

More than ever, it is crucial to think clearly about the morality of abortion and to understand how to make the case for life in a way that cuts through the Critical Theory mood.  

It shouldn’t need to be said, but pro-lifers are not oppressors. Look at the little Catholic grandmas who run most pregnancy care centers. Pro-life advocates aren’t feeling powerful after two years of legislative disappointments. While the other side may want to obscure the debate, pro-lifers cannot. To obscure the debate is to obscure the victims. So, pro-lifers must commit to always tell the truth about the unborn and always demand that our laws and culture reflect that truth. 

This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. If you’re a fan of Breakpoint, leave a review on your favorite podcast app. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.