There is no "pro-life." There is only forced birth -- and when. Why can't you say it?

People who call themselves "pro-life" often object to the coldly accurate use of "forced birth" to describe their position. They should ask themselves why.

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I have a confession. I’m a forced birther.

There is a point in a pregnancy — I’m not precisely sure when — that I support state power forcing a woman to give birth if there are no extenuating circumstances. There is a time point and a set of circumstances, in my view, at which the brutality of the treatment of the fetus outweighs the brutality of the forced birth.

I would give heavy deference to the pregnant woman and her doctor; but like Roe v. Wade itself did, I envision the government having the limited power to coerce birth.

America has deeply damaged itself, in my view, by not “framing” the abortion “debate” in those terms. There is no “pro-life.” There is no “pro-choice.” There is only government forced birth. At how many weeks. And under what circumstances.

Multiple generations of destructively vapid language

If we had continually discussed abortion rights in this way from Roe forward — if we had looked soberly and honestly at the right balance of brutality — I think our country would be much better off today in soooo many ways.

But as is often the case, Americans shrank from open, honest consideration of the brutality done in our name.

Rather than face the flesh and blood realities and trade-offs of forced birth and pregnancy termination in our medical system, America indulged in an abstract, performative personal virtue contest that has culminated in the brutal end of abstraction.

Six-week forced birth is abortion prohibition, not regulation. It’s very similar to alcohol prohibition and drug prohibition and gun prohibition and book prohibition, all of which fail because people imagine they can disapprove a thing into non-existence.

People imagine their personal abstract disapproval of an idea should translate into vicious state action at gun point for other people, without thinking about how that government action itself changes or damages society.

And, of course, humans often, if not always, find ways to exclude themselves from the consequences of their performative disapproval imposed on other people.

The forced birth war is the consequence of cheap vanity

That cheap moral vanity is the reason that we have total, escalating moral war — which I am committed to waging relentlessly until there’s a real offer of peace or until you forcibly stop me — over the government’s maternal brutality.

Abortion rates have spiked nationally, along with teen birth rate and baby death in Texas, because of cheap vanity. 59,000 women and girls have been pregnant by rape in forced birth states without rape exceptions since Dobbs because of cheap vanity. Women in many states face far more dangerous pregnancies because of cheap vanity.

Nothing better illustrates this cheap “pro-life” vanity more perfectly than the indifference of actual “pro-lifers” to those facts.

Indeed, rather than express any concern over those facts, my serious “pro-life” interlocutors (I have quite a few) mostly object to my use of the term “forced birth.” They call it emotional. It is not.

“Forced birth” is the opposite of emotional. It is a coldly accurate phrase — morally, mechanically, operationally. I suspect they mean it causes them to feel emotions they don’t want to feel about a belief system they’ve oriented their public lives around.

That is not my problem.

Most “serious” pro-lifers I know cannot face the cold governing consequences of their beliefs. So they prefer I don’t mention them. They always imagined their policy preference could be achieved without intrusive brutality and state violence — and somehow everyone would love them for it.

That is delusional.

So if you don’t like “forced” birth, you can use coerced or mandated or compulsory or any other accurate other word you prefer. Feel free to pick one, my serious “pro-life” friends.

But if you can’t accurately state your general position on how the government should violently impose your gauzy impression of “life” on other people because it’s painful for you to say, then you don’t have a belief or a position. And you never did.

You just wanted the government to say you’re right and good and better than the rest of us who actually do the hard moral work of looking the brutality balance in the eye.

You’re not better than us.

Until you recognize that — and reason with us accordingly — there is no chance for moral peace.

What about “babykiller?”

I do not, for one second, believe “life” begins at conception. No one believes that, functionally. If they did, there wouldn’t even be a six-week fig leaf on Florida’s looming abortion prohibition.

But I am a limited “forced birther” because I do not want to be a “babykiller.”

There is a point for me at which a fetus becomes a baby in moral terms enforceable by government. I’m not sure where exactly it is, but it is well beyond 15 weeks, and it is subject to real, executable exceptions, based on a wide range of circumstances.

Thus, my understanding of the point and circumstance at which a fetus becomes a “baby” that should be protected through forced birth is simply different than that of yours, pro-lifers.

Dishonest, unserious forced birthers like Marilyn Paul, who runs the Options for Women clinic in Lakeland, have long weaponized that simple disagreement of time and circumstance with genuinely “emotional” language like “babykiller.”

Because of that simple disagreement of time and circumstance, which she never even tried to discuss with me, Marilyn once called me “babykiller” to my face when she saw me wearing an Obama shirt on an election day.

And it will come as no surprise that Marilyn was on hand to support Bloody Jennifer Canady on the night Canady openly lied to me and everybody else about her forced birth intentions as a candidate.

And it was a Marilyn Paul, Options for Women event that led Jennifer Canady and Grady Judd to launch a multi-day, felony-charge womanhunt of Bonnie Patterson-James, a protestor who tossed a pair of balled up panties near a deputy attending this political event in uniform.

Options for Women competes with a clinic next door that terminates pregnancies by trying to convince women to give birth. Last year, when I visited her “clinic” just before the official fall of Roe, Marilyn described herself to me as “pro-choice” in an eye-rollingly transparent effort at gaslighting.

But whatever my opinion of Marilyn as a person — it was never great; and it’s getting worse by the day — I always understood the necessity of her “clinic” in giving “pro-life” zealots a voice in a Roe-defined world. She was the cost of peace, as I saw it.

We’re all forced birthers. I can say it. Why can’t you?

That peace is gone. Marilyn and Canady and Trump and DeSantis and all of you silent “pro-lifers” killed it.

In a world of forced birth and criminalized abortion and total moral war, Marilyn’s clinic is just a snitch center and adoption coercion engine — run by somebody who thinks you’re a “babykiller” if you wear the wrong political shirt. I will treat it and her accordingly.

I am not a “babykiller.”

I don’t know any babykillers, any people who actually believe they are killing babies by honestly and compassionately seeking the least possible harm in the line between brutalizing a mother and brutalizing a fetus. That is why “babykiller” is a garbage, emotional term and “forced birth” is not.

All of you, pro-lifers, are forced birthers just like me.

But the terms of your forced birth are exponentially more brutal than mine. Your forced birth is literally killing babies and mothers alike. You have to decide if that makes you babykillers. I’ll never call you that.

But I will tell you, mercilessly, to your faces, over and over again that you are brutalizing rape victims, tormenting women carrying fetuses that will die when they become babies, and driving up the abortion rate as a whole. I send Marilyn Paul regular updates on these matters via email that she refuses to address because she’s a moral coward.

Let’s see how long the rest of you can keep up your silence.

Religious conservative Randy Wilkinson is the most honest and constructive pro-lifer I know today

If you want an example of how not to be a moral coward, “pro-lifers,” you could do a lot worse than Randy Wilkinson, former School Board member and multi-term County Commissioner. Randy has been one of the most fervent religious and “pro-life” politicians I’ve known in my 25 years in Polk County.

As I said, I have running conversations with many, many, many “conservatives” or people who think they disagree with me on most things. (More often than not, they don’t, actually.) No conversation is more open and direct and sometimes harsh (particularly on my side) and morally complex than mine and Randy’s. I value it very much, even though it is crazy-making at times.

I’m publishing below, with Randy’s permission, some of the correspondence he has shared with me on forced birth.

If you other “pro-life” folks could be this honest and specific, there might be a path out of the war you launched casually on 60-to-70 percent of the public but don’t even want. This note is the product of two people trying to understand each other in a really difficult subject:

If Pro lifers like me are more interested in saving lives than maintaining a position we had better look at what’s happened since the Dobbs decision. If, like me, you really wish to reduce abortions we need to face facts that the law prohibiting abortions post six weeks was a bridge too far.

Both CBS News and Glen Beck from opposite poles have reported that US abortions have actually increased since the Dobbs Decision of June 24, 2022, Beck says there are 55,000 more abortions annually. You’d have to assume that most of these occurred in states which changed abortion laws. Take the 6 week law in effect in Iowa for example. Most women don’t even know they’re pregnant by 6 weeks and don’t have the opportunity to get an Ultrasound before then. Ultrasound imaging has been the the greatest preventative of abortions. What’s going to prevent them now?

Perhaps most damaging, is that even the mere discussion drew predictable backlash enraging and motivating pro abortion forces enough to get a sufficient number of petitions signed to get a Constitutional Amendment on the ballot which would allow abortions until viability, or, six months. Tellingly on WEDU’s This Week in Tampa Bay, Paula Dockery reported that a new poll found surprisingly that 53 percent of Florida Republicans support the Constitutional Amendment and 70 percent of all voters.

Covid has changed everything. Before 2020, 42% of abortions were by prescription drugs. By 2023, 52% were. Telehealth mushroomed with Doctor’s Offices closed and workers staying home. When pregnant women can get the two pills allowing abortions up till ten weeks and do it over the phone, perhaps from across the country or even Canada, how in the world would that be prevented. I don’t know how they could and certainly not without threat to the personal freedom of all.

The six week abortion bill is the product of Group Think. Perhaps the Governor thought it would help him in Republican primaries like Iowa which already had a six week law.

We have come to a stalemate in the abortion battle. We’ve checkmated one another.

I would disagree that we’ve “stalemated” each other.

I would say instead that a small, radical minority lacking public support destroyed Roe’s tenuous peace, which had allowed “pro-life” and “pro-choice” people to co-exist and compete openly. They replaced it with brutal forced birth at government gunpoint that has created more abortions and vastly more suffering.

The public has rebelled — and will continue to.

But disagreements aside, Randy isn’t talking about war here or running away at top speed from the consequences of his “beliefs” — unlike virtually every other “pro-life” person I know. He and I, as archetypes, could work out a livable peace, I think.

The Canadys and Trumps and DeSantises and Pauls and Stembergers don’t want that peace. They’ll drive up abortion and suffering all day long if they get to prance around with an unearned, laughable air of moral superiority.

But they also won’t be determinative over the medium and long term. You will be, my serious pro-life friends and fellow forced birthers.

So do you have an offer of peace? Or do you condemn us all to an endless war you’re afraid to even fight.