Pro-Life Policy in a Post-Dobbs America

[Trivia: what four actresses won the Best Actress Oscar in their debut film? Hint: the years were 1952, 1964, 1968, and 1986.]

After the 2022 elections, I wrote about what I called the necessary “differentiation” of America’s pro-life movement, arguing that Americans in different States would need to square themselves with policies that are less than perfect but better than nothing if we want to see any material movement on this subject. This isn’t about abandoning principle so much as it is recognizing that we live in a generally democratic system and a broad majority of Americans want at least some exceptions for abortion.

I write this from Wisconsin, where an excellent 1849 law is still on the books—but currently being completely ignored by a pro-abortion Governor and Attorney General, and where that issue is threatening to tip the 4-3 balance of our state Supreme Court in the wrong direction (pending an April 4 election). Down in Florida, the celebrated Governor DeSantis signed a bill into law last April banning abortion after 15 weeks—deeply imperfect policy, but it passed the democratically elected branches of state government, those politicians got re-elected (by stunning margins) in November, and that law is now on the books and being enforced. All the which, I am ashamed to note, cannot be said of Wisconsin.

But apart from the democratic feasibility of different bans on abortion itself, there are other pro-life policies that warrant discussion. Some of them are getting discussion, although it was noted by a Catholic University of America professor Michael New, how:

Now, a lot of liberal coverage on this issue has amounted to little more than a (simplistic and bad faith) kick in the pants about how, allegedly, it’s wrong for the government to ban abortion without paying for all attendant expenses—medical, childcare, mandating paid maternity leave, etc. etc. The liberal FiveThirtyEight went so far as to frame this as “In their first full legislative sessions after the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, Republican state legislators are being pressed on what “pro-life” really means.”

Now, that remark is dumb: being pro-life means opposing the innocent killing of human beings. Some (though not all) would want to include opposition to the death penalty under that same umbrella; some (probably more) would go so far as to affirm that human life, and more people being around, is good in a fundamental, philosophical way. But insisting that innocent human life not be taken is compatible with thinking that the government need not guarantee payment for related services and expenses. I want to address that issue anyway at least from the above standpoint—the fact that we have a broadly democratic system of government, and if voting majorities are going to see to it that any abortion restrictions go hand-in-hand with enlarged welfare, I at least wanted to make a couple of points about how that could be done best.

Let’s start with this idea: maybe you’ve heard anecdotes of bosses who’ve denied employees raises for fear of pushing them into a “higher tax bracket,” where a higher rate of tax would apply and that would result in them bringing home less money. I think that Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams has quoted a reader-submitted story or two to this effect in his books.

Now, our tax code doesn’t work like that. The thresholds are drawn in our tax code so that every dollar in a certain bracket is taxed at a certain rate, and those rates go up. So you’re not going to wind up swindled because your paycheck was more.

An example from NerdWallet. The numbers are not real, although their webpage does have America’s current real numbers.

The government’s smart in how it collects money. But it is less smart in how it disburses money! One of the big issues in welfare policy is the creation of benefits “cliffs,” where people receiving government assistance will, in fact, wind up taking home less all because their income got bumped up a certain amount. One organization (NCSL) has a pretty great look at how different states have been dealing with this.

This also applies to housing. Howard Husock noted in his book The Poor Side of Town (p. 105) how about many of last century’s subsidized housing programs how “In a system in which rent is fixed at 30 percent of income, increasing household income, just as in traditional public housing, becomes an economic burden. More income means higher rent. Marriage between two working adults leads to the same.” This also applied to housing voucher programs (Section 8 housing), where “Receiving what amounted to a coupon that could only be used for one thing—rent—inevitably distorted personal decisions in a series of subtle ways, as people sought to obtain or retain a financial benefit. Living with another breadwinner—whether a spouse or just a roommate—became a handicap that led to higher rent.”

This is relevant since a lot of what FiveThirtyEight reported falls into this vein: specifically guaranteeing help for poor people. Here are their highlights:

These new proposals — which usually involve strengthening social safety net protections for low-income women — fly in the face of Republican orthodoxy about limited government. Of the 14 states with near-total bans or where abortion is unavailable, at least six have passed or are considering some type of law that would create additional support for pregnant women, new mothers or young children, and seven additional Republican-controlled states with less restrictive abortion laws are considering similar legislation.

. . .

Postpartum Medicaid expansion is just one example. “We’re seeing a lot of activity at the state level this year that I’d call ‘post-Dobbs guilt bills,’” said Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families. Some of these proposals don’t push the envelope — three Republican-controlled legislatures in states where abortion isn’t banned are considering direct funding or tax credits for donating to crisis pregnancy centers, which was a common legislative response to the idea that anti-abortion lawmakers don’t care about pregnant women or new moms, even before the Dobbs decision.

. . .

“It’s a new era, one that conservatives aren’t used to,” said Patrick Brown, a fellow at the right-leaning Ethics and Public Policy Center. “At this point it’s insufficient to focus on a purely legal action to defend life in the womb. We need to be doing more to support low-income moms and parents of all kinds, and that’s pro-life too.”

Again—I quibble with the ambit of what Patrick Brown is calling “pro-life,” except perhaps in the tangential, contingent sense that implementing very popular policies in a wise manner will keep pro-abortion folks from the levers of power. But I digress.

(FiveThirtyEight also noted “Many simply lose the Medicaid coverage they got while they were pregnant — which is easier to obtain than regular Medicaid, thanks to higher income cutoffs — and become uninsured, which can be dangerous, since about one-third of pregnancy-related deaths happen in the year after birth. That’s why many researchers predicted that overturning Roe could make the U.S.’s already-high levels of maternal mortality even worse.” I believe I’ve heard people comment that those “already-high levels” are basically driven by the US being more diligent about medical record-keeping in some form—and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s related to their own “in the year after birth”—but anyway I note this here to remind myself to look into it in the future.)

All that to say: if these sorts of programs are implemented, I’d hope that they avoid discouraging marriage, which is the best institution for a child to grow up in. Conservatives were historically pro-marriage and pro-family not just for moral and philosophical reasons, but because sexual activity unconfined in marriage results in a myriad of harmful effects on people’s lives, and that leads all these “compassionate” voters to demand more government action—often in the form of a paycheck or voucher—which engorges the size of the government all while still not delivering the same kind of comprehensive, nurturing care that helpless children need and deserve.

There are other aspects to enacting these wisely, but I wanted to cover this one today.

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Answer: Shirley Booth (Come Back, Little Sheba), Julie Andrews (Mary Poppins), Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl), and Marlee Matlin (Children of a Lesser God).