What the opposition to abortion is really about

Comment published on New York Times blog in response to opinion essay by Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, “Can I ask a few questions about abortion?,” October 29, 2020:

The reason Christian compassion plays no role is that the "pro-life" position actually treats the lives in question as a kind of property. The real agenda is patriarchal and servile. It demands an ethics of obedience to authority on the part of people who are engaged in doing something that persons other than themselves can claim some stake in. The ethics of servility apply to pregnant woman as they do to workers. This explains also why it is the right wing that wants abortion to be illegal. Abortion being illegal means that child-bearing is mandatory. Pregnant women then are workers who are supposed to do their job. And have no rights.

Religion in America is not about the Christian (and Jewish) ideas of compassion for people and especially the disadvantaged and poor. Proof that abortion is not is that the objects of concern here may well not even be conscious individuals, they can be objects of obligations yet not of compassion, as they themselves cannot suffer or have experiences and desires.

Religion in America is about the duties citizens have to a God who in this scheme is a figure mirroring state authority. Thus, we have printed on our currency and signs in court rooms identification of the authority of government with God.

Blessed then are the obedient and also the successful and powerful. The American sensibility is Calvinist, celebrating those with claims to propriety that go with property. America's religion is capitalism.