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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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What I find objectionable is the mentality that teenage pregnancies just randomly fall on some proportion of the population. In fact, they are far more likely to occur in some subcultures than others, specifically those that treat it as something that just randomly happens.

From what I've seen, conservative and particularly religiously conservative communities – and there's a strong overlap here with pro-lifers (and, you might be relieved to hear, National Review!) are much more likely to articulate getting pregnant out of wedlock as a moral choice rather than a sort of chance occurrence [although I am unpersuaded that anyone really believes that] – so I think perhaps you're misattributing that mentality to pro-lifers.

But I also think pro-lifers have noticed that one driver of abortion is shame, and (since their view is that an unborn child shouldn't be aborted) they think "see, pregnancy is not the end of your life, you can be a happy and successful person even if you get pregnant unexpectedly" is a better message than "you moron, you complete idiot, you skank, you got yourself knocked up."

I think it can be hard to articulate a holistic message of "women shouldn't get pregnant out of marriage, that is a moral failing on their part if it is volitional, but if they do they should bring the child to term and trust that good things can still come out of that life" because there is some degree of tension or mixed messaging there, but I do think this is what a majority of strong pro-lifers in the United States believe and a position National Review is much more likely to air than, say, the New York Times.