Treat Abortion Bans Like You’d Treat Ritual Human Sacrifice

I.

“A fetus isn’t an ideal,” some would say. “They’re real.”

Believing they’re alive is believing an ideal. Believing they’re separate from the bodies carrying them, not fully belonging to the people who are literally growing them with an umbilical cord, is an ideal. “Abortion is murder” is an ideal.

TikTok user @beevesoftime uses a simple thought experiment to unmask this. Pretend you’re staunchly against abortion and just starting college. You meet your new roommate and become fast friends with her. One night she confesses a dark secret: she murdered a living child on purpose once. How do you react?

Now imagine the secret was that she once got an abortion. How do you react? It is not the same set of emotions.

But here’s something real. It’s not a possibility, not a high probability, but a certainty that deaths will come from the bans on abortion that just took effect in several states.

Some pregnancies are ectopic, meaning the embryo implants outside the uterus. They are always unviable and often life-threatening. Incomplete miscarriages, homicidal men who don’t want a child, and other causes will also kill more pregnant people.

Those who support the bans anyway are effectively telling you that these real deaths are justified by certain religious ideals. This means, for all intents and purposes, that they are condoning human sacrifice.

II.

Many of the Aztecs who witnessed human sacrifices were no doubt sincere in their belief that these murders kept the sun coming up. Others — some of the nobles, maybe — were likely skeptical but knew it would render the populace more obedient by inspiring awe and fear. Some, if we’re being real, just watched.

How about the gladiator matches in the Colosseum? Plenty of Romans viewed a warrior’s heroic death as a glorious ideal to pursue in itself. Others liked that this entertainment made for a less rebellious citizenry. Some, again, just watched.

Many American Christians will tell you that banning abortion upholds ideals about fetuses having their own lives and souls. Others, primarily Republican politicians, don’t see it this way (and have gotten many abortions for their mistresses) but eagerly fundraise on the collective zeal of those who do, largely to enact other policies that enrich their corporate donors. Some are trolls who delight in others’ suffering.

None of the deaths in any of the three scenarios needed or need to happen. They’re not about warding off imminent physical threats. They’re done in the name of religious ideals that ultimately end up serving as forms of political control.

III.

That TikTok user went on. “You know in your gut that a threat to a zygote is not a threat to a person,” she continues. “You know that someone who is ready to end a pregnancy is not the same as someone who is ready to kill. Pay attention to the people who are trying to tell you otherwise. By their rhetoric, there are thousands of murderers marching in the street right now.”

“Are they acting like it? Are they terrified? No. They’re just mildly grumpy. Laughing, even. Because this isn’t fear. This is contempt. They’re not saying ‘murder’ because it’s accurate. They’re saying it because it’s the most provocative thing they can think of to say. They don’t want you to treat people who get abortions like murderers. They want you to treat them like dogs.”

Few anti-abortion people will say they agree with treating pro-choice people as sacrifices or dogs. It doesn’t matter. Their support for banning abortion and for the Republican politicians who made it happen speaks much louder.

IV.

There are times when taking lives is necessary. In a sane society, this doesn’t happen in the service of distant ideals; it happens in response to real and urgent needs that outweigh the tragic cost of killing someone. If someone is shooting up a school, for example, lethal action is usually necessary. “Sacrificing” the shooter, and potentially a cop (though their expensive equipment makes death much less likely), is worth it to save dozens of children’s lives.

Radical lawmakers, and somehow many self-proclaimed Christians who vote for them, have sociopathically abandoned this way of thinking. They now cling to ideals that clearly cause more pain and death than they prevent. They cling to a primitive reading of the 2nd Amendment so hard that children routinely die from assault rifles in classrooms. They cling to the ideal of the “free market” so hard that anything remotely inconveniencing free trade among rich people, anything impeding their hypothetical freedom to own half the planet, is worth the deaths of countless poor people from COVID, rising sea levels, inability to buy expensive drugs, and more.

These lawmakers are often elected by Christians, and may even claim to be Christian, despite spending far more energy defending a few Old Testament ideals and the “prosperity gospel” than any of the concrete acts of kindness that Jesus spent his life promoting like feeding the hungry and healing the sick.

If Jesus really is the son of God, I think he would forgive us for not taking those people seriously when they claim to be motivated by “protecting life.”

V.

I’m no vigilante. I’m no Liam Neeson in Taken. I am, however, compelled to struggle against institutionalized human sacrifice with any and all resources I have.

How will I do so? How will you? Most importantly, how will we all?

I’ve written and donated and decided who I’m going to vote for. Those haven’t changed much. The real solutions are known. We need to withhold labor and provide mutual aid while we do so. We need to use encrypted messaging apps, join general strikes, and donate to activist organizations if we’re in a position to do so.

We need more people to do these things, and consistently, and simultaneously. We need to organize massive displays of solidarity that show, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we will not stand around and watch people die for others’ ideals.