While the macro forces of Religious Right misogyny need to be resisted strenuously - and the real harm they cause can’t be diminished - I maintain that the everyday Religious Right Pro Life Christian sincerely believe they are standing up for what they genuinely believe is right.
What am I basing this theory on? I'm basing it on what I experienced during the time when I was a Religious Right Pro-Lifer.
It's important for those outside of the Religious Right to understand: this subculture encouraged me to give strong deference to authority. This instruction was often under-girded by the assertion that people in authority only hold their positions because God ordained them to be in power.
I was not encouraged to develop critical thinking skills and was often warned strongly against questioning what leaders and celebrity pastors (who I was told spoke infallibly for God) said or taught.
With the issue of pregnancy specifically, the trouble is that the simple, rigid dualism of that worldview didn't equip me to have a comprehensive view of issue that nuanced.
My worldview didn’t understand or account for ectopic pregnancy. It didn’t get the science of fetal heartbeats correct. It didn’t even acknowledge - let alone care to address - systemic issues that have helped other industrialized nations achieve lower abortion rates.
What was regularly reinforced to me was that “abortionists” were wantonly cruel murders of babies. I now see that this was a thoroughly dehumanized caricature, but I simply didn't know any better at the time.
Pregnancy was so politicized and weaponized as a wedge issue that I was rendered wholly incapable of seeing the terrible outcomes of that narrow, reductionist policy agenda.
That ideological bent didn't acknowledge - let alone help me to develop - a consistent ethic of life; one where issues like the lives and health of women while pregnant, climate change, mass incarceration, gun violence, war, capital punishment, and refugee crises constitute a seamless garment of pro-life belief.
And tellingly, there was never any mention of how men - whose "cooperation" is necessary for a pregnancy to occur - factored into the entire issue. The entire issue was framed to me as a problem radical feminism and godless, evil liberals.
So, what changed?
Gladly, I eventually saw this worldview for the inadequate construct that it was. But that process didn't happen automatically.
It happened because I listened to opposing viewpoints and had civil discussion with people patient enough to push past what I believed, however foolishly, to engage on conceptual, ethical, and philosophical levels.
It happened because I maintained a dogged dedication to intellectual honesty (the truth shall set you free) that ultimately sent me against the strong flow of the Religious Right.
I say this not to pat myself on the back. In fact, it's still somewhat embarrassing to admit that I once held such misguided beliefs.
Rather, I say it to encourage people not to write off Jon and Jane Doe Pro Life person in the way that I was taught to write off "abortionists" and "crazed feminists" and "evil liberals" by the Religious Right.
While the macro forces of Religious Right misogyny need to resisted strenuously, the everyday people who have been mislead by its rhetoric will only be willing to engage in an exchange of ideas if they aren't dehumanized.
