I rarely read Ross Douthat, but every once in a while I check in just to see what new nonsense he’s peddling. So when this morning’s posting — How the Pro-Life Movement’s Deal With Trump Made America More Pro-Choice — caught my eye, I thought I would see which logic- and reality-twist he would be up to this time.
And twist he did:
The captivity of the pro-life movement to the character of Donald Trump is a crucial aspect of contemporary abortion politics.
While Douthat does not insist that Trump’s personality is the sole reason for the rise in pro-choice sentiment in post-Dobbs America, he clearly wants to make it a major one. Well, in a way it is — but not in the way Douthat tries to argue.
Douthat admits that “the world is a complicated place,” but then minimizes that complexity to argue that
one does not need to be a monocausalist to see how the identification of the anti-abortion cause with [Trump’s] particular persona, his personal history and public style, might have persuaded previously wavering and ambivalent Americans to see the pro-life movement differently than they did before.
In law, and in logic, there is a fallacy known as post hoc, ergo propter hoc (and thank you, West Wing, for that!): just because event B follows event A, that doesn’t mean that A is the cause of B. It’s not Trump’s personality that spurred the growth of the pro-choice movement, it was the effect of the elimination of a constitutional right to abortion that woke the sleeping giant. Trump’s personality could arguably be said to have influenced his choice of justices who did that, but that’s not what Douthat means. He means:
[Trump] is also a cause of [the pro-lifers’] increased unpopularity, an instigator for the country’s pro-choice turn — because the form of conservatism that he embodies is entirely misaligned with the pro-life movement as it wants and needs to be perceived.
In a word, no. Trump is, as Douthat admits, “a man famous for his playboy lifestyle who exudes brash sexism and contempt for weakness,” but that is exactly what draws many anti-abortionists to support him; he embodies and exudes their own contempt for women and their belief in (White) male supremacy. Trump’s character did not “captivate” the anti-abortion crowd against its will; it allowed them to openly express what they had previously felt privately.
To the extent that Trump’s personality did make the anti-abortion movement more unpopular, it’s only because it revealed to the rest of the world just how ugly the anti-abortion movement’s personality really is. Trump’s personality is not “misaligned” with the anti-abortion movement; quite the opposite.
But what really motivates the pro-choice people is not just the anti-abortionists’ sexism and contempt; it’s the concrete consequences of what they have done — the disastrous consequences to women’s health, safety, finances, and lives — that drives the pro-choice movement in the post-Dobbs world. The immediate and viral reaction to Tuesday’s Arizona Supreme Court ruling reinstating a total abortion ban shows the strength of the pro-choice motivation. See, e.g., The Arizona Supreme Court just upended Trump’s gambit on abortion. Trump’s character had nothing to do with it.
Side note on the Arizona Supreme Court ruling: I read the majority decision, and it is more nuanced than some here have acknowledged. It is based on the interpretation of statutes, holding that the wording of the 15-week ban did not make it clear that it was revoking the territorial law, and that it is the legislature’s job to make clear its intentions. They also mandated that the prohibition can only be enforced going forward, that the ruling is stayed to give the plaintiffs a chance to challenge the constitutionality of the 1864 law, and that they are emphatically not basing their ruling on any personal views about abortion:
This case involves statutory interpretation—it does not rest on the justices’ morals or public policy views regarding abortion; nor does it rest on § 13-3603’s constitutionality, which is not before us.
(§ 13-3603 is the old 1864 law, as codified in current statutes.)
One can argue with their statutory interpretation (as the dissent does), but I don’t read this as showing a particular animosity toward abortion on the part of the majority. Fears expressed elsewhere on this forum that this court will find a way to block the effort to put a constitutional amendment protecting abortion on the Arizona ballot are therefore unfounded, in my view.