As a pro-life advocate and author of a pro-life apologetic book, it has been disappointing to see pro-life laws be constantly defeated at the ballot box in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned. Fortunately, overturning Roe has still resulted in tens of thousands of saved lives; and it’s no surprise that the pro-choice movement would strike back in the wake of their greatest defeat.
But I still wonder why it has been so difficult to oppose pro-abortion amendments or pass pro-life laws after Roe’s demise. I can think of a few reasons.
First, it’s important to remember that people are complex; so there are lots of reasons to explain these defeats. For a long time, a person calling himself “pro-life” would never have those convictions tested since legal abortion was the status quo. But now that the “quo of Roe is no mo’,” suddenly he may vote for abortion because only a thin group dynamic in his church or political party motivated him to keep identifying as pro-life.
And there is, of course, the lying from the pro-abortion side who use their friends in the media to say that pro-life laws will result in women being denied care after miscarriages and other nonsense.
But here’s one reason I wonder about but haven’t seen discussed: people are desensitized to death, so hearing that babies are dying from abortion doesn’t move them as much as it did in the past.
I used to work for a group that set up large graphic exhibits with pictures of the unborn—before and after abortion—at major public universities. When we did this in the early 2000’s, huge crowds would come to see the exhibit, and the students were boisterous. In some cases, we thought there would be a riot among the students.
But as the 2010’s began, we noticed a trend. Students were buried in their iPhones browsing the internet and didn’t care. I think for many the graphic images of abortion had become old news. They had seen far more gruesome content on the internet for years.
Fast-forward to 2023. When I browse Twitter to see what’s happening in the world, I routinely see channels pop up in my feed that post videos of people being killed in accidents and other unfortunate circumstances.
When I was a teenager, the only way to see a gruesome death was to go that one kid’s house and watch the cult classic Faces of Death—the one you could only find at that less-than-reputable independent video store. But how many teens and pre-teens today have grown up on a limitless diet of shock and gore, accessible 24/7 on their devices?
Perhaps the pro-life movement’s challenges in the future will be to sanctify society and save it from both traditional porn that demeans life-giving sexual love as well as newer “gorn” (gore porn) that turns death (including unjust deaths) into something that piques our curiosity rather than our sense of justice.