Kheiriddin: Abortion policy is the tool. Authoritarianism is the goal.

Of note and interesting parallels among disparate countries:

This week, Mike Pence made it clear: he would ban abortions when pregnancies aren’t viable. The former Vice President, now candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination, expanded on his anti-abortion position, which includes a federal ban at six weeks gestation, such as Iowa has now imposed, and outlawing the sale of mifepristone, an abortion pill that the FDA approved twenty years ago.

“I want to always err on the side of life,” Pence told AP News. “I would hold that view in these matters because … I honestly believe that we got this extraordinary opportunity in the country today to restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law.”

It seems illogical, not to mention inhumane, to outlaw abortion when there is no chance a fetus can be born alive.  One is not saving a life, because that life will end before it comes to term. And one may be taking a life: a non-viable pregnancy can kill the woman carrying it, as evidenced in a recent lawsuit challenging an abortion ban in the state of Texas.

Forcing a woman to carry a fetus fated to die is also psychological torture of the highest order. Every time a stranger asks about her pregnancy, every time she catches a glimpse of her swollen abdomen in the mirror, every time she thinks of the child she wanted but who is not to be, she is made to suffer. There’s nothing Christian about that.

But that does not matter to Pence. He needs to mobilize the votes of the religious right to win the GOP nomination. He has the pedigree: he championed their issues in the White House during the Trump administration and since then only hardened his stance. “I am pro-life and I don’t apologize for it,” Pence told Face the Nation in April. He argued this week that restricting abortion is “more important than politics” and calls it the “cause of our time.”

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That’s where the clothes come off the emperor. Pence is no defender of the American Constitution, nor is he a conservative. He is a religious autocrat. Founding father Thomas Jefferson famously declared that when the American people adopted the First Amendment, they built a “wall of separation between the church and state.” Christian autocracy flies in the face of this dictate, basing policy not on evidence, reason, or debate, but on the tenets of a specific faith. It violates the United States Supreme Court’s neutrality test that requires that government be neither the ally nor the adversary of religion.

But the American religious right isn’t concerned about this. It has friends in high places. Domestically, it now has the Supreme Court on its side, as evidenced by its overturning of Roe v. Wade. And internationally, it has a lot of disturbing company.

One of those is Hungary’s Fidesz Party, that came to power in 2010 under Viktor Orban. In 2022, the European Union Parliament condemned Orban for creating an “electoral autocracy” that restricts the rights of the judiciary, LGBT individuals, the press and ethnic minorities.  That same year, Orban set his sights on Hungary’s abortion law. It currently permits terminations up to twelve weeks in cases of rape, risks to the mother’s health, serious personal crisis, or a severe foetal disability. But by decree, the Hungarian government now requires that pregnant women must listen to the foetal heartbeat prior to making their decision, similar to laws enacted in Texas and Kentucky.

This is no coincidence. In 2022, Orban addressed the American Conservative Political Action Conference, proclaimed his nation “the Lone Star State of Europe” and said, “The globalists can all go to hell. I have come to Texas.” (Note to my Canadian readers: Orban’s fandom is not just limited to American Conservatives. Just this month, former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who now heads the International Democrat Union, called for greater ties between conservative parties worldwide, including the Canadian Conservative Party and Fidesz.)

Iran’s Islamic theocracy is another regime infamously hostile to human rights, including those of women. In September 2022, 22-year-old student Jina Masa Amini was killed while in police custody. Her “crime” was not wearing her hijab tightly enough, in contravention of Iran’s strict religious dress codes. Amini’s death sparked nationwide and then worldwide demonstrations under the motto “Woman, Life, Freedom”. In her home country, more than 500 Iranians were killed in the protests and five sentenced to death between September 2022 and April 2023.

As for abortion, it is illegal in Iran unless a fetus is diagnosed with a genetic disorder or the mother’s life is endangered.  But the government has now upped the ante. In May 2023, Iran’s Center for Population Rejuvenation created a volunteer militia called Nafs (life) to identify doctors and clinics performing abortions, and shut them down. Iranian media have dubbed the group the “[Anti] Abortion patrols analogous to the same type of hijab enforcement units that arrested Amini.

Then, there’s China. In 1980, faced with a rising birth rate, China imposed a one-child policy. Millions of women were forced to terminate additional pregnancies, and due to a cultural preference for male children, hundreds of thousands of girls were aborted, abandoned or killed. In 2016, China repealed the policy due to an imbalance of the sexes and low birth rate, resulting in an aging population and demographic decline.

At first glance, China’s policy appears to be the polar opposite of religious pro-life policies that restrict abortion, but it’s driven by the same principle: removing bodily autonomy from women in the name of the state. China’s goal isn’t religious, but secular: the manipulation of the birth rate to ensure a steady supply of workers and soldiers to carry out the nation’s ambitions. And to ensure that the “right” children are conceived, namely, ethnic Han Chinese.

What all three nations have in common is not piety, but ethnic nationalism. The real drivers for their abortion and fertility policies are low birth rates among “desired” groups, coupled with aging populations.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khameni has described population growth as one of the “most urgent duties and essential policies of the Islamic Republic as the leading Shia country in the Muslim world.” Pregnancies are being documented to prevent abortion “so that the population of the country could grow.” Hungary is not only making access to abortion more difficult, but decreeing that women with four children will be exempt from paying income tax for life. In China, whose population shrank this year and was surpassed by that of India, companies are paying employees to have children. But according to an Associated Press investigation, China continues to limit births – including by forced sterilizations — among ethnic minorities including the Muslim Uyghur population of Xinjiang. It further seeks to assimilate these cultures to achieve its policy of “ethnic fusion”.

Pence’s anti-abortion policies are right in step with those of these authoritarian regimes. They meld religious belief with white nationalism and state power. It is no secret that a majority of the Christian right in the United States subscribes to the Great Replacement theory, a conspiracy which claims that white America is being deliberately replaced by non-white immigrants.

Theocracies are not pluralist. They favour believers and condemn those who dissent to second class status, or worse. If Americans think Pence would stop at abortion, they are deluded. Any minority – defined by race, belief, gender or country of origin – would be in his administration’s sights.

If the Republican party is to truly preserve the Constitution, if it is to offer a truly conservative political option, it must reject authoritarianism, including Pence’s Christian autocracy. Otherwise, it will become just as statist as the Left that it condemns.

Source: Abortion policy is the tool. Authoritarianism is the goal.