Just this past week, Texas passed one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws ever enacted in the post Roe v. Wade United States. It will hypothetically ban virtually all abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy before most women even know they’re pregnant. It will also allow any private citizen to sue any doctor who performs an abortion for up to $10,000 each. As with virtually all draconian abortion bills of this nature, pro-choice groups have already sworn to challenge it in court, where it will almost certainly be defeated as unconstitutional after the State of Texas spends millions of taxpayer dollars defending it. Is there an outside chance this law makes it all the way to the Supreme Court where the newly minted conservative majority uphold it? Well, there’s always a chance, but it is worth noting that all three justices confirmed during the Trump administration stated specifically during their confirmation hearings they believed Roe v. Wade was decided case law. Assuming they were telling the truth, this makes the likelihood of this, or any other hyper-restrictive abortion law, actually becoming enforced criminal or civil code very, very low. After fifty years of futility since Roe v. Wade, no one understands this reality better than conservative, so-called “pro-life” politicians, so why do they keep up the attempt?

Well, the stock answer one would likely receive from their respective offices would probably have something to do with the moral turpitude of the insidious practice of abortion, so even if the chance for success is low, they have a moral obligation to continue the good fight. The problem with this type of response is it is clearly a lie. The reality is, there is a surefire way to reduce the number of abortions in this country by 80% or more almost overnight, and conservative politicians have spurned it for decades – namely providing free universal birth control to all women and girls of childbearing age with the same consistency and regularity as we provide other vaccines. Now, some may object to referring to birth control as a vaccine, but in reality it easily matches if not surpasses any other vaccine for preventative benefit. Research clearly shows birth control is a vaccination against poverty. It’s a vaccination against low educational achievement among women and girls. And yes, it’s a vaccination against ever needing to even consider the wrenching choice between keeping a child you don’t want and/or can’t afford and having an abortion that in addition to the moral question, is a potentially risky and traumatic medical procedure. Birth control is also exponentially cheaper than the thousands of dollars American taxpayers spend in public entitlements for each child of women and girls who never meant to get pregnant in the first place.

So why do they do it? Why do they persist in passing legislation they know is doomed from the start? One would suppose if the goal was to prevent as many abortions as possible that these “pro-life” crusaders would be the biggest cheerleaders in the world for encouraging women and girls get on a birth control regimen as prudent public health policy and want to ensure they have the easiest possible access to encourage maximum coverage. However, this is not the case. The reality is “pro-life” politicians have no interest in solving the very real public health crisis of unintended pregnancy and abortion. In fact, there is powerful disincentive for them to ameliorate the problem at all – Namely, publicly and vocally decrying abortion gets votes, but solving the problem does not.

Politicians know these draconian anti-abortion laws are doomed to failure before they are ever passed out of committee. They know they’ll be challenged in court. They know defending them is futile and an extravagant waste of taxpayer money, but they do it anyway. The reason of course is the issue of abortion is exceedingly easy to demagogue. It is extremely simple to fire up your conservative base if you frame the issue as saving poor innocent little babies from monstrous, murderous abortionists. After all, who doesn’t want to save babies? Babies are cute. Babies are defenseless. Now, this completely ignores the nuance of scientific grey area about when life and moral agency actually begin, but that is a nonissue for politicians who owe their political lives to moral outrage over “killing babies”. The moral indignation over abortion in conservative circles is such that they will forgive conservative politicians almost any personal vice or shameless act of corruption as long as they give public lip service to their disgust and distain for abortion, all who advocate it, and their heart-felt desire to severely punish everyone involved with the practice. Thus “pro-life” politicians engage in a predictable and repeatable cycle, which goes something like this:

First, a conservative politician campaigns on a hardline stance against abortion. They advocate strict restrictions on the procedure, harsh punishments for women and doctors, all with the intention of firing up their conservative “pro-life” base. They get elected and pass these highly restrictive bills knowing full well they will be immediately challenged in court. The draconian laws get prominent, free news coverage as do the politicians who support them. They fork out millions of tax dollars to pay for defending the law in court, then when the law is inevitably thrown out as unconstitutional, they shake their fists and loudly decry dastardly “activist judges” thwarting their righteous efforts. The end result is these politicians can claim they are “tough on abortion” when in actuality, in terms of doing anything practical to reduce the number of abortions, they have done exactly nothing. Their efforts do not prevent one, single, solitary abortion. At its most basic, “pro-life” anti-abortion outrage is nothing but a political bait-and-switch scam that conservative politicians perennially dust off and reuse every two, four, or six years depending on their office, but the health crisis remains, and that’s just exactly how they want it.

There is no question unplanned pregnancy is a huge public health crisis in this country. Whatever one’s stance on abortion, the reality is if women and girls received birth control in the same numbers and with the same regularity as they receive other vaccines, the issue over abortion would largely solve itself. By eliminating the strong majority of unplanned pregnancies, the procedure would mostly be relegated to medically necessary situations where abortion is a lot less controversial. However, conservative “pro-life” politicians are unlikely to take the practical steps to actually improve a public health situation they decry as an abomination, because demonizing abortion is too much of a political cash cow for them to abandon. They have no interest in actually reducing the number of abortions. They aren’t really “pro-life”. They are simply pro-outrage, because hyped up fury over abortion is what keeps getting them votes.