Bryan Caplan is a libertarian economist with a large following. So, when he writes The Tragic Hysteria of Abortion a response is worthwhile. Plenty of people will read and accept his views as a reasonable middle ground. Unfortunately, they are not. 

To quickly encapsulate Caplan’s view, which you can read in full at his December 1 substack called Bet On It, Caplan thinks “pro-life overrates the value of the unborn; pro-choice underrates it.” He identifies camps—the radical pro-lifer and the radical pro-choicer. He arrives at the notion that abortion should be rare based on a bit of pro-choice research called The Turnaway Study. This is interesting all by itself. 

There is such a thing as a “radical pro-choicer.” There is actually no such thing as a “radical pro-lifer.” There are only people who see that the genesis of human life at its earliest stages is of the deepest moral significance, and then there are those who do not. If you recognize that we all started out as an embryo, and that our own value hinges on the value of that embryo, then you are pro-life. Not radically, but reasonably so. 

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To highlight the idea that pro-lifers are radical (read crazy) however, Caplan starts with a thought experiment: in a fire would you save one toddler or a dozen embryos? It’s supposed to show pro-lifers don’t really value the embryo, because absolutely everyone would choose to save the toddler. Me too. But what does that say about the value of the embryos? Not much. If, in another tragic thought experiment, I could only rescue one person between my daughter and my husband, I’d choose my daughter. That most certainly would not mean I think my husband is less valuable.  

Caplan goes on to highlight how pro-choicers are radical too, in a different thought experiment. “If you could either save one human embryo from a fire, or just let it burn, what are you morally obliged to do? Again, only a small minority even claims they would shrug and walk away,” he writes. Really? My best bet is that for many—they both could and would shrug and walk away. Radical pro-choicers are utterly invested in ideas around that embryo having no significance, no value, and not being worth saving at all. 

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Women are uniformly advised to have abortions early; when the fetus looks less baby-like, is hidden, and can be expelled without being in a hospital. If we ever talk about abortion—the mainstream, acceptable view is that earlier is better. We cannot adhere to this view while simultaneously ascribing value to the embryo, and most people don’t. 

In identifying why his view is rational and reasonable—that abortion is morally justified in only extreme scenarios, but otherwise not, Caplan goes on to talk about the Turnaway Study in some detail. It shows that only a thin sliver of women who wish for an abortion but cannot get one actually regret having a baby. This leads him to conclude that “unless your situation is extremely bleak compared to those faced by other women who want to end their pregnancies, you should keep your baby.”

But how do we define “extremely bleak”? When a woman says a baby will ruin her life, is it hysteria as Caplan thinks? Or is it simply rational? I’d argue it is factual to think a baby will mean the end of your life as you know it. If a woman is embedded in a society like ours, where having children is largely viewed as a barrier to personal growth, job satisfaction and by extension life satisfaction, then having one, particularly under unexpected circumstances, does indeed “ruin” that. 

The “radical” pro-life position understands this. We understand the human condition and the human predicament. We also understand the sin condition of man and that sin can appear seductive and blind us to other options. 

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Caplan’s wishes for how abortion is treated in our culture would be a massive improvement over what we have now—as they would amount to abortion becoming rarer. But it is radical pro-lifers, to use his term, who will get us there by introducing the idea that each human being even as an embryo has value and a purpose. 

So “radical” pro-lifers trundle along, attempting to mitigate the reasons for abortion, and always counselling that there is no obstacle so great it cannot be overcome, no mess so big it cannot be cleaned up, while simultaneously also welcoming women who have had abortions into our fold for counselling and care. If we have to be called “radical” for believing this, then we can take it as a compliment.