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Elizabeth Warren Wants to ‘Shut Down’ Crisis Pregnancy Centers

If abortion is murder, it should not be legal, and if it is not murder, it should not be rare.

Speaking to a gaggle of reporters Tuesday, Senator Elizabeth Warren called for crisis pregnancy centers around the country to be "shut down."

"In Massachusetts right now, those 'crisis pregnancy centers' that are there to fool people who are looking for pregnancy-termination help outnumber true abortion clinics by three-to-one," Warren said. "We need to shut them down here in Massachusetts, and we need to shut them down all around the country. You should not be able to torture a pregnant person like that."

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Crisis pregnancy centers support pregnant women and provide clothes and supplies for their children after birth. Senator Warren protests that these centers "fool" women and divert them from "pregnancy-termination help," that is, killing their unborn children. Warren adds that these centers "torture" women, presumably by encouraging them not to "terminate" their pregnancies.

As National Review's Nate Hochman pointed out, progressives want to have it both ways on this issue. On the one hand, they claim pro-lifers don't care about pregnant women and their newborn children. On the other, they object to conservatives supporting women and children, because that support might deter women from procuring abortions.

It is good to support pregnant women, of course, but the premise of the first objection—that pro-lifers have no right to oppose abortion unless and until they materially support pregnant women and their children—is ridiculous. No one argues that, in order to support homicide laws, a person must first have eradicated all forms of material want that could possibly contribute to a person's choosing to murder someone.

The second objection reflects the progressive movement's prevailing view on abortion. It no longer considers abortion a necessary evil that society must tolerate but a positive good that must be celebrated and subsidized. This is at least more coherent than the idea that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." If abortion is murder, it should not be legal, and if it is not murder, it should not be rare.

The Democratic Party has both an ideological and electoral interest in preventing childbirth. Childless women in particular are integral to the Democratic coalition. Counties with high fertility rates are overwhelmingly likely to vote Republican. The family is by its nature a conservative institution. People with families and stable personal lives tend not to do things like this, for example.

If your goal is to turn the United States into a continental human-resources department, you need a lot of unhappy people to staff it. From that perspective, keeping people single and childless is good policy.

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