Liberalism is both an ideology and an instinct, and the first is a function of the second. The liberal instinct, for better or worse, is the political manifestation of empathy; it asks that when making policy decisions, we put ourselves in the shoes of the person or group most likely to be hurt by our proposals. This instinct yields an ideology that compels those who hold it to seek both the greatest benefit for the greatest number and the least harm for the least advantaged. Further, the second half of this maxim takes precedence over the first; i.e., when the rights of different groups come into conflict, intuition necessitates that liberals side with the least advantaged, refusing to confer a benefit to the well-to-do at the expense of the less fortunate.

Since before I was born, the consistent liberal consensus has held would-be mothers as the group most likely to be hurt by poor abortion policy. Under the Clinton administration, liberals negotiated the conflict between the rights of the mother to bodily autonomy and the pursuit of happiness with the rights (or potential rights, depending on medical perspective) of the fetus to life and the pursuit of happiness by advocating that abortion be safe, legal and rare. This position minimized harm to mothers by permitting them to exercise their privilege to terminate their pregnancy under certain, extreme circumstances while avoiding a reality where that privilege is wantonly exercised.

More recently, Democratic rhetoric on abortion has taken a decisively illiberal turn. Much in the way that pro-slavery arguments in the early 19th century transitioned from Thomas Jefferson’s “necessary evil” to John C. Calhoun’s “positive good,” modern pro-choice arguments seem to suggest to a greater degree than their predecessors that abortion is something to be celebrated. To be clear, there is nothing liberal about the celebration of a competition of rights between two groups. “The trouble with competitions,” to quote George Orwell, “is that somebody wins them.” And so the exaltation of abortion as a positive good is not liberal.

But the justification of abortion as a necessary evil, though more moderate and palatable than the contemporary left-wing consensus, suffers from a similar illiberalism. Whereas the latter is flawed in its praise of a competition between rights, the former is flawed in whom it declares the winner. The liberal instinct is supposed to side with the least advantaged group, i.e., the group with the most to lose and the worst ability to advocate for itself. There is no person more silent, less able to advocate for itself, or with more to lose than a fetus in the womb. If those of us who have already been born put ourselves in their places when making policies that affect their lives and their futures, then we have no choice but to oppose abortion.

So the liberal position in favor of life has clear advantages over that in favor of choice, but it also has an appeal that the conservative pro-life position lacks: Liberal pro-life policy does not end at birth. The end goal of such a policy is not simply to compel mothers to carry their pregnancies to term, but to provide an environment that is conducive to the success of both the mother and the child by offering access to affordable health care and education, paid parental leave and child care support, among other things. Clearly, pro-life liberalism does the best job of providing the greatest benefit for the greatest number while causing the least harm to the least advantaged.