“Choice”: The Word’s Meanings and (Mis)uses
by Ms. Boomer-ang
Society has developed the habit of calling people who support abortion “pro-choice” and people who oppose abortion “anti-choice.” But “pro-choice” is too narrow a term for abortion supporters, and “anti-choice” is too broad a term for me.
”Anti-choice” means a woman has no choice on whether to carry a pregnancy to term, and she must obey orders to abort as strictly as orders to keep the pregnancy. An example of pro-abortion “anti-choice” are supremacist groups that requires women to carry to term all healthy babies of purely the “right” race but requires them to abort all “flawed” or “racially impure” babies. By calling me “anti-choice,” they are lumping me with these groups. Some groups might also require all women to abort their first pregnancy, to show they are willing to sacrifice.
Meanwhile, we hear people who call themselves “pro-choice” advocating unrestricted baby-killing but not unrestricted baby-sparing.
If laws and customs were really “pro-choice,” then:
- Any law enshrining the “right” of a pregnant woman to abortion would also enshrine the “right” of a pregnant woman to carry her pregnancy to term.
- Any law specifying the “right” of a dependent to have an abortion against the wishes of her parent or guardian would also unambiguously specify her “right” to carry a pregnancy to term against the wishes of her parent, guardian, or social worker.
- Any law or ruling giving a woman the “right” to abortion against her husband’s will would also unambiguously give her the right to carry a pregnancy to term against her husband’s will.
- Any law or ruling requiring doctors who refuse to abort to give women a list of doctors who will abort her baby would also require doctors who perform abortions or recommend abortion to give women a woman to give her a list of doctors who will support her carrying her pregnancy to term.
- Any law or ruling requiring crisis pregnancy centers to post lists of abortion facilities would also require abortion facilities to post lists of crisis pregnancy centers.
- All measures making things hard for crisis pregnancy centers would make things equivalently hard for abortion providers.
- Any law criminalizing (in some specific circumstances) trying to dissuade a woman from having an abortion would also criminalize (in equivalent circumstances) trying to pressure her to have an abortion.
- Voluntarily carrying to term a pregnancy conceived by an enemy soldier in rape would not be considered treason.
- Treatment to reverse abortion pills would be legal, at least for woman who have been given that pill by fraud.
- Women and girls would not be given abortion pills or morning after pills without their informed consent. Policy Analyst Leslie Corbly observes that “protecting broad open access to abortion pills” protects.
- Schools, employers, and social service providers would not require women and girls to take morning after or abortion pills. Nor would they allow ridicule of those who refuse them.
- Preference in awards, job promotions, and job hirings would not be given to women who have had abortions and their spouses.
- Any policy providing free abortions would also provide free pre-natal care and free birth for those planning to spare their child’s life.
- Health care providers would not be allowed to electronically sign a woman’s name requesting or agreeing to an abortion without the woman’s knowledge and consent. At least once, when a woman refused to abort a “flawed” baby, an obstetrician called her in for an emergency appointment and presented her with documents agreeing to an abortion, with her signature already added to them, as a fait accompli. (This has implications beyond the abortion issue. Adding signatures electronically without the signer’s knowledge warrants an essay of its own.)
- Women would be able to place babies for adoption, without requiring permission from the biological father. And once finding out about the baby’s birth, the biological father would not be able to get the adoption annulled and make the woman take the baby back.
- Women would not be punished, sued, or criminally prosecuted for carrying pregnancies to term.
- There would be no laws or policies summarily condemning any group of babies to abortion (or infanticide). A September 2025 Google search ran into Artificial Intelligence (AI) claiming “no government or legal system has a policy that forbids a person from carrying a pregnancy to term.” Though this is encouraging, it is not clear if it meant only national central government, regardless of local governments. It is common knowledge that over the past half century, for varying periods of time, some countries had laws and policies against having more than a certain number of biological children or having deformed children. AI claims that (fortunately) maximum family size measures have been rescinded in specific Asian countries, but it acknowledges that some states in India deny or are considering denying government jobs to women who bear more than two children and husbands who stay married to them.
In the US, no state (yet) has a law directly summarily condemning certain babies to abortion, but forced abortions occur on a case by case basis.
In addition, the policies of privately supplied essential programs and services can have feel de facto like laws. Furthermore, identity groups have their own acceptance policies.
Moreover, social pressure is powerful. Legalizing takes away stigma, and In Iceland, pre-natal screening “tests are optional,” but almost 100% of babies found before birth to have Downs Syndrome are aborted. In Denmark, the percent is 98. In the United States, the percent has been reported as only 67% by one source and about 80% by another source, and that might be partially because non-conformity is tolerated more here.
Whose choice do those calling themselves pro-choice want to prevail? The pregnant woman’s always, when she wants to abort, but only sometimes, when she wants to carry the pregnancy to term? Regardless of her financial status, abilities and disabilities, IQ, age, genes, medical needs, family members’ needs, number of already-born live children, and other demographics? Even if she cannot prove long-term devotion to a religious denomination that opposes abortion? Are there cases when they would go along with requiring the woman’s significant others, the biological father, his significant others, social workers, sponsors, and guardians to approve before she can carry a pregnancy to term?
Could the word “choice” be heading to mean the authority to condemn another individual to death? (Even if more than one person has the “right of choice” over the same individual?) The possibility is a reason to use the word cautiously.
Rather than use the word “choice,” one should use more direct descriptions like: “pro-abortion,” “pro-abortion, but only if voluntary,” “pro voluntary and mandatory abortions,” “pro-abortion only when mandated or expected,” “anti-abortion,” and “anti-abortion, while pro giving women support, to help them and raise their children.”
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See more of our posts reflecting on the meaning of the word “choice”:
When “Choice” Itself Hurts the Quality of Life
No Combat Experience, No Opinion: Parallels in Pro-bombing and Pro-choice Rhetoric
“Trust Landlords”: Pro-Choice Candidate Supports Eviction Rights
Misleading and Distracting Language on Abortion
Is an Embryo More Important than a Woman? /
Grievances against Planned Parenthood: Extensive Documentation
by Rachel MacNair
Years ago, I kept tripping across documents on pro-life sites that indicated a lot of failed health inspections and malpractice suits at Planned Parenthood (PP). We collected a lot of those documents, including ones on women’s deaths, to use on a site called Problems at Planned Parenthood, sponsored by the Problems at Planned Parenthood Committee. We felt a need for a website with a target audience of organizations that refer people to Planned Parenthood. This expanded to donors, journalists, legislators, and researchers – anyone who might be turned off by pro-life rhetoric but would appreciate a facts-only approach. The website organizes the documentation for each individual PP location, since that’s most relevant to referrers.
The problems then expanded, too. Regarding medical issues, we came across a couple of websites that featured dispatch recordings for 911 calls. On non-medical problems, we collected documents and mainstream news stories and book excerpts on: sexual abuse, racism, employee rights, financial ethics, and patient privacy.
Then we also collected thousands of Google, Yelp, and Indeed (employee) reviews, along with some from a medical patient platform called DocASAP. We’re currently working on a new site, Glass Door, which offers employee reviews.
Employee rights was a topic where we got more information from non-prolife sources. Union-busting is the kind of topic that not all pro-lifers might notice, but left-leaning publications certainly do. And those who refer may find that a good reason to stop. As far as I’m concerned, any honest reason to not refer is good enough – and mistreating workers is actually quite a good one.
There have been several times when I thought we were close to being finished with the main body – just needing constant updates as new things happened. But then I’d come across another extensive set of problems.
This happened this summer when I found a law service, Trellis, where I could put “Planned Parenthood” in the search and find a huge number of lawsuits where PP was the defendant. Between the ones where Trellis had the documents and those where they gave case numbers so we could get the documents from court clerks, we’ve added over a hundred new cases. They’re mainly malpractice suits and labor complaints, with a handful on large data breaches and financial improprieties.
Now we went from having some malpractice suits, mainly but not all on abortion, to having 75+ cases. The page of lists now puts them in categories, since there are so many.
And the majority don’t have to do with abortion. We find them failing to diagnose several ectopic pregnancies, then also fibroids, polyps, actual age of pregnancy, and cervical cancer. There are complications from IUDs, implants, a vasectomy, Depo-Provera, and even diagnostic tests. Uterine and bowel perforations were usually but not always due to abortions. There was one case where they left toxins out in the vicinity of a toddler.
Why?
Why are there so many problems that involve callousness and insensitivity? Reasons that come to my mind:
- Participating in the killing of human beings and the deception of their mothers and families that frequently accompanies that lends itself to other forms of not being mindful of morality. This is the kind of explanation that hops to the mind of many pro-life activists.
- It’s a large corporation with an intense interest in making money and influencing public policy for its financial and ideological benefit. We notice similar cold-heartedness in many industries, especially among military contractors, polluting companies, and nuclear weapons manufacturers. This is often the first explanation that comes to mind with labor problems, and is generally put forth by leftist publications that decry the union-busting and the employee mistreatment upon which the desire for a union is based.
- Planned Parenthood attracts the kind of people who want there to be fewer people in the world (in some cases, fewer Brown and Black people) based on the belief that “overpopulation” is a problem. If that’s a major goal, then care in patient outcomes isn’t so important as long as the outcome means no baby.
- People who engage in killing are traumatized by those acts of killing. I’ve done a lot of work in the psychology of Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress. Symptoms include emotional numbing and outbursts of rage, and evidence for both of those are found in these documents.
Why is This Important?
Two big reasons.
One is the original motivation for the website: people who refer or donate to Planned Parenthood are already generally immune to pro-life arguments, but they may pay attention to issues that they also regard as problems. Therefore, a facts-only approach offering documentation coming from official channels is going to be more persuasive. It won’t matter to solid PP supporters, but for those who just thought that PP had a fine reputation and so was one of several places they refer to, and they can easily decide otherwise and take it off the list, it can be effective. People who donate to a list of organizations can decide to prioritize their money elsewhere.
The other reason is to shore up the psychology of the “Great Switch.” When abortion came on as a juggernaut industry and Planned Parenthood was growing, people had a conundrum. This contradicted the idea that we’re a noble and virtuous people. Since people in general aren’t willing to give that up, they conclude that increasing abortion must fit with that, and so they buy the pro-abortion arguments.
But now the switch: abortions are banned in many states, and Planned Parenthood is shrinking. That shrinking, when defined by the number of medical centers they run, has actually been going on since the 1990s. But it’s picked up the pace, and bids fair to do so more as the one-year federal defunding kicks in. At least, they’ve said so. The 200 centers they cite as possibly closing, which would be over a third of their total, I suspect to be an exaggeration to get supporters riled up. But there are still likely to be many.
There’s a running tab of centers closed or closing soon starting in 2020 on CLN’s project website on Grassroots Defunding:
Temporarily & Permanently Closed PP Centers – Finding Alternatives to Planned Parenthood
So first we need to document how PP is shrinking, which that one page does, and then we’ll find people more receptive to hearing the reasons why. After all, the behavior no longer contradicts the idea that we’re a noble and virtuous people. In fact, if worded right, it reinforces that we are.
So the idea that the reason PP is falling apart is a natural consequence of its many problems bolsters the case that PP should fall apart.
That will make the decline happen a little more quickly. And it will make that decline more solid and permanent. In the long run, we want people to be happy to see it go.
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See also:
The Consistent Life Network project website:
Grassroots Defunding: Finding Alternatives to Planned Parenthood
The home page and the page that’s basically the index of the website above is:
Problems at Planned Parenthood
Explanation of Problems and Lists of Planned Parenthood Centers
The explanations page also includes pdfs of compilations of the patient and employee reviews on the topics of medical dangers, racism, employee rights, and financial ethics.
There is also a book version, which organizes with chapters by type of problem rather than by center. A pdf is available online:
Problems at Planned Parenthood Book (pdf)
This is currently the first edition. The second edition is coming out soon and will be about half again as big as the first.
Some of the states with more material will also have their own pdf books. We have plans for some of those to be printed as books and hand-delivered to state legislators.
Anyone who wants to help with that delivering, or who has other ideas of how to promote the information, or has more information on problems that can be added, can contact Rachel MacNair at info@problemsatplannedparenthood.org. Or comment below.
How Abortion Doesn’t Address Women’s Real Problems
by Jim Hewes
Many abortionists (Dr. Malcom Potts, Dr. Frasier Fellows, Dr. Willie Parker, etc.) claim that the reason for doing abortions is to help women.
For example, Dr. Kathi Aultman stated: “performing an abortion, I was doing something for the wellbeing of women.” (Written Testimony of Kathi A. Aultman, M.D. FACOG, November 1, 2017 House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice H.R. 490, the Heartbeat Protection Act of 2017).
She stated that she stopped doing abortions because she saw that abortion was not truly helping women (including the tiny developing women within in the womb).
Real-Life Stories
A woman wrote a letter to the newspaper sharing her experience: “I had an abortion because I had no job, no transportation, and was living in my parents’ basement.” After the abortion, she still had no job, still had no transportation, and was still living in her parents’ basement. The abortion was an attempt for a “quick fix,” which did not address her real underlying needs.
In fact, if she had connected with a crisis pregnancy center (according to a Charlotte Lozier’s Pregnancy Center Report there are more than 2,752 pregnancy centers across the United States), she would have found practical support. The staff would have helped her address her fears and work though them, knowing she was not alone. In addition, they could have helped her find a job or job training, possibly helped her find adequate transportation, find affordable housing, had a baby shower for her, and/or made available “mentoring moms,” who would have supported her in all sorts of ways. With this support, she might have thrived despite her challenging circumstances. What she truly needed was not an abortion, but practical help and a new perspective.
Consider another actual case: a single mother of several children facing an unexpected pregnancy. She lived in a small apartment and was behind on her rent. She was also behind payment on a storage unit which held many valuable possessions. She was on the brink of being evicted, and the owner of the storage unit was going to toss all of her items.
Fortunately, she connected with a crisis pregnancy center which quickly mobilized resources; a donor paid for her overdue rent, including the storage unit. The center connected her with an ob/gyn doctor. She experienced an ultrasound of her baby. A local parish organized a baby shower. She continued to receive ongoing support during this seemingly crushing situation. She then gave birth to her baby and was delighted with this new member of her family. If she had gone through with the abortion, it wouldn’t have addressed any of her seemingly overwhelming problems. She may have remained still feeling alone and very isolated, with the added burden of the abortion.
Another valuable resource is “Walking with Moms in Need”. This involves parish outreach ministries, where many women in unexpected pregnancies have found all sorts of support, including financial aid and caring people to accompany these vulnerable women in so many other ways as they face such difficult circumstances.
Many vulnerable pregnant women face housing insecurity. Abortion doesn’t help them find safe and affordable housing for keeping their child, but there is housing available in the many wonderful maternity homes throughout the United States. Women also have the loving option of adoption, blessing both their child and couples longing to grow their families.
Research Evidence Supporting Life
Research further underscores this reality. A peer-reviewed study in the journal Cureus by David Reardon, Katherine Rafferty and Tessa Longbons found that 60% of post-abortive women surveyed testified that they would have continued their pregnancy if they had had more financial security and/or more emotional support from others.
Conclusion
Abortion provides a temporary illusion of relief without addressing the underlying issues women face. Real solutions—practical, emotional, and financial support—truly empower women, offering them the chance for a fuller, more hopeful life for themselves and their children. With increasing abortion restrictions and the current defunding of Planned Parenthood, whose main focus is abortion, this approach is more needed than ever.
It’s an illusion that killing one’s child will actually help women. There are more life-giving alternatives, which will in the end truly benefit vulnerable pregnant women.
In fact, in many cases an unexpected or untimely pregnancy can actually end up as a catalyst to addressing underlying problems and eventually bring about practical solutions, which can offer the person a chance for a fuller life than before the pregnancy.
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For more of some of our posts from Jim Hewes, see:
Death Penalty and other Killing: The Destructive Effect on Us
Consistent Life History: Being Across the Board
Reflections from My Decades of Consistent Life Experience
The Consistent Life Ethic: My Christian Perspective
Abortion and Other Issues of Life: Connecting the Dots
A Personal Reflection on a Just War
Abortion and the Christian Bible: A Consistent-Life Perspective
Abortion When it Involves a Rape: See the Faces
Mourning the Dead and Protecting the Living: Remarks from the August 9th Peace Vigil
Our quarterly peace vigil against nuclear weapons fell on August 9th, the 80th anniversary of the US bombing of Nagasaki. The vigil was an occasion both to mourn all those killed by the nuclear weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and to call for action against the threat posed by nuclear weapons today. Below is a selection of remarks and readings from the vigil.
Marie Dennis
From remarks by Consistent Life Network endorser Marie Dennis, of the Catholic peace organization Pax Christi International:
Marie Dennis
For moral arguments to change the opinion of political decision-makers will require a sustained effort by communities of faith to develop synergy between nonviolent activism (like this [vigil]) and “insider (realpolitik) negotiations for policy change.”
Religious institutions, including the institutional Catholic Church, need to develop collaborative strategies with faith-based peace movements like Pax Christi, plowshares activists, peace fellowships, all of us—to help politicians hear and heed the demands of ordinary people for an end to the nuclear nightmare…
It is time to replace the logic of violence in which we are mired with a new logic of nonviolence, opening the space for creative, life-giving alternatives; training us for active love and healing rather than for fear and killing; providing solid ground for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Pope Francis said, “The consistent practice of nonviolence has broken barriers, bound wounds, healed nations” (letter from Pope Francis to Cardinal Blase Cupich, April 4, 2017). Nowhere is this transformation more desperately needed than in freeing the world from the terrifying threat of nuclear weapons.
Many years ago, Jesuit peacemaker Rev. Richard McSorley, SJ wrote, “The taproot of violence in our society is our intention to use nuclear weapons. Once we have agreed to that, all other evil is minor in comparison” (Rev. Richard McSorley, SJ, “It’s a Sin to Build a Nuclear Weapon,” U.S. Catholic, 1976). Consent to the presence of nuclear weapons in our world not only accepts the risk of a nuclear conflagration in the future, but also undermines the ethical foundations for the common good here and now.
Judy Coode
Judy Coode of Consistent Life Network member group Pax Christi Metro DC-Baltimore read from the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech of Hiroshima bombing survivor Setsuko Thurlow:
Judy Coode speaking
I was just 13 years old when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb, on my city Hiroshima. I still vividly remember that morning. At 8:15, I saw a blinding bluish-white flash from the window. I remember having the sensation of floating in the air.
As I regained consciousness in the silence and darkness, I found myself pinned by the collapsed building. I began to hear my classmates’ faint cries: “Mother, help me. God, help me.”
Then, suddenly, I felt hands touching my left shoulder, and heard a man saying: “Don’t give up! Keep pushing! I am trying to free you. See the light coming through that opening? Crawl towards it as quickly as you can.” As I crawled out, the ruins were on fire. Most of my classmates in that building were burned to death alive. I saw all around me utter, unimaginable devastation.
Processions of ghostly figures shuffled by. Grotesquely wounded people, they were bleeding, burnt, blackened and swollen. Parts of their bodies were missing. Flesh and skin hung from their bones. Some with their eyeballs hanging in their hands. Some with their bellies burst open, their intestines hanging out. The foul stench of burnt human flesh filled the air.
Thus, with one bomb my beloved city was obliterated. Most of its residents were civilians who were incinerated, vaporized, carbonized – among them, members of my own family and 351 of my schoolmates.
In the weeks, months and years that followed, many thousands more would die, often in random and mysterious ways, from the delayed effects of radiation. Still to this day, radiation is killing survivors . . .
To the officials of nuclear-armed nations – and to their accomplices under the so-called “nuclear umbrella” – I say this: Listen to our testimony. Heed our warning. And know that your actions are consequential. You are each an integral part of a system of violence that is endangering humankind. Let us all be alert to the banality of evil . . .
When I was a 13-year-old girl, trapped in the smoldering rubble, I kept pushing. I kept moving toward the light. And I survived. Our light now is the [Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons]. To all in this hall and all listening around the world, I repeat those words that I heard called to me in the ruins of Hiroshima: “Don’t give up! Keep pushing! See the light? Crawl towards it.”
Lauren Pope
Lauren Pope of member group Rehumanize International read from The Crazy Iris and Other Stories from the Atomic Aftermath, an anthology of stories remembering the bombings of Japan:
Lauren Pope
We hadn’t heard a single bomb drop, we hadn’t seen a trace of an enemy plane. The sky had been perfectly peaceful . . .
Nearly all the people had burned clothing and they walked along in files like ants.
Had they been burned by the flames from the sky? I wondered. I was convinced then that what I had seen in the moment in the factory had indeed been some kind of “fire from heaven.”
Since I knew so little about the geography of the city, I decided to walk in the direction of the green hills I could see in the distance.
The overhead wires that the trolley cars ran on were plastered all over the streets like cobwebs and people with bare feet were stepping over them. Some brown-colored animals – whether dogs or cats I couldn’t tell- lay tumbled by the road.
Everything had been burned! I thought. Everything had a brownish color. Even the asphalt on the street had turned the color of an old frying pan.
- From “Human Ashes” by Katsuzo Oda
Jack McHale
Jack McHale of Pax Christi Metro DC-Baltimore read this poem by the late Daniel Berrigan, SJ, a Consistent Life Network endorser:
Jack McHale
SHADOW ON THE ROCK
by Daniel Berrigan, S.J.
At Hiroshima there’s a museum
and outside that museum there’s a rock,
and on that rock there’s a shadow.
That shadow is all that remains
of the human being who stood there on August 6, 1945
when the nuclear age began.
In the most real sense of the word,
that is the choice before us.
We shall either end war and the nuclear arms race now in this generation,
or we will become Shadows On the Rock.
Our thanks to all the member groups and other organizations who co-sponsored this event: the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, Pax Christi Metro DC-Baltimore, American Solidarity Party of DC-Maryland, Rehumanize International, Pax Christi USA, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, Little Friends for Peace, the Isaiah Project, the Assisi Community, the Norfolk Catholic Worker, and the Hampton Roads Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Reasons to Fear, Reasons to Hope: The Nuclear Threat after 80 Years
by John Whitehead
The nuclear threat is now 80 years old. Nuclear weapons became a reality with the first successful test of a nuclear weapon, the Trinity test, in New Mexico on July 16, 1945.
These weapons’ ability to destroy human lives and societies was demonstrated with horrific clarity a few weeks later when two American-made nuclear bombs were used against two Japanese cities: Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9. How many people were killed by the two bombings remains unclear to this day: one post-war estimate put the number of people killed in the bombings and their near aftermath at roughly 100,000; later estimates put the number at roughly 200,000. By either estimate, though, the bombs were unambiguously devastating.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY
As the United States and other nations built more nuclear weapons, these weapons would go on to destroy lives through their production and testing. Nevertheless, since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have never again, to date, been used in wartime to destroy cities or other targets.
For 80 years now, a war fought with nuclear weapons has been a real possibility. Over these years, humanity has lived with the knowledge that nuclear war, if it ever occurred, could kill unprecedented numbers of people, cause catastrophic genetic and environmental damage to our world, and ultimately destroy humanity. Everything humans have been or have built over hundreds of thousands of years could be wiped out in a matter of hours by nuclear weapons.
This anniversary year, which marks eight decades since the invention of nuclear weapons, is an apt time to reflect on the nuclear threat. What is the status of the threat today, and what does this mean for all of us?
Reasons to Fear
A survey of the world in 2025 gives significant reasons to fear that a nuclear war might occur. The number of nations that possess nuclear weapons has grown from the original one, the United States, to include eight other nations: Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. Many of these nuclear nations are mired in deep conflicts that could escalate to the nuclear level.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has set the United States, Britain, and France against Russia. During the war, in the fall of 2022, when the Russian invaders were losing ground to a Ukrainian counter-attack, American officials reportedly feared Russia might resort to nuclear weapons. Russia did not use nuclear weapons at that time, but as the war continues, the possibility of their future use remains.
US-China relations have been tense for years. Against this backdrop of international tension, China may be building more nuclear weapons, perhaps in an attempt to deter the United States or gain more influence in the world. The ongoing rivalry, aggravated by nuclear competition, could someday flare up into nuclear conflict.
India and Pakistan have been adversaries since their founding and have fought multiple wars. As recently as this past May, hostility between the two nuclear-armed nations broke out into open military conflict before thankfully being stopped by a ceasefire. The next outbreak of hostilities might not end that way, though.
North Korea’s fractious relationship with South Korea and the United States is another potential flashpoint for nuclear conflict. Even conflicts involving states that do not yet possess nuclear weapons raise ominous questions: Will the recent bombing campaign by Israel and the United States against Iran lead Iran to make an all-out effort to build nuclear weapons? If so, what will a Middle East with multiple nuclear weapons-armed states mean for the future?
Amid this array of conflicts and tensions, the network of international treaties meant to limit and regulate nuclear weapons has been unravelling for years. The United States, under President George W. Bush’s administration, decided to leave the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which had limited this potentially destabilizing technology.
More recently, during President Donald Trump’s first term, the United States left the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, which had abolished a particular type of nuclear weapon. The New START Treaty limiting US and Russian nuclear weapons is set to expire in February 2026, and renewal of the treaty is far from likely. The legal barriers to an unrestrained nuclear arms race between the United States and Russia are falling away.
Given all these circumstances, a recent decision by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a group that has sounded the alarm about nuclear weapons almost since their invention, makes sense. The Bulletin has long provided regular assessments of nuclear and other dangers to humanity. These assessments are visually represented by a “Doomsday Clock”: the graver the Bulletin assesses global dangers to be, the closer the clock is set to midnight. This year, the Bulletin set the clock at 89 seconds to midnight.
Reasons to Hope
The current dire conditions make pessimism or even despair tempting. Such responses would be mistaken, though, because the dangers today are only part of the story.
More important than any of the disturbing events or trends above is the central, inescapable fact that we’re still here. Humans still exist, and we still have the power to shape future events.
Further, the time that has passed since nuclear weapons were invented is a sign of hope. For eight decades, we have lived with the power to annihilate ourselves—and we have not done it. In the past, we have been through crises and tense periods as serious as what we are facing today, during which nuclear war was highly probable. Yet we did not fall into the abyss. We did not start a nuclear war.
The history of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union offers a clear example of how nuclear dangers can be averted. In the early 1980s, combined US and Soviet nuclear weapons arsenals numbered almost 70,000. Given the extraordinary hostility between the two nations, the idea of major reductions in nuclear weapons seemed absurd. Nuclear war between the two nations seemed far more likely.
Nevertheless, within a few years after this period of extreme danger, the Cold War effectively ended. The United States and the Soviet Union (and then its successor state Russia) began radically reducing their nuclear weapons down to roughly 8,000 weapons combined.
Granting that current nuclear weapons arsenals still pose a serious threat, we should not overlook the extraordinary accomplishment of these earlier weapons reductions. What had been a ridiculous dream became a reality in less than a decade.
Humans’ 80 years of survival since the invention of nuclear weapons should not be a cause of complacency. We need to work against the nuclear threat today.
However, these years of survival and past accomplishments, such as earlier nuclear weapons reductions, are a crucial reminder that catastrophe is not inevitable. The mere fact that nuclear weapons were invented and used in 1945 does not mean we are doomed to use them again in the future.
Other signs of hope are the efforts made by so many people all over the world to reduce or end the nuclear threat. A global campaign created the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which prohibits the use or even possession of such weapons. Ninety-four nations have signed the treaty, which demonstrates that a huge section of humanity is not prepared simply to accept the ongoing threat from nuclear weapons.
Within the United States, the Back from the Brink Campaign is working to reduce the nuclear threat by advocating for policy changes that will make nuclear war less likely. Many of these policy recommendations have been incorporated into legislation currently before the US Congress: H.Res 317 in the House of Representatives and S.Res.323 in the Senate. American citizens can take action by urging their representatives and senators to support these resolutions.
These initiatives, together with the larger fact of humanity’s survival, should encourage us. The nuclear threat today is grave and requires a response. We should support efforts to respond to the threat.
We should act now to ensure that we can continue, 20, 50, and 100 years from now, to celebrate humanity’s survival. We should act now so that one day we can look back on the nuclear threat as a threat we have overcome.
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The Consistent Life Network will be co-sponsoring a peace vigil outside the White House in Washington, DC, on August 9, the 80th anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing. Please join us as we remember the lives destroyed by nuclear weapons and advocate for peace in our world. If you would like to attend, contact John Whitehead at jwwhiteh@yahoo.com.
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We have an extensive list of posts on nuclear weapons, which you can find under that category All Blog Posts
Raising Lifelong Defenders of Dignity: Teaching the Next Generation the Consistent Life Ethic
by Nathanial John
Editor’s note: Nathaniel is a Christian writer and so writes from that perspective, but many of the comments will also apply to people from other traditions.
You can learn a lot about a society by listening to what it protects.
We live in a world that shouts loudly about rights—but often falls silent when it comes to the dignity of the voiceless. Whether it’s the unborn child, the poor family in a war-torn region, the elderly person with no advocate, or the wrongly incarcerated—we have a growing habit of dividing life into “worthy” and “inconvenient.”
For those of us raising or teaching young people, the question isn’t just what we believe—it’s what we’re passing on. Are we giving the next generation a piecemeal ethic? Or are we handing them a complete vision—a consistent, compassionate conviction that every life matters, from beginning to end?
Welcome to the Consistent Life Ethic (CLE)—not just a theory, but a call to live, parent, and educate with holy integrity. This article isn’t just a roadmap; it’s an invitation to raise youth who don’t just react to headlines but live by a deeper principle: that all human life is sacred, and no one should be discarded.
What Is the Consistent Life Ethic, Really?
The CLE isn’t a political movement. It’s not a slogan. It’s a lens—a way of seeing people.
Coined by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin in the 1980s, the Consistent Life Ethic affirms the sacredness and interconnectedness of all human life. It challenges us to speak with one voice against abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, war, systemic poverty, racism, and every other force that devalues or destroys human beings.
It’s not about picking one issue that stirs our passion and ignoring the rest. It’s about being consistent. If we believe life is valuable, we must protect it—everywhere it’s threatened.
And that’s not easy in today’s world.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
Young people today are growing up in a world full of contradictions. They’re told to “stand for justice,” but justice often gets fragmented by partisanship. They’re told to “believe in equality,” but some lives are treated as expendable.
If we want to raise kids who are more than activists—who are advocates with a moral compass—we need to help them understand life issues not as isolated controversies, but as a deeply connected moral vision.
Making It Real: Teaching the Interconnectedness of Life Issues
This isn’t about dumping all the world’s problems on a child. It’s about helping them see people through God’s eyes. Here’s how:
1. Use Real Stories, Not Just Arguments
Instead of opening with a political debate, open with a name. A face. A story.
- The teenage mother who is wrestling with an unexpected pregnancy.
- The veteran who is struggling with trauma and homelessness.
- The prisoner on death row who met Jesus and changed—but may never be free.
When you teach through human stories, you show that life issues are people issues. And that’s what touches the heart.
2. Connect the Dots with Curiosity
Help kids and teens ask better questions:
- Why are people more likely to choose abortion when they’re poor or unsupported?
- How does racism affect access to healthcare or housing?
- Why do some people feel like death is more dignified than life?
These questions don’t just educate—they form empathy. And empathy is the starting point of every lasting conviction.
3. Use Scripture as a Compass, Not a Weapon
If teaching from a biblical perspective, let the Bible shape the worldview, not just back it up. Verses like:
- Micah 6:8 – “Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly . . .”
- Psalm 139 – “You knit me together in my mother’s womb.”
- Matthew 25 – “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for Me.”
Show them that God cares not just about the start of life, but the whole of life.
Raising Advocates, Not Just Opinion Holders
Let’s be honest—most teenagers aren’t looking to be theologians or politicians. But they are looking for something real to live for.
Here’s how to inspire them:
1. Give Them a Reason to Care
Talk about justice not as a cause, but as a calling. We’re not raising “pro-lifers” or “social justice warriors.” We’re raising peacemakers. Whole-hearted, courageous defenders of life and dignity.
Let them see how this ethic transforms everything:
- The way they treat the kid at school who’s different.
- How they view addiction, mental illness, or poverty.
- How they think about war, forgiveness, and mercy.
2. Help Them Take Action, Not Just Take a Side
Help youth translate conviction into compassion:
- Start a “Dignity for All” campaign at school or church.
- Volunteer at shelters, soup kitchens, or pro-life clinics.
- Write letters to leaders or make art that speaks truth to culture.
Teach them that change doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it whispers through kindness, consistency, and courage.
Tools for the Journey: Resources for Parents and Educators
You don’t have to figure it out alone. Here are some resources to support you:
🧠 Learning Materials
- Consistently Pro-Life: The Ethics of Bloodshed in Ancient Christianity by Rob Arner – Theological and practical introduction to CLE.
- “Pro-Life Kids!” by Bethany Bomberger – A colorful, age-appropriate picture book.
- Youth Education: CL Kids! , a project of the Consistent Life Network, offers several resources.
📲 Websites
- Consistent Life Network – Articles, advocacy tools, and events.
- Rehumanize International – Especially great for youth-led initiatives.
- Students for Life – Strong on student activism with a pro-life focus.
🎧 Podcasts & Media
- Peace & Life Conversations – from the Consistent Life Network
- Many more can be found through searches on YouTube.
A Better Way Forward
Raising children with a Consistent Life Ethic doesn’t mean giving them all the answers. It means giving them eyes to see—really see—every person as someone with inherent worth, or in theological terms, made in the image of God.
It means teaching them that human dignity doesn’t come from usefulness, popularity, or perfection—but from the God who created us.
In a world full of contradictions, we can raise a generation that’s consistent. Not perfect, but principled. Not loud, but rooted.
And maybe—just maybe—these kids we teach today will be the ones who finally break the cycles of violence, division, and dehumanization.
Because once you truly believe every life matters . . .
You start living like every life matters.
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For more of our posts about educating, see:
Two Practical Dialogue Tips for Changing More Minds about Abortion
Dialog on Life Issues: Avoiding Some Obstacles to Communication
Turning Problems into Potential: Positive Social Movement Dynamics
by Rachel M. MacNair
There are several features of social movements commonly seen as problems. Yet when underlying psychological dynamics are understood, they can be explained and accommodated. At times, they can even be converted to positive developments.
So Many Problems We Have
One such feature is a perception that one’s own movement has a distressing number of problems, while the movement’s opposition is seen as running smoothly. Yet the opposition, similar to one’s own group, is not likely to publicize its personality clashes, territorial squabbles, financial difficulties, and insufficient volunteers.
This is something of a variant of the “out-group homogeneity effect.” In this case, it is an out-group unseen-problem effect.
The in-group is the group a person belongs to and identifies with. The out-group is a group a person considers to be other people. People can easily see the differences between individuals in their own in-group; for instance, one person is shy, another obnoxious, one is punctual but not trustworthy, and so on. There is a tendency for these understandings of individual differences to drop when a person looks at an out-group. The less known the out-group is, the greater the “out-group homogeneity effect.” People in an out-group are distant, so differences get blurred. The more distant the group, the greater the blurring. This is where the idea comes from, in referring to another racial group, that “they all look alike.”
The resulting deindividuation can easily become dehumanization. One of the things a nonviolent campaign seeks to do, whether aware of this mechanism or not, is to reduce the out-group homogeneity effect by reducing the sense of its group as an out-group in the minds of its opponents.
Those in power tend to see opposition forces as being a mass of people rather than a set of individuals. They are fully aware that the people they deal with in their own group are individuals, but a group of people protesting them tends to be stereotyped as being homogeneous. If those people use violence, the distance is maintained and the out-group retains its status all the more. Efforts at humanizing interaction break down those stereotypes; the out-group homogeneity effect lessens as the distance between groups erodes.
This works both ways. People who want to start nonviolent campaigns against those in power may also tend to see these people as more similar to each other than they are. Demonizing the opposition and viewing them as homogeneous are strong psychological tendencies in a conflict. Paying attention to ways of having human interaction with people from this out-group will result in a fading of the bias to see them as similar, when the reality of their individual differences becomes clear.
Meanwhile, being aware that the opposition to any social movement isn’t a monolith but actually has many of the same problems we do is simply a matter of being in touch with reality. Movements are made up of people. People have problems.
Divisions
Another common feature is a diversity of perspectives seen as distressing divisiveness. Many of these differences are so common they can be categorized as present in most large social movements.
The solution is to understand them not as divisions, but as multiplications – “schools of thought” that constitute complementary perspectives. Varied schools of thought can achieve more than any one school by itself would.
For example, “purists” believe compromise is immoral, while “pragmatists” believe it’s necessary. When both are active, the purists keep the compromises from being overly watered down. The pragmatists can use the purists to make themselves appear more moderate and therefore more effective in legislative settings.
As another example, people who believe in digging out “root causes” will dive more deeply, but those who instead believe in “reform for now” can alleviate current suffering and make progress. Both approaches are necessary.
Newcomers provide much needed energy and avoiding of ruts. Experienced people provide knowledge of what has actually worked and not worked in the past. They may at times have conflicts, but it’s long been understood that both are needed.
Keeps Getting Worse?
Yet another common problem is that there is a constant feeling that events are worsening at a time when they’re objectively improving. This causes unrealistic discouragement.
One reason is that our efforts in the real world fall short of perfection. Therefore, when perfection is the comparison being made, rather than comparing to previous conditions, disappointment is bound to result.
Another reason is that smaller problems come to the forefront when larger and more urgent problems are solved and therefore no longer overshadow them. Progress actually encourages the recognition of a larger number of problems. The contagion of successful social justice movements in one area encourages people to think in terms of social justice and rights in a wide array of other areas.
Yet another reason is that advocates tend to push how very bad things are with the idea that people will be pushed to action the more they think that things are awful. They don’t take into account how that very negativity may discourage people – if we’ve done all this work and it’s still so terrible, then it’s futile. Why bother to work further?
Keeping in mind progress that has actually been made is important to counter these ways of thinking. It’s more in touch with reality, and it inspires more work in the future. We realize that all the work in the past has in fact made progress. Therefore, there’s solid reason to think our current work can make more progress.
The Stubborn Won’t Listen
Finally, the dynamics of cognitive dissonance gives insight on why people may be stubborn about refusing to understand how terrible a social situation is once it’s explained to them. Other understandings they hold dear may override the social-justice presentation. This idea is developed at length in my post, Explaining Belligerency.
Once activists understand how cognitive dissonance is working against them, they can turn this psychological dynamic around to make it work for them. For example, letting people know that nuclear weapons and abortion are both way less than they used to be at their peak allows people to have less trouble trying to account for why they’re good people in a good nation and yet have such violence going on.
Conclusion
Many of the problems that are common to social movements and which seem intractable can become much easier to handle when the underlying psychology is understood. This will help avoid unwarranted discouragement and make movements more effective.
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For posts on similar themes, see:
Instead of Division, Schools of Thought
Applying Pacifist Insights to Abortion
The Creativity of the Fore-closed Option
Does J.D. Vance’s appeal to an ordo amoris (a ranking of love) make any sense?
In January 2025, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance cited the Catholic concept of “ordo amoris” in the context of the debate over immigration. He said that “there’s this old-school [concept]—and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way—that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.” Vance’s statement resulted in much controversy about whether he correctly described the concept.
Here are slightly edited notes from a discussion of this question among four members of the CLN board:
Richard started:
The background deep context in which the discussion about the ordo amoris is taking place is Peter Singer’s idea of “effective altruism.” Singer thinks that we should walk right past the hungry, the imprisoned, and the other local needy if more good can be done with our contributions over in Africa or India or some other place. That’s one reason why he also advocates infanticide of handicapped kids. They’re just too expensive. They don’t deliver enough bang for the buck, compared to mass immunizations in Africa, for example.
Both the Good Samaritan parable, and the Gospel of Matthew emphasize that we will be judged according to how we treat those who call out to us, either in an auditory way or in terms of their plight lying close before us. We cannot adopt a philosophy which lets us ignore the cry of neighboring humans, even if our refusal to help is done in favor of a greater number of more distant humans.
Peter Singer is teaching people that a consistent morality requires equality, and who wants to be against equality? That’s why his appeal is so dangerous. He calls a preference for helping one’s actual neighbors “tribalism” because it fails to consider the needs of all human beings equally. But the value he denigrates as tribalism I would call communitarianism. Lending sugar to a near neighbor builds community as well as providing calories. Individuals who consume sugar we send abroad are never going to be related to us in such a close and multifaceted way. Gift giving is important for many reasons besides the satisfaction of physical needs.
As for migrants, I would say that it is not permissible to deny aid and shelter to those whom we meet in the USA. They are now our neighbors, too, even if they were not yet our neighbors a few years ago.
We should not ignore the needs of those who remain further away, but they should have less priority.
This ranking of our love makes sense to me.
Bill commented:
The issue has some complexity. None of us individually or generally organizationally can respond to all needs in the world. There is always a need to prioritize. There are different ways to do it. I think we all disagree with Peter Singer’s approach to that. There are other rational approaches, and there are approaches that are beyond the rational. The Church of the Saviour tradition, of which my church is part, emphasizes call. We listen to God and seek to hear God’s call on our life. We act in accordance with that call. We are not then much concerned with how what we are called to do relates to global priorities. We are rather assuming that each person, as well as each collective body of persons, has a particular role to play. If everyone fulfills their part, it will all be taken care of. I think that has strong roots in the Christian tradition. I expect it also has counterparts in other faith traditions, but I don’t know enough about other traditions to specify anything. I also think that there are ways of looking at the general concept that can work for secular people. A secular way of putting it might be that we each have our own niche in the larger work, and we need to find that niche and live into it fully.
Julia countered:
Thank you for clarifying your own position, Richard. It seems much more reasonable, humane and CLE-compatible than Vance’s, and I share your critique of “effective altruism,” which is a particularly impersonal form of utilitarian ethics.
You did seem to be conflating a critical position toward effective altruism with the “America first” approach to public policy that Vance was directly defending. The latter is what the popes have rightly critiqued – particularly the idea of placing limits on our concern for others based not only on physical distance but on degrees of difference from “us,” or on specific categories like national origin, race, or level of need. That’s what I object to as incompatible with the CLE (and also with Catholic teaching and Christian faith more broadly).
It also just occurred to me that physical distance is a very different kind of factor in considering one’s personal practices as an individual, versus in the public policies of a country with a large economy and a long-running practice of international aid.
This difference may be at the root of our very different readings of Vance’s comments. Please correct me if I’m mistaken here, but maybe you heard his description of the “ordo amoris” concept in terms of applying it at an individual level, and then thought, “Well sure, of course, otherwise we’d be left with effective altruism.” In which case you’d be right, up to a point (although I don’t think it’s quite as simple as a choice between those two concepts at an individual level either). But that overlooks the context of what idea Vance was explicitly defending, namely “America first,” specifically as reflected in domestic policy in open hostility to immigrants, and in foreign policy in the abrupt cutoff of existing humanitarian aid programs without so much as a phase-out.
There’s a pretty significant difference between attempting a moral defense of that kind of mass-scale callousness on the one hand, and factoring in geographic proximity when deciding where to give one’s time or money on the other.
Richard responded:
Yes, Julia. That’s exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking that the ordo amoris idea is a pretty good way of setting priorities for an individual. And I didn’t like the idea of the pope and others just plain debunking it, especially given the menace of effective altruism (which has even reached a study group in my own parish). I wish the pope and others had given your clarification, namely, that the ordo amoris has got to have a very different meaning for a large institutional actor. Or maybe it just doesn’t even apply to such an actor.
Rachel closed with this comment:
Vance was using ordo amoris as a way of justifying being cruel to people at a distance, and I think that’s why Cardinal Prevost (now Pope Leo) had that reaction to using it that way. But Singer uses “effective altruism” as a way of being hard-hearted to people near you on the grounds the same amount of money could do more good elsewhere. That gets especially vicious if that means killing disabled infants that are near you in favor of, say, mass vaccination programs.
But in either case, whichever direction they aim it, hard-heartedness is contrary to any form of true ethics.
Misleading and Distracting Language on Abortion
by Ms. Boomer-ang
In many points relating to abortion, the most commonly-heard voices distract our attention from what we really need to know and keep us focused on minor or misleading parts of the story. Following are examples:
1. Media reporting on parents trying (unsuccessfully or successfully) to prevent their daughters from having abortions diverts attention from and covers up the probably much more common cases of parents forcing their daughters to have abortions against their will.1
2. The media often claims that where abortion is illegal, women die in illegal abortions. But women dying in legal abortions is so common that Feminists for Life has a page on its website with examples, called “We Remember.” See also a list of patient deaths at Planned Parenthood alone.
3. The media often covers people arrested for having or providing abortions where they are illegal, while ignoring the pro-life political prisoners, including in the United States, like Heather Idoni.
4. When people equate “forced birth” with fascism, why don’t we point out that abortion and infanticide (of “deformed” or “bad ancestry” children) are a cornerstone of fascism? In fact, don’t fascist societies have examples of abortion without choice?
5. Misusing the word “choice,” including to describe when support for abortion is unconditional and opposition to forced abortion is conditional.
Don’t many pro-life voices make this mistake too? It is easy to use words, phrases, and concepts the way “everybody else does,” often after hearing them on television and other media, “where even people who disagree repeat them.”2
6. Calling abortion a “strictly religious issue.” Why don’t we point out all the non-religious pro-life voices and mention organizations like Secular Pro-Life?
7. Calling morning after pills and abortion pills “Plan B.” For many people who use them, aren’t they Plan A? And as for those who take them only when it is snuck into their food or medicine without their knowledge, they could be Plan Zero. And what Plan number are they for those who take them only to fulfill requirements, such as for school or social services?
8. When someone says that the morning after pill prevents abortions, how about pointing out that it still doesn’t prevent the killing of fertilized pre-embryos? The actual difference is that we never know whether there were any pre-embryos to kill and whether they would have miscarried on their own.
9. Shouldn’t we ask:
a. what the effects are of taking morning after pills several times in one menstrual cycle?
b. what are the effects of morning after and abortion pills ingested inadvertently by people other than fertile women? For example, when they are snuck into food, and it’s impossible to control who eats it? Consider especially post-menopausal women, pre-pubescent girls, males, hemophiliacs, and people with certain kinds of cancer.
10. When the media celebrates aid organizations like UNICEF for giving refugee women in places like Congo morning after and abortion pills, how about asking whether this is upon the woman’s request, consent, and knowledge? Are they required to take them for admission to shelter camps? Are the pills mixed with other medicine and the women not clearly told that, if they are pregnant, they will cause miscarriages?
11. When a report claims that abortion rates are highest in some places where abortion is illegal, shouldn’t we scrutinize the calculation of these rates? In comparisons, shouldn’t we study whether the figures for all places used the same data? Unfortunately, even some pro-life voices have repeated rather than confronting these reports.
a. What is counted in the number of abortions? In some places, was every morning after pill snuck into food, often with no guarantee who ate it, counted as a requested sought abortion? Meanwhile, in other places, a morning after pill taken deliberately after intercourse by a fertile woman in the fertile stage of her cycle was not counted as even a fraction of an abortion.
b. Typically the abortion rate means abortions per a certain number of women. But additional measures should receive attention. Would the statistics be different when using the ratio of abortions to live births? When using the percent of women who have at least one abortion? Doesn’t each of these three statistics have a different psychological impact on society?
12. When the media spotlights doctors who move from places that restrict abortions, why don’t we report doctors who move to such places? In fact, a study of over 60,000 OB-GYNs, explained here, suggested that the share of physicians who are OB-GYNs decreased less in states that restored abortion restrictions.
13. When somebody equates forbidding abortions to requiring blood donations, organ donations, or Caesarean births, how about pointing out that abortion is more similar to these three procedures than carrying a pregnancy to term? Abortion, like the three procedures, requires intervention. Carrying most pregnancies to term need not require intervention.
FOOTNOTES
- Examples: Doris Kalasky, Elliott Institute Newsletter, Winter 1993-1994; and abortiondocs.org-content/uploads/2020/02
- Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny (New York: Random House, 2017), pp. 59-60
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For more of our posts on dialog and persuasion, see:
If You Can’t Explain the Opposition to Your Case
Two Practical Dialogue Tips for Changing More Minds about Abortion
Dialog on Life Issues: Avoiding Some Obstacles to Communication
Why a War of “Regime Change” in Iran Would Be a Catastrophe
by John Whitehead
What direction the conflict between Israel and the United States and Iran will take is unknown. As of this writing, the ceasefire between Israel and Iran is holding and the United States has not bombed Iran again since June 22. We can hope this situation continues.
Military conflict among these nations might resume, however. Renewed fighting could take the extreme form of an effort by Israel and/or the United States to overthrow the current Iranian government.
Such an attempt to bring about “regime change” in Iran would be catastrophic. Overthrowing Iran’s government and installing a new one would be extremely difficult to achieve and would likely lead to extremely violent consequences. Further, even if regime change somehow succeeded and led to a stable new Iranian regime, that might not resolve the ongoing conflict over Iran possibly building nuclear weapons.
Threats from Powerful Sources
Israeli and American policymakers have made statements pointing toward the goal of “regime change” in Iran. During Israel’s bombing campaign against Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Iranian government’s overthrow “could certainly be the result” of the military conflict. He also opined, in reference to Iran’s ruling elite, that “80% of the [Iranian] people will throw these theological thugs out.”
Netanyahu’s address, at the outset of the campaign, to the Iranian people also implied the hope of regime change: “As we achieve our objective [of destroying Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities], we are also clearing the path for you to achieve your freedom,” he said.
US President Donald Trump has also suggested regime change is a possibility. Posting on social media shortly after the US bombing, Trump wrote “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change???”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed this sentiment, saying in an TV appearance that “if Iran is committed to becoming a nuclear weapons power, I do think it puts the regime at risk . . . I think it would be the end of the regime if they tried to do that.”
Whether any of these threats will turn into action is anyone’s guess. Threats from the leaders of nations that have already attacked Iran should be taken seriously, though.
The Long, Costly History of Regime Change
The United States and its allies have a history of overthrowing governments and attempting to install new, more friendly ones. The track record of such regime change is a grim one.
In 2001, the United States led an invasion of Afghanistan, overthrowing the Taliban regime. The United States spent the next 20 years trying to support a new regime and defeat a Taliban insurgency. After tens of thousands of deaths, including more than 46,000 Afghan civilians killed by the warring parties and more than 6,000 Americans, and more than $2 trillion spent, the US project in Afghanistan ultimately failed. The US-supported regime collapsed, and the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
In 2003, the United States led an invasion of Iraq, overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime. The United States then spent eight years trying to support a new regime and defeat an Iraqi insurgency. The US withdrew from Iraq in 2011 only to return in 2014 to fight the newly emerged ISIS terrorist group. US involvement in Iraq led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, including roughly 200,000 Iraqi civilians killed by the warring parties and more than 8,000 Americans. The war in Iraq, along with related military operations in Syria, cost almost $3 trillion.
In 2011, the United States and its allies carried out a bombing campaign against Libya to support insurgents who eventually overthrew Muammar Qaddafi’s regime. Compared to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, this regime change war was relatively low cost for the United States: the war lasted about seven months, no Americans died, and the operation cost roughly $1.6 billion.
The war was more costly for the Libyan people, though. The new Libyan government failed to establish effective control over the country, and Libya was soon split by a civil war. Libya remains troubled by armed political conflict to this day. Precisely how many people have died in 14 years of conflict is unknown, but the toll might be very high.
We have no reason to believe that a US war of regime change against Iran would be any less difficult or costly. Such a war against Iran may even be far worse than these earlier wars, for simple reasons of scale.
Iran is very large country, at 1.6 million square kilometers (about the size of Alaska), and a very populous country, at 92 million people. To provide relevant comparisons, Iran is more than double the size of Afghanistan and more than four times as populous as Afghanistan was at the time of the US invasion in 2001. Iran is more than triple the size of Iraq and more than three times as populous as Iraq was at the time of the 2003 US invasion. Iran is actually somewhat smaller than Libya but more than 14 times as populous as Libya was at the time of 2011 war.
Tony Masalonis and Herb Geraghty hold signs
Invading and occupying a country as large and populous as Iran and trying to establish a new regime that could govern the country would be an even bigger challenge than these previous regime changes—and thus would likely be far bloodier and more costly. Beyond the scale of the task, an occupying power and a new regime would have to contend with uniting a country that has various ethnic divisions, such as between the Persian majority and Azerbaijani, Kurdish, and other minorities.
Writing in the Guardian, Patrick Wintour commented that if the current Iranian government is overthrown, “Azerbaijan and the many Kurdish militant movements might see a chance to carve out ethnic enclaves from Iranian territories.”
Beyond all these considerations, proponents of regime change should also contemplate the fact that the disruptions produced by a war in Iran might lead to some of the country’s enriched uranium stockpiles going missing or being seized by groups with their own agendas. A war of regime change in Iran might lead to uranium falling into terrorist hands. War on Iran might thus prove to be a self-fulling prophecy, bringing about the kind of nuclear danger it’s meant to prevent.
Would Even Successful Regime Be Futile?
Finally, another scenario should be considered. Let’s set aside the legitimate concerns about a war of regime change and assume a near-miraculous outcome in which the current Iranian regime is replaced by a stable new one without terrible destruction and loss of life. Even in such a situation, the new Iranian regime might continue to pursue the capacity to build nuclear weapons.
In a debate over Iran, Dan Caldwell, a Marine veteran, made the striking observation that Iran, as a large nation that is ethnically and religiously distinct from its neighbors (being non-Arab and Shia Muslim) may wish to have the power that comes from a nuclear program regardless of what regime rules the country. The current Iranian nuclear program might arise from conditions more enduring than the personalities or ideology of the ruling elite. We cannot know what some hypothetical future regime might do, but Caldwell makes the valuable point that we shouldn’t assume that a different government will mean entirely different policies.
Conclusion
For all these reasons, seeking regime change in Iran would be profoundly unwise. Further, a policy that would probably cost huge numbers of lives and trillions of dollars while likely accomplishing very little is not, in my judgment and I would guess most people’s judgment, a moral policy.
Concerns about Iran or its nuclear program should be addressed diplomatically, which means dealing with the current Iranian regime. Let’s hope those making decisions in the United States and Israel come to realize this.
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For more of our posts on how wars are unjustified, see:
The Huge Mistake: The U.S. Joins Israel in Bombing Iran
Gaza War: Outrageous and Foolish
The Preferential Option for Nonviolence in Just War Theory: Opportunities for Just War and Pacifist Collaboration
The Civil War Conundrum, 150 Years Later
Finding Common Ground on and Learning from World War II
Seeing War’s Victims: The New York Times Investigation of Civilian Casualties in Iraq and Syria