Pro-family is the new pro-life

As conservatives slowly come down off the high of electoral victory, they are beginning to soberly count its cost. Donald Trump may have won, but pro-life lost. In seven of 10 states where abortion rights were on the ballot as a constitutional amendment, abortion rights prevailed—and would have in Florida as well if not for the state’s supermajority requirement. In Nevada, a state that Trump won by 3 percentage points, a “fundamental right to abortion” also won by nearly 30 points. Given Trump’s own campaign trail pivot away from a consistent pro-life position, this disjunction is hardly surprising. In case there was any lingering doubt, the nomination of vocally pro-abortion Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services would seem to settle it.

That said, it has long been clear that the pro-life cause rested on too narrow a plank, and a new generation of conservatives hopes to make use of the current opportunity to reanchor it on a far broader base. In a recent essay for The New Yorker, Emma Green offered a sympathetic profile of the new “pro-family” conservatism that has a fighting chance of shaping policy in a second Trump term. Her essay highlights three critical lessons for conservatives who want to change the culture of bearing and raising children in an increasingly childless culture.

First, we must broaden our lens when we argue for the pro-life cause. Protecting babies from abortion must begin by making the burden of parenting more bearable and the joys of parenting more real for millions of people to whom the prospect of raising a child is frankly terrifying. Some of this is simple dollars and cents. Changes to the tax and welfare codes can incentivize having children and make it easier for mothers to stay home and care for them. Some of it requires further-reaching labor policies that will provide more stable, family-friendly jobs, especially for dads. Some of it means housing and energy policies that make homes more affordable for young families.

Second, a laissez-faire approach is not enough. In the 1980s and ’90s, when birth rates were considerably higher than today and most children were still raised in stable two-parent households, it may have made sense to think that the best thing for families was simply for the government to stay out of the way. Today, with birth rates cratering and traditional families becoming an endangered species, sitting back and letting the market (and the marketplace of ideas) take its course is not a winning proposition. That market right now is saturated with a technology industry built to profit off of the sidelining of families and with incentive structures that encourage double-income families with few children and outsourced child care. New incentives created by carefully crafted government policies are needed to make childbearing and child-rearing at least a little bit easier and to encourage couples to get married and stay married.

Third, conservatives must model the change we want to see in the world. In her essay, Green profiles the communities of pro-family conservatives that have grown up in Hyattsville and neighboring Cheverly, Md. There, many highly skilled, highly connected professional couples have opted not to pursue the crassest form of the American dream that money can buy: three acres in the exurbs, a big brick house, a nanny while they both work overtime, and private tutors for their Ivy League–bound 1.6 kids. Instead, they’ve opted to live within more modest homes and modest means near Christian neighbors, Christian schools, and local churches, making sacrifices to prioritize their own families—and in the process, sending a message to their children about what’s most important.

Building this pro-family conservatism will require at least two other planks, which Green did not mention: education and technology policies. In the wake of the pandemic and the scandals of woke education, a record number of families have opted to pull their kids out of the public school system, and some have decided to try homeschooling. For many, though, this is simply too high an economic hurdle. School vouchers will make it more feasible for parents to pay the cost of a more family-friendly private school or give up an income to homeschool.

Moreover, digital technology has proved a powerful solvent for the bonds of family life, as parents and children are more likely to be zoned in to their own devices than involved in each other’s lives. Catechizing us in quick in-and-out convenience rather than patient burden-bearing, our technologies have produced a generation for whom the lifelong commitment of bringing a child into the world seems almost unthinkable. A new conservative commitment to put parents back in control of the tech in their homes is an essential plank of the pro-family cause.

In short, in the tumultuous new political landscape, pro-life conservatives will have to throw out the old playbook, but we can’t forfeit the game. The new GOP coalition is ripe for fresh thinking about the relationship of life, work, marriage, and family, and Christians must take the lead in forging a comprehensive pro-family agenda for the next four years and beyond.