Just last week, West was criticized for writing, “Abortion is liberty” in the Times. She could have also been mocked for claiming that “contrary to what the pundit economy would have you believe,” the procedure is “not particularly controversial.” But this was just a sideshow to her real theme, sounded at every opportunity: Anyone who disagrees with her has bad intentions. “To legislatively oppose abortion is to be, at best, indifferent to the disenfranchisement, suffering and possibly even the death of women,” wrote West. “At worst it is to revel in those things, to believe them fundamental to the natural order.”

This reflects such a blinkered worldview that I hesitate to insult West by suggesting she really believes in it. But I have no other choice: She thinks that, “at best,” opponents of abortion do not care about women, even if they die. That is the best motivation that West can imagine for being pro-life — not an earnest belief that abortion is killing innocent babies. No, that would betray an ability to empathize with other people. Instead, West thinks the 46 percent of Americans who identify as pro-life — and the 59 percent of women who think abortion is “morally wrong,” according to a 2017 Marist poll — are just woman-haters.