Abortion kills twice. It kills the body of the baby and it kills the conscience of the mother. Abortion is profoundly anti-women. Three quarters of its victims are women: Half the babies and all the mothers.
-Mother Teresa of Calcutta
In the past I have stayed silent on many of my views on more inflammatory subjects. I will continue to do so for the most part, but I decided that there are a select number of things for which I will open my mouth and this is one of them. Here are some thoughts on why I am Pro-Life.
But I want to begin with an apology. I think that far too often, Pro-Life people come out swinging against Pro-Choice people, rather than loving them and offering sympathetic dialogue. We have condemned mothers who have gone through with abortions instead of coming alongside them and helping them find other options. And for that, I am sorry.
This post is not intended to put down or shame anyone. In fact, quite the opposite. It seems ironic to me that someone claiming to be Pro-Life would resort to tactics of shaming, belittling, and hating other humans. Talk about a self-defeating argument. I’ve seen far too many “interview videos” where the Pro-Life interviewer poses questions to intentionally and sarcastically embarrass the interviewee, so I’ll do my best to avoid that tone.
Instead, this post is meant to simply give some reasons for why I personally continue to hold my Pro-Life stance, as it applies to all humans on earth, whether they agree with me or not. So please do not take my reasoning as any kind of assault or tactical maneuver against you, because that is not my goal.
It’s also worth mentioning that as a Christian, I am aware that I write heavily from a Christian worldview, and therefore many of my reasons are based on scripture and God’s love for all people.
God Loves Everyone & Hates Death
So I think the place to start is there. In God’s love. He loves the unborn children just as much as He loves the mothers in whom they dwell who are debating what to do with their surprise. He loves the Liberal and Conservative alike. He loves the woman who would never dream of having an abortion, and He loves the woman who has already had two dozen.
And because of this love, not a single person is meant to be wasted.
I think God hates death.
We see this in the life of Jesus, as every time one of His friends died, He either wept or retreated to a lonely place. God did not make us with the hopes that we would all die, but that we would all have life and life to the fullest, but death is the direct result of sin.
Josh Howerton points out that while Jesus laid down His life for all, abortion does the opposite: “Abortion is the evil reverse-image of the gospel. Instead of ‘I’ll die for you,’ it says, ‘You die for me.'”
The Language of Abortion
Many of my Pro-Choice friends contend that the heart of the issue is really about deciphering where personhood begins. They contend that the tissue inside a pregnant woman is not, in fact, a person, but simply a collection of cells which will eventually grow into a person. Yet because I believe the Bible is true, I look to it for the answer (And yes, I realize this will do little to persuade my non-Christian friends but like I said, I’m explaining why I believe what I do).
David writes in Psalm 51, “In sin did my mother conceive me.” He does not say that she conceived a lump of tissue which later became me; he says that his personhood was developed in the womb.
Throughout scripture, we see writers employ phrases such as “She was with child.” It doesn’t say that she was with a fetus, but with an actual child. If this argument is too semantic, look no further than the media and their liberal use of language describing pregnancy.
When a celebrity is pregnant, she has a “baby bump;” but when the child is unwanted, it is referred to as a fetus, cells, tissue, or just a part of the woman’s body. The language used is malleable depending on what the reporter wants to convey.
Another common argument is that the fetus is not an individual human as long as it is dependent on its mother’s body for life. Yet how many of us could sustain ourselves sans parents at the age of 1? or 2? 3? 4? If a child is born with health defects and needs machines to survive its first weeks, can we kill it because it is not independent of its life support?
I do not believe there is a justified age or level of dependency at which ending a life is permissible.
Pro-Life Versus Pro-Birth
There is also a difference between being Pro-Life and simply Pro-Birth. Many people put a lot of effort into getting the baby born, but care very little about what happens after delivery. Being Pro-Life involves a plethora of multi-faceted issues, such as battling the death penalty or doctor-assisted suicide. Someone who cares about fetuses but wants to “bomb the hell out of terrorists’ families” is not Pro-Life. I believe God loves all life, not just the babies in the womb.
This, however, is easier said than done.
I think Pro-Lifers have a responsibility to work toward creating alternatives for mothers in crisis, such as making adoption, pre- and postnatal health care, and emotional support more readily available. If we really care about these children, we should do more than simply protest Planned Parenthood, but take active steps toward being the solution, even going so far as to adopt unwanted children into our own families. When we claim to be Pro-Life, but do little to support the continuation of that life, we are defeating our own stance.
Abortion is Racist
From its inception, the abortion industry has targeted minority groups. Whether or not Margaret Sanger was a racist is a hotly debated topic, but regardless, she said some highly disturbing things. In spite of what Stranger (or any Pro-Choice person) actually believed, historic numbers have seen abortion target minority groups.
This article points out that due to abortion, the black population has dropped 30% from 1973 to 2012. It also points out that in 2014, abortion killed more black humans than all other causes combined. It concludes, “To put it bluntly, abortion has thinned the black community in ways the Ku Klux Klan could have only dreamed of.”
Again, the call lands on the shoulders of Pro-Life people to rise up and offer alternatives. Abortion clinics are incredibly easy to find in lower-income urban centers, but where have we offered alternatives? How often have we come alongside single pregnant mothers and offered our hands instead of pointing fingers and hurling shame?
I am not a racist, nor is God, and if we want to encourage flourishing for all of our brothers and sisters of all skin colors, we must speak out against abortion and offer help wherever we can.
Rape, Poverty, and Disability
Conversations about abortion often lead to a slew of hypothetical questions, one of the biggest being What if the mother was raped? Aside from the fact that less than 1% of abortions are due to rape or incest, what I am about to say may sound extreme.
Even in the case of rape, I think the mother should carry the baby to birth.
If we truly believe that God loves all life, we must believe He loves it regardless of how it was created. Just because something horrible occurred, does that mean something beautiful cannot come of it? I believe God is in the business of redemption, and loves to take hideous, ugly things and turn them beautiful. I just read several accounts from women who were raped but chose to keep their child, and not one of them regrets it.
Similar arguments that arise have to do with poverty and disability in the child. The simplest question to ask is, would you consider the same solution if the child were already born? Would we try to kill a 5-year-old simply because his family was poor, or because he had Downs Syndrome? These sorts of questions all loop back to the nature of the fetus itself, as addressed above. If we believe the being inside the pregnant woman is actually a person, we cannot justify any reason for its termination.
Conclusion
I realize that this brief post is far from conclusive and will probably do little to change anyone’s mind. I hope to have conveyed some of the major reasons why I hold the stance I do on abortion, though I realize it is a complex and emotionally-loaded topic. I do not shame or condemn anyone who believes or acts differently than I, but I hope that at the very least I have made you think.
I also hope that this post will spring some of my fellow dormant Pro-Lifers into action, not simply to fight the Pro-Choice agenda, but to offer love and aid to those in the throes of crisis. I think the way to end abortion is not to merely battle the entity itself, but to construct healthy and fruitful alternatives.
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