"How I Became Pro-Life" - an excerpt

It is tough to be pro-life & liberal at the same time. I've lived that life for over 20 years, believing staunchly in many things that are "leftist" in our culture, like protecting the Earth (that God has given to us, making me question why this ever became a partisan issue in the first place), caring for the unfortunate (again, just as Jesus himself did, bringing into question its partisan status), and the left's general reticence to throw us into war.

During my college days, I hid my true pro-life feelings behind a veneer of apathy. "I would never have an abortion," I'd say, "but I guess I can't really control what other people do." That much was true indeed. But I didn't feel comfortable revealing my disgust at abortion and the way it valued mom's feelings about the pregnancy over those of the developing fetus. Essentially, a culture that says abortion is legal and doesn't even carry with it a scarlet letter is saying that one human life (that of the mother) is more important than another human life (that of the fetus). Let's bring up all the ethical baggage that goes along with the dilemma: but what if there was rape? What if the mother's life were in danger? What if the baby had severe disabilities?

Is it really our right to decide the answers in blanket yes or no judgements? Is it all black and white? Does it have to be? I'm not fooled by the excessive media attention given these fringe scenarios, when I realize fully well that they comprise a very small percentage of abortion cases.

I found a post sort of accidentally this morning that detailed another woman's journey from pro-choice to pro-life, and I appreciated hearing her thoughts.

It made me realize that my pro-choice viewpoints were putting me in the position of deciding who was and was not human, and whose lives were worth living. I (along with doctors, the government, or other abortion advocates) decided where to draw this very important line. When I would come across Catholic blogs or books where they said something like "life begins at conception," I would scoff at the silliness of that notion as was my habit...yet I found myself increasingly uncomfortable with my defense:

"A few cells is obviously not a baby or even a human life!" I would say to myself. "Fetuses eventually become full-fledged humans, but not until, umm, like six months gestation or something. Or maybe five months? When is it that they can kick their legs and stuff?...Eight weeks? No, they're not human then, those must be involuntary spasms..."

I was putting the burden of proof on the fetuses to demonstrate to me that they were human.

If you have 20 minutes to spare, please read the whole post because it's very good.

Lately, I've realized what a wonderful moral compass we can find in healthy, secure children who've been given the chance to think freely and not have our society's moral agenda superimposed onto them. My daughter is a great example of this, as was I, and as I believe most children I know are. These well-adjusted kids have an inherent sense of what is right or wrong, not based on a particular ideology, but based on an innate conscience that, when followed and not ignored, will cultivate a loving, generous and kind soul. This, I believe, is why we recognize that children are "innocent."

The abortion issue is one that struck home with me very early. I remember as a child when I first learned of the procedure. My first thought was thankfulness that my own mother didn't choose to have an abortion, followed by a feeling of having had a "narrow escape." Then, I felt a deep sadness for all the babies that didn't get a chance to live. I hadn't been taught yet that the correct term was fetuses and that only pro-life freaks called them babies.

My own daughter loves babies as well, inside or out. She was fascinated by the baby that lived in my womb for 3 months last year. She knew that the baby was to be protected. She would have been horrified if I'd terminated the pregnancy on my own, and rightly so.

We don't like to hear of the particulars of dismemberment, drowning in acid, floating heads, etc. We call it "religious propaganda," and wouldn't dream of showing it to our children. That's because we know our children would be horrified. In their innocence and ability to feel truth rather than our current culture's dogma, they would be sickened and disgusted. That doesn't mean the answer is to hide it from them, any more than the answer to factory farming is to put it out of sight so we don't have to see the suffering of our meat.

The answer for me is that logic and rational thinking only take you so far. No matter how much life experience you have, true wisdom often comes from the littlest voices. If you aren't afraid to look directly at your own moral compass, I think you'll agree.