(Originally posted to Facebook 16-Jan-2021)
This was bothering me as I was trying to sleep, and I decided I couldn’t rest until I had written down my thoughts.
Why I am pro-life:
- I consider a preborn baby to be of near infinite worth.
There is a lot of talk about whether or not a man should even talk about this subject since men cannot get pregnant or give birth. So let me create a hypothetical scenario to explain my feelings. Let’s say I was driving along a deserted road and my car breaks down. I get out to check what’s wrong and I hear a baby crying. I look around and, there by the side of the road, is an abandoned human infant. No one else is around. It’s just me. If I do nothing, the baby dies from exposure. From no fault or choice of my own, I have now become responsible for a helpless human life.
What would I do? Would I abandon the baby because it wasn’t mine? Because I had other plans? Because I had my own problems? My own life to lead? No. Of course not.
Perhaps a better question is: what wouldn’t I do? Would I walk a hundred miles to the nearest help? Would I defend the child from the elements, from starvation, even from wild animals? Yes. Of course I would. Even if it caused me inconvenience, great discomfort, or even certain death. I would protect the child until I could deliver it to someone more capable or appropriate to handle the situation.
And if there was no one else, I would care for that child indefinitely. Even though it wasn’t mine. That is the value of human life. And the fact of whether that life has been born yet or not, makes no difference to me.
- Abortion cheapens women and erodes women’s rights.
Having a child should be a choice and a responsibility shared equally between a man and a woman. When men are removed from the equation… When that choice happens in the abortion clinic, the burden of choice and the responsibility for that choice falls unequally on the woman’s shoulders. Feminists often say “my body, my choice.” But when the choice is recognized as happening in the bedroom – when the choice to have sex is made with the understanding that a child could result – then both the man and the woman are choosing to use their bodies to create a life. And both share equal responsibility for that life they have created.
Making abortion free for women makes men free from the responsibility for their choices. Even if you try to force responsibility, people don’t feel responsible for a choice they had no part in making. Laws can be passed to try to force men to take financial responsibility, but laws cannot force love. It takes more than money to raise a child.
If the decision to have children is divorced from the procreative process, then women who choose to have children will, by necessity, become second class citizens, bereft of the freedoms their male counterparts enjoy.
- Devaluing human life is bad for society.
Many bad things have happened throughout history when people decided some other humans where “not people.” The nazis declared that Jews, Africans, Gypsies, and other groups they didn’t like were not really people. Not truly human. And therefore the atrocities they committed were justified to purge the human race of “undesirable elements” of the human gene pool. Slave owners declared that their slaves were just property, not really human and that slavery was necessary for the slave owner to realize their due rights and privileges. Some even claimed that slavery was good for the slaves on account of the underdeveloped societies they were pulled from.
And similar arguments are being made now for abortion. That a fetus is not human, not a citizen, just a clump of cells. That a woman needs to have access to abortion to realize her rights and privileges. Some even claim that it is good for the babies, because “all children deserve to be a choice.”
And even worse things are looming in the future. Some are talking about post-birth abortion. When unwanted babies are born alive before they can be terminated. Or when disabilities only surface after birth. Some are talking about euthanizing disabled individuals who cannot contribute to society… sometimes regardless of age. And what about the elderly, retired individuals who can no longer work. If some human lives have less value and can be eliminated with sufficient reason, where do we draw the line?
For me, there can only be one place to draw the line. All human life must have value. From conception onward, each human life has a unique place in the world, an infinite potential, a genetic signature that can never be erased or fully duplicated. (And yes, science has progressed far enough to discern the minute mutations caused by cell division that distinguish genetic differences in identical twins or even clones.)
Conception is the only place such a line can be drawn. And it is truly becoming a line in the sand.