Saturday, July 5, 2008

I am "Pro-not choosing who has a right to live and who doesn't", Who am I (or you) to decide?

Here's a link to a great article about a Pro-"choice" woman who, while studying ancient Greek cultures, learned that if you "couldn't afford it" or "weren't ready" or "this wasn't planned" in that culture, you waited until the baby was born and then left them to die. As she studied more, she realized that their view of these "choices" was not any different than her rationalization of abortion. None of us can say when the soul enters the body, thus none of us can say that abortion isn't murder.


"One night I was discussing the topic with my husband, who was re-examining his own pro-choice stance. He made a passing remark that startled me into reconsidering this issue: “It just occurred to me that being pro-life is being pro-other-people’s-life,” he quipped. “Everyone is pro-their-own-life.”

His remark made me realize that my pro-choice viewpoints had put me in the position of deciding whose lives were worth living, and even who was human. Along with doctors, the government and other abortion advocates, I decided where to draw this crucial line. When I would come across Catholic Web sites or books that asserted “Life begins at conception,” I would scoff, as was my habit, yet I found myself increasingly uncomfortable with my defense. I realized that my criteria for determining when human life begins were distressingly vague. I was putting the burden of proof on the fetuses to demonstrate to me that they were human, and I was a tough judge. I found myself looking the other way when I heard about things like the 3-D ultrasounds that showed fetuses touching their faces, smiling and opening their eyes at ages at which I still considered abortion acceptable. As modern technology revealed more and more evidence that fetuses were humans too, I would simply move the bar for what I considered human.

I was lured into one of the oldest, biggest, most tempting lies in human history: the enemy is not human. Babies had become the enemy because of their tendency to pop up and ruin everything; and just as societies are tempted to dehumanize their fellow human beings on the other side of the line in wartime, so had I, and we as a society, dehumanized what we saw as the enemy of sex.

I suspect that as those Greek parents handed over their infants for someone to take away, they remarked on how very unlike their other children these little creatures were: they couldn’t talk, the couldn’t sit up, and surely those little yawns and smiles were just involuntary reactions. I bet they referred to these babies with different words than they used to refer to the children they kept. Maybe they called them something like “fetuses.”
She goes on to become Catholic and her complete view of contraception is changed. She points out that over time our society has carefully taken the point of sex out of the equation. It is no longer considered primarily a God given blessing, meant for procreation. It is now considered a recreation for us to use as we wish with no consequences or repercussions. Especially not an unplanned pregnancy.

I loved this article. I believe that abortion is murder. I also believe that those who have made that choice have the opportunity to repent and move on with their lives and sin no more. The article is worth reading if you agree. Or even if you don't.

0 comments: