Pro Life?

I've just been thinking about this for a while... I thought it might be worth writing down my thoughts.

"Pro Life" is a politically charged slogan that has been aligned with a single issue in the last 30 years: abortion. It has been a polarizing issue, and one of a few issues that spring to mind when people answer the poll question "how important are 'moral' issues to you in deciding who (or what) to vote for?". The wording seems to make it obvious on which side of the debate Christians (or any person of conscience) should lie: who would say "yes" to the question "Are you 'Pro Death'?".

So, if you had asked me a year ago if I was "Pro Life," I would have said "yes," and I would have meant exactly what you thought I meant. I would have meant that I am opposed to abortion in the same way that I am opposed to murder: I believe that just because a person is still living inside of its mother's womb doesn't mean that its mother gets to decide whether or not it should die.

In the past year, however, I've heard a few things that have challenged that definition as being too narrow. First of all, I read Jim Wallis's book God's Politics over the summer. He says that Christian's need to be "Consistently Pro-Life" and not limit our passion for survival to the unborn. I also heard a powerful sermon from my pastor in which she talked about "Pro-Life" needing to inform our opinions not only of whether or not children or born, but the quality of life they experience after that event.

So, am I "Pro Life"? Yes. But it doesn't just mean I'm opposed to abortion being a legal option in this country.

Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to defend the innocent Fur, Zaghawa and Massaleit people of Darfur from genocide at least as vigorously as we are defending the people of Iraq from a violent insurgency.

Because I am "Pro Life," I think that the worst act one person can commit against another person is taking their life, and we as a society must guard our own humanity by relegating those guilty of such crimes to a life of imprisonment without parole instead of making ourselves just like them by murdering them in righteous indignation.

Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to provide millions of poor and dying widows and orphans in Africa with the food, water and medication they need to survive the ravages of extreme poverty and AIDS... a responsibility that should usurp our responsibility to the billion dollar portfolios of American pharmaceutical companies.

Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to children and mothers in poor neighborhoods to insist that they be able to walk to a grocery store with as much selection and prices as low as the supermakets in suburban neighborhoods, and they should be able to walk there without exhausting themselves or passing a dozen liquor stores on the way.

Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to make choices when we shop and when we vote that allow both farmers in Central and South America and peasant children in Southeast Asia to receive a living wage for the back-breaking labor that they do from dawn to dusk, seven days a week, from childhood until they are too old to stand... a responsibility that trumps our desire to save a few bucks, or wear the same shoes as Michael Jordan, or have our favorite coffee every morning.

Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to a child born (not aborted) into a culture and cycle of poverty to adequately fund and reform public education so that their zip code doesn't determine whether they end up in college, jail, or Iraq.

Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we have a responsibility to exhaust every diplomatic strategy possible (and maybe even compromise on our own preferences for the sake of peace) before launching pre-emptive strikes against countries that might possibly be able to attack us at some indeterminate point in the future assuming our intelligence is not faulty.

Because I am "Pro Life," I think that we should be upset when the CEO and board of directors of an American company smugly award themselves multi-million dollar bonuses for the money they've made for their company... money they've made by "cutting costs" with waves of layoffs that take away the livelihoods of American workers and the pensions of retired workers, and "outsourcing" by creating a factory just across the Rio Grande where they pay pennies on the dollar to people so desperate for food that they'll work for slave wages.

And yes, because I am "Pro Life," I think that we should work to save the lives of as many unborn children as we can. If we are called as Christians to stand up for the defenseless and weak against the strong and the powerful, who is more defenseless than a child still dependent on its mother's body for every necessity of life? I don't believe, however, that making it against the law will accomplish this goal by itself. If abortion is murder, and murder is illegal, than reversing Roe v. Wade should make abortion as rare as murder is... and murder in our country is not nearly rare enough. I dare say that there may be a few "Pro Life" people out there that would be satisfied if abortion was still prevalent, but confined to the same neighborhoods in which murder is so prevalent in our country today, but I am not one of them.

The irony is that this is one point on which leading Republicans and Democrats agree: both parties want there to be less abortions performed than are being performed currently. The problem is that one side is committed to making it illegal as the only path that they're willing to pursue, and the other side is committed to keeping it legal no matter what. The debate has been trapped in this one question which our experience has shown will not in and of itself put an end to abortion... it will just give us a new label ("criminal") to put on the doctors and mothers who continue to pursue this option.

Will the number of abortions go down if it is made illegal? Maybe. Probably. I hope so. And if even a handful of lives are saved, then I think this is a path worth pursuing. But it shouldn't be the only path we pursue. If the war on drugs has taught us nothing else, it's that simply making something illegal doesn't make the problem go away... it may actually end up creating horrible violence both home and abroad as well as defining a steady source of income for organized crime, cartels, gangs, and street thugs. I'm not saying that these exact outcomes will be the results of making abortion illegal again... the point is that I don't know (and neither does anyone else) exactly what other issues might arise as a result of addressing abortion only by making those who seek it into criminals.

So what should we do? I think that if we truly believe that the unborn are people, then we should continue to work to make abortion illegal, since we define it as murder. Just because people still get killed in drive-by shootings doesn't mean that it should be legal. But it should mean that our work is not done once it is illegal. Let's also work to make this a world and a nation in which less people want to have abortions: where a poor mother knows that her child will be able to eat enough healthy food and have alternatives to gangs and be able to get into and afford a four-year university. Where children born in poor countries are more likely to die of old age than malnutrition or AIDS before they're old enough to go to school. Where a woman doesn't have to give up her career (and a vital source of income for a growing family) when she has a child because childcare is affordable (and even provided by her employer because of government subsidies and tax breaks), and health insurance plans cover children without charging exorbitant premiums or co-payments. And we need to use our resources to create places and communities where those women who are desperate and without resources can find hope and a family that they lost when they found out they were pregnant (check this out to see an example of what I'm talking about).

We can be Pro Life without being Pro-Death-Penalty, Pro-Big-Business, Pro-Military-Imperialism, or Anti-Capital-Gains/Inheritance-Taxes-On-The-Super-Rich. I would actually argue that we must be. Let's not feel defeated if the number of abortions actually comes down before it's illegal because of bi-partisan efforts to make "Pro-Life" apply to post-natal life as well as pre-natal life. Let's rejoice for those few lives saved and work and pray for more and more each day.

- "Ye know, the church says wearin' one o' them's a sin, darlin'." "So's this. Darlin'."