I am not. Somewhere around here I've got several years of posts demonstrating just that. Worse yet, I don't even want to be. There is very little love to be lost between me and the prolife community. Part of that is that I just cannot bear blinding hypocrisy and shallow ideology.
No doubt someone will be offended by my words, but here's the deal, I've just spent the past couple of weeks reading comments from so called conservatives and Christians that tend to validate what I've always known to be true. The biggest ones that really stick in my craw, many people secretly seem to still believe poverty, race, criminality, and genetic abnormalities are valid reasons for abortion. For the common good, of course.
Few people seem to remember that Norma McCorvey, the "Jane Roe" in Roe/Wade was supported and encouraged to get an abortion due to a rumor she had been raped by some black men. That rumor was created to generate compassion, because back in the day carrying a black child was perceived as the equivalent of having a disease. Hence the idea that abortion is healthcare, your right to cure a disease. In fact, Margaret Sanger championed abortion as a way of riding the world of undesirables. Flat out, abortion is eugenics, and abortion is heavily entwinned with racism.
Either all life has value or none of it does.
I'm a jaded soul with a lot of scars, so when I was about 16, I was busy watching some good Christians (and some Mormons) carrying on about how much they valued life, how morally virtuous they were, all while sending their own children to an abortion clinic to avoid any scandals, financial implications, or any criminal consequences from sexual abuse. Not once, but sometime two or 3 times in the same year.
Abortion is not just racism, abortion also helps to keep the beautiful people, beautiful. It covers a multitude of sins and keeps the rich and powerful in positions of authority.
We used to have an abortion clinic right downtown near the ice cream parlor. I knew many of these girls and their stories. One gal was a Jehovah Witness, raped by her Uncle, sent for an abortion by her parents, and excommunicated from her church when they found out. Not her uncle, not her parents, but a 16 year old girl was kicked out and shunned. She was forced to move in with a boyfriend, developed a drug and alcohol addiction, and eventually died in a car wreck.
That's my world. It's not well insulated from the world's hypocrisy. It's taken me a long, long time to trust in the fact that the God I serve is even less impressed with the virtue signaling prolife ideology of the adults in that girl's life than I am. Something about millstones comes to mind. God will not be mocked.
Anyway, I much prefer to focus on creating a world that someone would actually want to bring a child into, and helping women develop the confidence and support to do so. It's a pretty brutal environment, I've had four kids and I've heard it all, how can you be so selfish and irresponsible? Why don't you do something productive with your life? You've now caused global warming, population explosions, famine, and world poverty. All in good humor here, but motherhood is so not for the faint of heart. It's the world's second oldest profession, the first one being somewhat respected, at least in liberal-ville where we often talk about sex worker's rights. Mother's are more like, wasting good carbon credits. Let's not forget the other side of the aisle that tends to just label us all, "welfare queens."
You betcha, not being "cost effective" and being a "drain on society" are right wing talking points that have contributed a great deal to abortion. Let's not forget the alleged horror of being "a dependent," either a dependent on the state, a dependent of your parents, or a dependent of your husband. All bad things according to the rugged individualism of modern conservatism, a fate worse than death, even.
Back to the notion of, "creating a world that someone would actually want to bring a child into." I've been really blessed by Mary, the mother of Jesus, and spent a lot of time trying to understand her. Never mind what the Christmas song says, Mary knew. She treasured these things in her heart. She knew she was bringing a child into the world who would be tortured, suffer, and die. You have to really admire Mary's trust, her faith, her ability to place her eyes on something unseen and to invest herself in it. Not only does she know her child will suffer and die right before her, she stays with Him every step of the way. I spent many years wondering why Mary didn't hide her eyes, look away, walk away, when she knew what was inevitable.
We all experience that to some degree, we all bring children into the world knowing they will suffer and someday die. It's an incredibly challenging moral dilemma, one I think we really need the Lord to walk us through.
I met a wonderful woman who took care of a child with terminal cancer who really helped me to understand that mystery that lives in mother's hearts, that insistence that something spiritual is happening here, and it's something worth laying down your very life for. It isn't rational, it isn't material, it's totally supernatural. Spiritual, not reason based.
Love me some Hebrews 11:1, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
So that's how I feel about it all, that's why I'm not impressed with all this prolife glee, why I'm not out celebrating the Supreme Court "win." It's all just basically lipstick on a pig, as far as I am concerned. I make no bones about the fact that given the right conditions, we are all potential murderers. Show me you value life, by valuing life, and not just by murdering people's souls with words and proclaiming victory on social media.
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