Can we talk?

Sanctity of Life

         Can you be both pro-Choice and pro-Life? I've always been sympathetic to the mother who knows that her health is bad, she has cancer or a bad heart and has been told she can't survive a pregnancy, nor will her baby. I've also felt deeply for the mother who knows that her baby will be severely deformed in any way. If she knows she can't bear the burden of watching her child suffer, it might be more loving. But then I look at the statistics for actual abortions.

         Very few abortions are performed for deformed babies. Those mothers for the most part choose to have the child, especially at the 3 months point and after. Only a negligible percentage are for women with health issues. Surprisingly, only a small percentage of abortions are for women in poverty. Another small percentage are for minorities not below poverty line. I can't recall many opting for abortion due to rape or being underage, although those are still used as reasons. In fact, the giant proportion of abortions are done by women who are middle class, married, and white.

         I don't believe poverty, singleness, or minority status justify the ending of an unborn life. I'm just surprised those aren't driving factors. Women who have other options, other means to prevent unwanted births are electing abortion as a means of birth control, or as a back up plan.

         All of these categories have other options to prevent a pregnancy instead of "fixing" or "curing" it. These options include abstinence, but in our impatient world, we need instant gratification. (I'm in favor of more vasectomies.) It seems the basic problem is a lack of respect for human life. Even pro-lifers who would bomb a clinic or shoot an abortion doctor are showing a misunderstanding of life and its sanctity.

         We can turn to so many other areas of our culture, like gangs, violence, and other issues, to see that overall, people fail to appreciate life, or living beings. That appreciation of life has to be taught by words and example from an early age on. The lack of appreciation is part of the missing moral backbone of our society. Where we don't respect life and revere it, we have more crime, more war, more abortions.