Pro Life, Pro War, Pro Death Penalty—What’s Wrong With This Picture?

All politics may be local but it can have national implications as this story surely does.  A local politician, former county councilwoman, current chairperson of the Republican Party’s anti-abortion committee, and prominent member of a Catholic parish is promoting a weekly protest march against a local Planned Parenthood medical clinic that provides women’s health services and reproductive counseling.  The objective is to protest its services and force it to shut down.

She says she is “pro life” – but that is an inaccurate and meaningless statement.  I don’t know many people who are not in favor of life, but as she had made clear that is not really what this protest is about.  Her statements (and those of her Catholic parish) establish that she is actually anti-abortion, anti-family planning, anti-birth control, anti-contraceptive, anti-family planning, and anti-sex education, the very programs that are necessary to increase the quality of life for our communities, reduce unwanted pregnancies and ultimately reduce the need for many prospective abortions. Planned Parenthood is the wrong target. It promotes family planning and sex education and ultimately reduces the need for abortion as a response to unwanted and unplanned pregnancy.

I find it curious that those who say they are pro life are not consistently in favor of life on other issues where positions in favor of life seem relevant.  Being pro life implies a larger agenda than just being anti-abortion.  If they were really pro life wouldn’t they oppose the death penalty [because the innocent are condemned more often than most realize], oppose war [because the innocent are often collateral damage in military conflicts], oppose manufacturers who poison our environment, contaminate our air and water, and sell defective products, etc. [because this affects the quality of life]?  However, most who say they are pro life are conservative Republicans who support war and the death penalty and oppose environmental policies that limit what businesses can do or that impose costs on them, so it is difficult to see what they mean when they say they support a pro life agenda.  I think it is safe to say that they misuse the pro life label—they are not pro life, they are anti-abortion.

Anti-abortion folks have a right to their views, and they have a right to try to convince women to keep fetuses rather than abort them. They also have the duty, having taken that position, to provide the means for taking care of the unwanted children that would otherwise be aborted [although that raises another problem, over population, which is a social and moral issue for another time].

Instead of protesting abortion and trying to eliminate abortion rights, the anti-abortion folks, who are largely associated with fundamentalist Protestant and Roman Catholic churches, would do well to create and fund orphanages in their local communities and then say to women who are pregnant—we will give you an option, we will take care of your maternity health needs, we will pay the expense of delivery and the care of the newborn with special needs, we will take the baby once it is born and raise it through childhood, we will not come after the father for child support, and we will not burden the community with the unwanted child or its expense. Then they might be taken seriously. That might eliminate the need for some but clearly not all abortions.

But these anti-abortion folks, who have a religious based viewpoint and a political agenda, should not seek to convert their religious views into legal prohibitions.  Many Christians do not believe that abortion should be outlawed and consequently they support the abortion rights of women.  Many of us are not convinced by the moral and religious arguments of anti-abortionists. 

Supporters of abortion rights should not have their rights infringed upon by religious zealots.  Anti-abortionists must respect the rights of those who disagree with them. Freedom and democracy require it.

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