Moving Beyond “Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice”
Abortion is a most divisive issue. The two prominent sides in the debate define themselves using terms that make the other side cringe. As if pro-choice people are anti-life. As if pro-life people hate choice. On whichever side one finds themselves, it feels like a zero sum game, where only one side can win and the other lose. The more freedom there is to choose an abortion, the more pro-lifers lose. The more restricted abortion gets, the more pro-choicers lose. How can we move beyond this stalemate?
Perhaps the following can help: what if we realize that nobody ‘loves’ abortions? That nobody puts “having an abortion” on their bucket list? Even though we disagree over whether or not it is a legitimate option of last resort, nobody celebrates when people actually have to face that choice. So how can we move forward together? Can we work together to truly make abortion a last resort? Can we ensure that as few people as possible even have to contemplate the possibility?
However important it is to debate the morality of abortion and what would be ‘right’ laws regulating (or banning) abortion, our energies probably would be better spent in making sure women and men in a crisis pregnancy have plenty of support and good options to consider before they even get to the point where abortion seems like the least bad option.
Research shows that “if a pregnant woman cannot find in her intimate circle (parents, siblings, friends, lover/boyfriend/spouse) the love and support that she needs to carry her pregnancy to term, she is likely to seek an abortion”.¹ Therefore, instead of shaming people for being in a crisis pregnancy (and thus not really loving the parents), or quickly proposing abortion as an easy cop-out (and thus not really caring for the new life that is growing), we need to be creative in taking concrete initiatives to help and support, not afraid to pay a price ourselves in order to both love the mother and the child.
The following story is a great illustration of this:
An unmarried 18-year-old woman I’ll call Becky became pregnant. She was afraid to tell her strict Christian parents because she was convinced they would disown her in disgrace and make her move out of the house. This, in turn, would severely jeopardize her plans to attend college and fulfill her dream of becoming a veterinarian. Consequently, she was planning on having an abortion.
Becky confided in a neighborhood friend of the family I’ll call Dorothy. Dorothy was a middle aged divorced woman who over the years had developed a special relationship with Becky. When Becky told Dorothy of her plan, Dorothy didn’t judge her or dump her opinions about abortion on her. She simply offered to help. If Becky chose to have an abortion, Dorothy offered to help with her post-abortion recovery. But, believing that abortion was not the best solution to Becky’s dilemma, she lovingly encouraged Becky to think seriously about her planned course of action.
Even more importantly, she offered to do whatever it took to make going full term feasible for Becky. It is at this point, I believe, that Dorothy began to address the abortion issue in a distinctly Kingdom [Jesus-like] manner.
If Becky’s parents kicked her out of the house (which they did), Dorothy offered her basement as a place for her to stay. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Dorothy also offered to provide whatever financial and emotional support Becky would need throughout the pregnancy to whatever degree she was able (she ended up taking out a second mortgage on her house). If Becky wanted to give the baby up for adoption, Dorothy offered to help with this. If Becky wanted to keep the child (which she ended up doing), Dorothy offered to help her with this as well (she became the Godmother). And, on top of this, Dorothy promised to work with Becky to help make it financially possible to pursue her dream of becoming a veterinarian.
As a result, Becky went through with the pregnancy, moved in with Dorothy, and pursued her dream part-time while both she and Dorothy raised her daughter.
If we truly care about life and choice, we will make sure people have as many viable choices as possible to let life flourish. That may mean creating options that didn’t exist before by using our own resources, as the lady in the story did by giving money, offering a place to live, sacrificing her time to help raise a child.
Moving beyond the “pro-life vs. pro-choice” stalemate means rejecting the idea that we have to choose between the mother and the child. It means understanding that we can love both, that we can seek the best for both. But unless we are willing to pay the price of this costly, practical love, we are doomed to continue bickering over abortion, trying to get our way by voting on the ‘right’ people, and in the end not being the loving people we are called to be.
Sources
- Gushee, David P., and Glen H. Stassen. Kingdom ethics: Following Jesus in contemporary context. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2016, p413.
