Thursday, March 1, 2012

Day 9 - pro-life is messy

i read a blog post recently written by "Abortion Gang" - in it, the author lamented, "the pro-choice view of the world is messier and more complex, and therefore a harder sell, than the nicely packaged anti-choice “I heart babies” view."

i can only imagine how hard it is to package the reality of what abortion does into anything that could be deemed palatable... but i gotta say - that if she doesn't see the messiness and complexity of the pro-life view, she's just not looking.  She only needs to look as far as my friend who has a house full of tiny babies - and just found out she's pregnant again.  If she wants to see complex, she should take a peek at our relatives who declined the doctor's offer of termination and now fill their weeks with doctor appointments, seeking answers and care for their tiny son who needs all the help he can get.  If she thinks pro-life is nicely packaged and easy to sell - she should go talk to the rape victims who endured their pregnancies in agony - only to fall madly and irrevocably in love with their children once they were born.  The reason that the pro-choice view has a hard time packaging their message isn't because pro-life is so tidy beside it, it's because their message is a lie.  Abortion isn't a kindness to women, it's simply the killing of an innocent human life - and this killing will not solve the issues that brought these women to their moment of crisis.  To offer death - as a solution to heartbreak, ill health, unwantedness, bad circumstances... to offer death... that's an ugly thing.  Giving it a pretty name like, "freedom to choose" or "pro-choice" doesn't make it palatable.  It needs to be swaddled and wrapped in lies upon lies... carefully cleaned and sanitized so that the blood ceases to seep through the cracks. 

And pro-life lies naked and exposed in all it's complexity. 

Yes, it will be hard to carry that baby.  Yes, pregnancy is hard and childbirth painful.  Yes, it involves a sacrifice that could last between 9 months to the rest of your life... What we're talking about isn't something that's easy.  No, pro-life is messy... it's complex.  We're talking about allowing a life that has begun to continue unhindered - to enter the world... to take great gasping breaths of air - to breath and cry and eat and LIVE.  We're talking about stretch marks, about hormones, about pain.  Blood, mess, waste, milk - stretching, tearing, crying...

The reason that pro-choice is such a hard sell isn't because pro-life could ever be simplified into "i heart babies" (though, make no mistake, i do heart babies...) but the real reason that pro-choice is such a hard sell is because we know...  we know, deep down in our heart of hearts - that the tiny one in the womb is a unique person... worthy of our help and protection.  Denying that truth will never be an easy sell - even next to the complex mess that often comes with the pro-life view.

4 comments:

  1. I'm working at making childbirth less painful and more of an empowering thing. Can you imagine what would happen if the muscular pains that athletes experience were regarded the same way the uterus muscle pains during childbirth were treated? What if it is was the other way around, with the uterine pains being managed and treated the way athletes are trained to cope with theirs? More women would choose life if they knew they had control of labour and delivery.

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  2. Great statement Paige. It's so true. Killing ones offspring is a horrible abberation in all the animal kingdom. It's certainly a denial of our humanity.

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  3. Ha! Pro choice is such an easy sell. 74% of Canadians know the TRUTH and stand up for abortion rights. You people are so so so incredibly buried beneath your own lies, I almost feel bad for you... Almost ;)

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  4. Hey anonymous - i wanted to respond to your comment, but wasn't aware of any lies you could be referring to. :) The majority of Canadians actually aren't ok with the status quo on abortions in Canada. You can check out this link: http://weneedalaw.ca/index.php/resources/abortion-polls
    Thanks for reading here! :)

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