Dear Pro-Lifers, Here is How You Can Change The World and Save Babies


An Irish friend of mine, Eamon Mag Uidir, is headed out to march for the pro-choice camp in Ireland, and I wanted to add a few words of support.

To me, this issue is not about who is right and who is wrong. It's about looking at the current reality and seeing if we can change it.

Let's say that you are one of the people out there marching and shouting that abortion is murder. Fair enough. I don't disagree with that. It's choosing one life or another. Men do the same thing in wars all the time, choose who will live and who will die. They're doing it today. Isn't abortion often women making the same strategic decision?
However, what we call it is irrelevant .
Let's get beyond the name calling and see if we can make a change.
Why is it that a woman would choose to have an abortion?
If you are a thinking person, you'll realize that it's not because she is a bad person. It's not because she wants to kill another person. It's not because she's making a political or religious statement. It is none of that.
Simply, she's trying to live her life the best way she knows how. And she knows the following things:
  1. If she carries through the pregnancy, she may have to interrupt whatever schooling or career path that she is on right now. She may have to sacrifice the comfort and safety of her other children or herself.
  2. This may, or may not, impoverish her.
  3. If she becomes a single mother, or a single mother of more children, those same people who are yelling at her that she must not have an abortion, are also going to shun her, not invite her to their parties, and not lend a helping hand at all.
4. And so on.
She knows that. She's basing her decision on those facts.
If you actually want to make a change -- if you want to help a pregnant woman bring a baby to term, I suggest you do these three things.
  1. Offer her a place to live, rent-free and full of love and acceptance, during her pregnancy. I do not mean an institution. I mean your home. I mean that you will personally approve of her and love her. Because guess what? A major cause of young women getting pregnant is looking for love. That's not something to judge, that's something that all of us need. In some cultures, they understand that. Unfortunately, ours doesn't. If the woman is married, this is all right and good. If the man she tried to love is a rotter, then the woman is shunned. (The man is not. Usually, he's still invited and liked just the same, with absolutely no consequence.) Well, stop it. You be the change. Stop shunning and shouting, and love her.
  2. Offer her friendship. Honest, respectful friendship. A friendship that she knows can and will continue after the baby's birth, regardless of her decision.
  3. Offer her help to achieve her dreams. Real help.
  4. Offer her a circle of accepting, caring acquaintances and friends. A social crowd who won't ostracize her.
  5. Offer her a loving couple who desperately wants to adopt that baby that you're trying to save the life of. Because if we're going to save lives here, those lives all have to count. Creating another life and saving two disenfranchised, unloved-by-society people, isn't helping any of us much.
And that last sentence explains why women make a strategic decision, because they understand that they are not just saving themselves, but they're saving a poor soul they don't have the resources to help right now, and, looking around them, they don't see anyone else who will save that soul either.
So if you want a change, you want a baby saved... you be the saviour. You find a pregnant mom and offer her love and acceptance and shared problem solving and the right to be herself, and you can save the baby for a couple who wants to adopt it.
That is the only valid way to be pro-life.


... or maybe you'd like to still put some props in for the pro-life camp, but not commit that level of yourself. Okay. Here are some things you can do:
  1. Invite single mothers into your social circle. Not as charity cases, but just the same as you invite married mothers. Because guess what? Single mothers do not get invited out.
  2. HELP. Offer babysitting help, visits, chore help. Did you see that middle one? Visits and phone calls? Because single moms are home alone while other people are out at social gatherings. So visit them. Or better, invite them along when you're inviting everyone else.
  3. Treat single mothers with all the respect and joy you treat married mothers. Don't give them pitying glances and poor you. Give them "I want to see you today! Do you have time?" and "You are awesome! I love how you did that!" "You look great!" and all those other things you tell your amazing friends. Because single moms are amazing people too, but most of society is too busy turning away to notice.
  4. If you do those things, then in five years when another girl gets pregnant and the father turns his back, she'll have your kind behaviour in her memory, instead of the realities that she sees of how single mothers are treated today.

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