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Pro-Life, But Not Proud of It
I’m 100 percent pro-life: No exceptions for rape or incest, and opposed to all the research and fertility treatments that involve creating zygotes to be left in freezers or destroyed for testing. But I have to admit, I am ashamed to call myself pro-life.
Part of that shame stems from why I am pro-life. I grew up in a family that was both pro-life and adamantly devoted to the bourgeoise American Dream. Children were a gift from God, to be sure, but they were also a gift that should only be accepted when the circumstances were right; i.e., after one had a college degree, a remunerative career, and was married to productive man after buying a nice house in the suburbs. Having children before that point was to throw away one’s life, and a woman staying at home to raise children was a waste of her education. The night we announced our engagement, I overheard my mother flatly say, “Maybe after she pops out a couple kids she’ll realize college is more important.” Having unplanned children was, I understood, a mark of failure to control passions and failure to control fertility.
Moreover, I grew up on a hobby farm. We may not have raised animals for meat, but we lost enough of them that I understood why euthanasia is considered humane: better a quick death by injection than for a cat to suffer through internal bleeding from a car collision, or see the ducks and chickens attacked by coyotes, or a thirty-year-old horse die of dehydration because she couldn’t get up on her arthitic legs. I learned the hard way that sometimes the kindest thing one can do is to let death come quickly and cleanly, as Mother Nature doesn’t let animals die peacefully in their sleep.
With these kind of premises, the pro-life stance I grew up with seemed unfair. If children really did forestall any further education or career potential, maybe it was better to abort a child now so as to build a better life for future children. And maybe it was better to let a fetus die cleanly than to be trapped for nine months with the kind of terrible, thoughtless woman who managed to get unwantedly pregnant in the first place. An abortion was a horrible thing, to be sure, but maybe it was the least bad option.
Things changed. First, my bourgeoise expectations crumbled around me. My husband lost his job as a computer programmer and couldn’t find better paying work than washing dishes. I graduated from law school into a major restructuring of the legal industry and ended up selling shoes to try to make ends meet. Unfortunately, the ends didn’t meet in the middle, and we lost our house in foreclosure. By our tenth anniversary, everything I thought my adult life would be was gone
I began looking enviously at the Facebook pages of high school friends. They’d married their high school sweethearts and stayed in our small town, but they’d had children. For years, I had privately looked down my nose at them, imagining the upper-middle-class life I’d soon have that they’d envy; less than a decade later, I was envious of their children and their husbands who made enough for them to stay home in their modest houses. Children had gone from a curse on the imprudent to a luxury beyond on our means to afford.
My husband and I started working toward being able to afford children, and life improved enough that we felt ready to start trying. So we tried, and tried, and tried. After two years of trying every friendly tip — yes, I even tried dramatically giving up to get pregnant ironically — we brought in the doctors. The verdict was we’d never have children naturally due to a birth defect.
The second change was that, as I was going through this, I changed denominations into a sect of Christianity that takes the pro-life message seriously and became aquainted with pro-lifers who took their call to defend the unborn more seriously than what I’d been used to. Through their influence, I began to learn what abortion really entailed. Far from the clean, humane, and sanitary process I had imagined, I learned how the fetus is ripped apart limb from limb or mashed to a pulp by a vacuum. This wasn’t a humane death: This was a gruesome, torturous execution. If someone killed a puppy in this way, the howls of the internet mob would never stop. Surely, a human fetus deserves at least as much concern.
The third fact came when I decided to look into adoption. I’d had second-hand experiences that didn’t give me good feelings about the system. An aunt and uncle were (and are) foster parents, and it took three years of legal wrangling to finalize my cousin’s adoption because the case worker would rather have seen an unwanted black child with her drug-addicted single mother than with married white social workers. Additionally, a couple we know had been fostering two girls for a year and lost them when the “father” gave one girl a well-earned spanking. It appeared that whatever money one saved by trying to adopt through the public system would be spent either on legal bills to keep a child one had come to think of as one’s own, or would be paid in heartbreak, as a foster parent is less a parent than a landlord for very picky tenants who can move out at a moment’s notice.
If anything, the private systems were more depressing. Domestic adoption fees range from $12,000 to $22,000, plus the ability to pay for any of the mother’s remaining medical bills. International adoption is expensive enough to constitute a status symbol. (Seriously, how many children would there be if every parent had to pay $40,000 to bring them home from the hospital?) For comparison, the average abortion costs $400.
I thought about how my child-free life had not brought me the material success and contentment it was supposed to bring. I thought about how unlikely it would ever be that I could afford to adopt. I thought about how adoption was so expensive, in part, because there were so many parents who wanted to adopt and so few children who were both unwanted and survived to term. I thought about how those children who could have been mine were brutally killed because other women — women lucky enough to conceive — decided they couldn’t be bothered. I envied them, and I hated them.
In the end, I’m ashamed that what convinced me to become adamantly pro-life was not a new-found respect for the worth of all life, or a utilitarian analysis that the potential for each person to help make the world a better place outweighed the significant inconvenience to parents, or even a humble submission to the teachings of the church I joined. No, what finally pushed me over the edge into a 100 percent, no-exceptions, pro-life stance was the deep visceral hatred I felt for the women who’d been given what I so deeply craved who would rather destroy that gift — kill that child — rather than be inconvenienced long enough to regift it to me and my sisters in barrenhood whose arms ache for a child.
Published in Culture
Hey Kay of MT and Old Dan: what about Jephtha’s daughter? Yahweh seems to have relished that–no “just kidding!” like with Isaac……
There is a unique DNA created at conception, a DNA that has never existed before and will never exist again. This is a scientific fact. Whether or not a soul is present is a religious question, but a new life has been created at conception, a unique life that has never existed before and will never exist again. I am pretty sure that I once a saw a list of quotes from scientists who support abortion but totally acknowledge that life begins at conception, I am going to look for it now. Stay tuned :)
The latter is a rather base reading of this chapter in the story of Abraham, which in fact is near the end — the climax of his story if we prefer. There is much going on here that the previous events described in Genesis build in the character of Abraham and how he and the Lord interact.
The former is a different story as well, and again you’re looking at a brief passage outside the context of the book of Judges and of the Torah, and of the Old Testament in general.
The book of Judges is a story of decline. Though it seems cyclical: the Israelites go from following the Lord to failing to listen to outright rebellion followed by subjugation to rescue. But turn of this cycle brings us further and further into decline. Jephthah is a crook called to free his people.
But He’s no angel, no where near perfect. He makes a foolish oath and is prepared to break it once he realizes what he’s done. It’s his daughter who takes command in this passage. She learns of his oath and insists he follow through no matter the consequence, lest he break his oath to the Lord. Things are so bad that Israel has to be saved by a fool who makes a costly oath.
To take this passage and say, “The Lord is actually okay with human sacrifice” is not understanding the story of Judges and Israel as a whole.
As far as I know, Judges contains no “relishing” by God nor was any favor bestowed on Jephthah by the Lord.
Never mind that it isn’t clear that he killed his daughter vs. secluding her away.
Ok, I did a quick search and could not find the documents I wanted. I have to get back to work now :(, but I am pretty sure that it’s a generally accepted fact that in the scientific community that life begins at conception, although at this point in time, Vicryl Contessa’s suggestion that maybe life begins when the heart starts beating is better than the magical thinking employed by many who think it doesn’t begin until birth.
I don’t see how this incident is relevant to the discussion. There was no command from God as with the sacrifice of Isaac, just Jephtha’s vow. It raises some serious questions about Jephtha, however. I think, when considering this incident, it would be helpful to consider it as one of many very bad incidents recorded as having occurred during the centuries between the leadership of Joshua and that of Samuel, a period which frequently lapsed into anarchy, when “there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
C.U. Douglas: yuh, that’s what Scoffield the disbarred lawyer says about the story:”Jephtha’s awful vow”. But it shows Yahweh accepted human sacrifice. Move over Ipheginia….say whatever you want about it, I think it’s pretty clear: he killed her. “I have raised a hand to Yahweh; I cannot go back” ( from memory: I just used this passage in an article I wrote about how oath-taking is so central to our supposedly secular society).
…to whoever said J “hid” his nameless daughter (from God?!?)–any textual support for that? I’d love to believe it!!
I’m pro-choice and don’t have a problem with the claim that a unique life is created, but it only the beginning of the story…
That’s not really a rebuttal of my explanation, mind you. Just an admission you don’t like the story.
It’s certainly better than the Planned Parenthood position: abortion should be allowed for any reason, permitted at any time, and performed by anybody.
I will say, even if we do take that as a standard, it’s a cut-off much sooner than most compromises allow.
C. U. Douglas: I DO like the story! Read Tennyson’s A a Dream of Fair Women..
See this?
After an placental abrupture there was no promise of a quality life. There could have been brain damage, corneal damage, lung underdevelopment. One weekend he stopped breathing 67 times over a two day period. DNR orders? Forget it.
Today, we call him Future Tony Winner. He is finishing up his freshman year of college next month. I’m still paying off the loan on the 20% my insurance at the time didn’t cover. And I can’t imagine my life without him.
There were no promises of perfection either given or assumed. He is the reason I am Pro Life. Because we stared down death too many times.
He dedicated her to God.
That the conjunction should be translated as “and” isn’t so clear. It is translated as “or” other places.
Furthermore, if she knew she were to be killed, she should lament her death? Instead, she laments that she’ll never marry.
Finally, after the deed is done…the thing noted was that she was a virgin.
The case that she was killed hangs on a conjunction.
I was about that premature (in 1961, doctors estimated I had a 1/10 shot at living, and my mother had a 50 percent (blood loss I think)., 3.6 lbs, lost down to 3.1 before I started gaining weight. Stopped breathing numerous times. a month in a isolet. 245 lbs today, in relative good health and mind. Much more handsome than Tom, proud to say!!!
That’s pretty close to my reasons for opposing abortion, too. Well said.
Fricosis guy: “burnt offering” seems pretty clear. And I think she’s lamenting that she’ll die before ever fulfilling her womanhood, by sex and childbearing.
you seem to be saying she became a nun?
What bothers me is: why didn’t she just go over the other side of those mountains?
From a purely medical, scientific view, would you seriously deny that a zygote is a living organism?
Same here, except I usually refer to it as anti-abortion.
What are the “attributes of personhood?”
I’m happy to say that “the rest of the world” has been mostly indifferent to seeing my white husband and me with black children. I honestly can’t say we get stares, but we’ve had them for 18+ years so I may be impervious to “looks.” And that’s true for the reactions of all races. Now, I’ve been told what we did wouldn’t work in (fill-in-the blank area), but California has been very good for us in this regard.
As for tons of crap, my kids haven’t mentioned that. Not saying they won’t ever experience it. Adopted kids have issues biological kids don’t. All kids have some issues. “Love” is not a solution in itself, but it’s a necessary starting place.
EJ HILL
well, just the fact that progressive eugenicists also talked about quality of life ( and I don’t know that they did; seems to me they put the health and vigor of the populace AS A WHOLE first) doesn’t mean quality of life for an individual is no longer worth talking about in any context. My point was a single mom might weigh the resources she has left to give yet another child, might be motivated by the quality of the child’s life and not only by selfish concerns.
You are correct in that abortion is not singled out in the Bible. However murder is singled out in one of the commandments.
The Jews were commanded not to imitate the Phoenicians who fed their children into a fire to be consumed by Moloch, their deity. Imagine feeding children to a fire to be destroyed to earn the benefit of a god. What kind of religion commands that?
Should someone arrive at your place demanding your life without proving you guilty of a crime of some sort which could demand the death penalty, one would hope that you would be acquitted if you had done nothing wrong.
Human women do not give birth to bats or griffins, they give birth to uman children, or will if there are no birth defects, no physical problems with the mothers, and no one decides to kill those children merely for being conceived.
Oddly enough it is a moral issue, should the innocent be made to suffer? And, unfortunately, a number of religions concur with you. They can find reasons to permit the child to be killed, even though the child is innocent.
This might be a reasonable argument if adoption and a whole host of support services weren’t available. But, they are, so it’s not. It’s an insistence that women (and, coming soon, why not men? What’s the difference?) be allowed to kill their offspring for their own convenience. If it’s a rational “choice” at six weeks gestation, why not six weeks post-birth or more? If it’s for the “good” (quality of life) of others?
This is not strictly a religious argument I’m making. It’s a matter of ethics. What we decide is acceptable treatment of the weak and vulnerable is the very essence of ethics. Some people are okay blurring the lines. Some of us want to keep a bright distinction for the sake of all the weak and vulnerable.
This is not the G-d Jews believe in. The G-d we believe in is a G-d of love, who want us to be happy. Every bit as much as you want happiness for your children. The story of Job tries to explain the whys, when things go wrong. And it is just a story after all, not scripture. It tells us that G-d does not have total control over every thing that happens in the world, after all it isn’t easy being a G-d and if you think it is, then you try it.
I don’t know if most of you realize that most Jewish prayers don’t ask G-d for anything, except for His blessings and we praise Him. He does not ask us to do things for Him either, He asks us to care for each other. Please read Psalm 8:4-10, it might ease your heart. Also Micah 6:8
Amy:
I know you are not Catholic, but Pope Francis has issued a pastoral document reaching out to families (Amoris Laetitia – On Love in the Family) following 2 years of the Church discussing how the Church can help the family. As he opens:
In Chapter 5, Love Made Fruitful, the Holy Father reaches out to those like you and your husband, in a section titled An Expanding Fruitfulness (starting at paragraph 178, starting on page 136). I offer this in Christian charity.
May the Lord be with you and bless you.
Joseph Stanko: Lotsa things are alive: our hair, our nails, the bacteria in our gut. Doesn’t mean they’re human.
By “attributes of personhood” I mean, we all know what it’s like to be a conscious being “dreading and hoping all”, as Yeats put it. (Yeah, I know you’ll say what about people who are brain dead, should we just be allowed to kill ’em…I dont know. ) But I feel we owe our highest duty of care to beings in whom we can identify the capacity to suffer like we do, and I mean suffering in anticipation as well as responding to painful stimuli. It’s why I oppose the death penalty.
I have a niece who has severe spina biffida. When the doctor was breaking the news to my sister and brother-in-law, one of the first things she did was bring up the abortion option. Today my niece is a happy five year old who expertly maneuvers her wheelchair while playing with her brothers and sisters, loves The Little Mermaid, and will be starting school in the fall. Who are we to play god and decide whose life is worth living? My beautiful niece doesn’t deserve a death sentence simply because her legs don’t work, and that’s exactly what the “quality of life” argument is advocating.