From Womb to Tomb
“To be pro-life doesn’t necessarily end with a woman’s pregnancy,” says Wendy Davis, the candidate for governor of Texas best known for opposing laws that would prohibit late-term abortion and regulate safety at abortion facilities.
I agree, actually. Being pro-life shouldn’t end with a woman’s pregnancy. It does, however, begin there. (More accurately, it begins before then, by preventing unplanned pregnancy.)
It feels like pro-lifers are always on the receiving end of charges of hypocrisy. “You care so much about fetuses, but you don’t support Program XYZ that would help impoverished families!” Of course, the charge of hypocrisy works just as well the other way around. It’s disingenuous to claim to stand for disadvantaged members of society, while supporting the right to dismember the most disadvantaged of them all.
This isn’t meant as a put-down of liberalism generally. There are plenty of pro-life liberals, represented by groups like Democrats for Life and All Our Lives. Many SPL members are politically liberal as well.
This also isn’t meant to imply that fiscal conservatives are heartless. We can all agree that poverty is a bad thing, but reasonable people can disagree on how best to end it and where the money should come from. I know many conservative pro-lifers who devote considerable time and money to private charity, including charities that help young children and their parents.
The problem is that when pro-lifers give, they give as individuals; their care for born people isn’t publicly connected to the cause. On the other hand, when a liberal government program is established, it is (usually) associated with pro-abortion politicians.
Late in 2012, Secular Pro-Life launched ProLifeCares.org, a website that connects pro-lifers to great charities. Many are, at least on a surface level, totally unrelated to abortion. But they are united by a common value: protecting those who cannot protect themselves.
So if you want to show the world what it really means to be pro-life, before, during, and after pregnancy, help a charity on our list* and then share ProLifeCares.org on your social media pages. Do it for the weakest members of the human family. Thank you.
*We recognize that you may not have disposable income; that’s okay! The site includes non-financial ways to give too. Check it out.
It has always seemed a little weird to me when pro-aborts/choicers would angrily question charitable giving on the part of pro-lifers, as if a person doesn't have a *right* to desire to save the life of the unborn unless they were willing to house and clothe the poor who are having unwanted pregnancies. For myself, I just tell them my story of having a young pregnant woman–who'd intended to abort her daughter–live with me & my family until she had her baby and was on her feet again. Then I ask them, "What have *you* done to help these women and children?" That usually leaves them speechless, because typically they haven't helped at all. Additionally, most of the pro-life people I have encountered have been the most generous in their freely-given (versus coerced through taxes) charity to the poor.
I'm a "broke college kid", but I try to do my best to protect human life, and for me that means giving blood as often as I can. Maybe next time I should wear my pro-life t-shirt!
"That usually leaves them speechless, because typically they haven't helped at all"
Of course, these are a group of people who feel it's better to be dead than to have any hardship in life. That's why they don't really help with crisis pregnancies, and view abortion alternatives to be cruel manipulations. Because they want the woman to get an abortion.
Like most important controversies the problem is simplifying what is complex. There's a whole series of separate (although some are related) issues, there's your belief system, there's the political reality which requires prioritizing and choosing, there's the question of how you address a problem and what policies you favor/oppose in pursuit of a goal, and there's non-political action. People often pick one of these and ignoring the others say, 'You're being a hypocrite.'
re: cartoon – I'd like to see how the creator of that cartoon would respond if you PS'd the pro-life table and word balloon into gun control and children killed by gun violence. Lucky stiffs?!
I do help and its called taxes, because its hell of a lot better than some whishy washy fly by night charity that simply scams off the donation to pay overpaid CEO'S.
The US is one of the only industrialized countries that doesn't have paid maturity leave, or after school programs, prenatal care, or even decent health care system.
I rather live in society where it taught people how to use contraceptives successfully, where birth control is given freely to those who can't pay, offer help to those who want to have kids, and offer those who don't with safe / legal abortions.
Raising children is a 18+ years commitment that not all people are willing to bear. I also don't think that a woman should be forced as some broodmare to have children just because she is pregnant, and then take the child away.
Women have rights and abortion is one of them.
I think its better for woman to have the option of having a safe / legal abortion with out interference by the state / religious / overly opinionated groups of people. I think women have a constitutional right to privacy when she visits her doctor and if she wants or doesn't want an abortion its her choice.
The US is one of the worlds industrialized countries that doesn't have paid maturity leave. How about this, instead of "hoping" a nice charity that will appear, how about we give women access to prenatal care, after school programs, free access to birth control if you can't pay, and health care services that those women, who wish to go full term have their children and give them the option of having safe / legal abortions.
Becoming pregnant is not a crime, nor its social obligation that she must bare that child no matter what because it upsets a few people, who for most will shows only interest in the first 9 months and forget the next 18 years.
Janet. Dane Locesh I thinks that's how you spell her last name. She works for The Blaze and told her story about how she got pregnant college and how her pro choice friends all abandon her when she decided to have her child.
The State has the right to intervene prior to fetal viability only to protect the health of the mother, and may regulate the procedure after viability so long as there is always an exception for preserving maternal health. The Court additionally added that the primary right being preserved in the Roe decision was that of the physician's right to practice medicine freely absent a compelling state interest – not women's rights in general.
Perhaps the most notable opposition to Roe comes from Roe herself; in 1995, Norma L. McCorvey revealed that she became pro-life and is now a vocal opponent of abortion.
"As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible….Justice Blackmun’s opinion provides essentially no reasoning in support of its holding. And in the almost 30 years since Roe’s announcement, no one has produced a convincing defense of Roe on its own terms."
Norma McCorvey became a member of the pro-life movement in 1995; she now supports making abortion illegal. In 1998, she testified to Congress:
It was my pseudonym, Jane Roe, which had been used to create the "right" to abortion out of legal thin air. But Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee never told me that what I was signing would allow women to come up to me 15, 20 years later and say, "Thank you for allowing me to have my five or six abortions. Without you, it wouldn't have been possible." Sarah never mentioned women using abortions as a form of birth control. We talked about truly desperate and needy women, not women already wearing maternity clothes.[10]
As a party to the original litigation, she sought to reopen the case in U.S. District Court in Texas to have Roe v. Wade overturned. However, the Fifth Circuit decided that her case was moot, inMcCorvey v. Hill.[94] In a concurring opinion, Judge Edith Jones agreed that McCorvey was raising legitimate questions about emotional and other harm suffered by women who have had abortions, about increased resources available for the care of unwanted children, and about new scientific understanding of fetal development, but Jones said she was compelled to agree that the case was moot. On February 22, 2005, the Supreme Court refused to grant a writ of certiorari, and McCorvey's appeal ended.
Syner–if you believe that bearing the children you create is a punishment, then there's no reaching you. How sad. If you believe a woman's choice to have sex–which science proves can lead to the creation of a new life–and then taking responsibility for and nurturing & protecting the life you helped create is being "forced as some broodmare to have children", then there's no reaching you.
Janet where did I say "punishment?"
Of course you can't reach me its because you don't have an argument.
Okay, and lets ignore that the US out of all industrialized nations that doesn't have paid maturity leave, decent health care, or even after day programs, or even paid time time off.
Seriously create a society that welcomes children, all children, but also allow women to decided if they want to go full term, I mean you got to choose, didn't you?
I wasn't going to say anything the first time, but this is seriously bugging me: it's called MATERNITY leave.
Thanks for the correction, but the US doesn't have paid maternity leave or paid family leave.
It also seems you don't have a counter argument, good job!
Taking a life is not right. Doesn't matter if it's legal or not. It's still wrong. And what about helping women? You know, free birth control, aid, ect? I hear so many pro choicers saying that we don't care about the child once it's born, but what do they say? "just abort it." both sides need to step up and help women and children.
(I'm not saying YOU don't help, I'm just saying as a whole that's what I've seen, om both sides.)
http://nursingclio.org/2012/08/27/are-you-really-pro-life/
I hear so many pro choicer, blah blah blah.
I don't know who you hang with just because, the ahem, pro choice people you hang with it doesn't mean all pro choice people think the same way. Much of what I have read from this site has not mention anything about social inequity or the US 80%+ Christians doesn't give paid family leave, or the other programs that are offered in other industrialized nations that support mothers and families.
A simply search revels how people who are pro life but against social welfare programs.
The Pro-Life Paradox
http://prospect.org/article/pro-life-paradox
that is because most of them are conservative. I'm liberal. I also abortion would be greatly diminished if we had public assistance. A lot of women are uncomfortable with going to private Christian charities, so a secular source of help would be so beneficial. I'm not just pro life during pregnancy, but throughout a human being's life.
You making the assumption that all women who get abortions are atheists, Christian are 80% of the US population, Christians get abortions too. A Christian women will not seek a Christian charity if she seeks an abortion.
If you're seeking a "secular" source try to fund more social services of the state, oh but I forget you're Christian pro life life friends are trying to cut socials welfare programs, the worse is at the same your "conservative" pro life friends cut socials programs, they wish to fund prisons.
If you really want to cut the abortions down, put more effort in prevention, free access to birth control and better education in schools like sex ed and returning home economics back to schools.
Abortion should always be available as the last option, you may not agree on that concept, I think a women's right to privacy is paramount.