Today’s New York Times has an op-ed co-written by a pro-lifer and a pro-abort that reads like a “can’t we just get along” rant. Or maybe it’s more of a request to pro-lifers to just capitulate and end the uncomfortable stalemate.
Amanda Peterman represents the pro-life side and is lilfe media director for Right to Life of Michigan and if these are her opinions, her bosses should reconsider her employment there.
- There will be other chances to work together and still be true to our missions. For example, many unintended pregnancies could be prevented by ensuring that women have health insurance coverage for the most effective contraception methods.
Except that we all know that even birth control pills are abortifacient—if taken during the first moments of conception they kill the baby. And does this universal coverage for birth control mean that Catholics will have to compromise their religious beliefs to accommodate it? What people don’t like to say is that the Pill is as much responsible for abortion as just about anything else. The contraceptive mentality—reducing sex to a convenience divorced from its unitive and procreative ends in marriage—directly leads to abortion as Pope Paul VI so presciently foresaw in Humanae Vitae.
- Making the workplace more accommodating to the demands of parenthood is also a common goal. Why does affordable, high-quality child care remain out of reach for the majority of American families? If the pro-choice and pro-life movements work together to support legislation to expand the social safety net for low-income mothers, and to lobby for more family-friendly policies for working parents, their power would be formidable. These are goals that we both share.
Yes, if only we had more liberal programs in which we hand over our children to be raised in baby kennels where we have no idea who is teaching what values to them, it would solve so many problems. Perhaps what we should instead be saying is that government should only encourage two-parent, stable families and reduce the tax burden on families so that they can live on one income.
But even that misses the point. Even if every child was placed in day care so that every mommy could work, it still says nothing about abortion. There would still be more than a million abortions a year. How many women walk into a clinic saying, “I want an abortion because I can’t afford day care for the baby.” That’s balderdash. They walk into clinics because they are embarrassed, afraid, or just plain mad. They want to do away with the consequences of their actions and they are often pushed by their dads, boyfriends, or perhaps least likely, husbands.
The op-ed then descends into the typical liberal claptrap of “don’t hurt my feelings with hurtful language.”
- Both sides must unite publicly against the use of violent measures in the movement and must isolate extremists who employ them. The language we use to argue our positions must change, too. We can no longer tolerate inflammatory terms that serve only to divide us further and create conflict.
Most pro-lifers already isolate violent extremists. To suggest otherwise is to surrender to the pro-abortion rhetoric. Then they claim, “Doctors who offer safe abortion services are not murderers or butchers.” Safe? For whom? Certainly not for the baby. And it denies the very essence of what it means to be pro-life. An unborn child is a living human being. An abortion kills that innocent person. The intentional killing of an innocent person is murder. Any questions?
And of course, the whole thing ends with the liberal baloney that since we don’t agree, we can agree to disagree, and hope to all get along and end all division. I’m sorry, but division and disagreement is not evil, especially when it is over the most vital issues of life and death, salvation and damnation. I want to disagree with people who think the highest end is to end “unwanted pregnancies” at the expense of the psychologial, emotional, and spiritual well-being of the mother and father and the life of the child.
