If we really want to fight against abortion, we need to do everything we can to decrease desperation– and I’m not talking about standing outside of abortion clinics passing out pamphlets to charities that help with housing and baby layettes either. Exercise your empathy, and think about how scary and degrading that would feel if you were the woman running into the clinic. I mean that we need to create a society where the poor are reasonably confident that they can get what they need, so they never get as far as the clinic in the first place. We need a society where people actually can pull themselves out of poverty with hard work, and that means doing what we can to make the economy prosperous while also mandating a just wage. We have none of those things right now, and pretending we do feeds desperation. Also, no matter how prosperous our society becomes, we’re always going to need a generous social safety net which includes healthcare. That’s going to cost tax money, which we have to be willing to pay. We will always need private charities as well, and lots of them. Everyone should be supporting charities that help poor families in their communities, as much as we can. But there is no realistic way that private charities can do everything in a country this size without the government’s meddling. It’s got to come from both.
And that’s not enough. We need to convert our own hearts, to remove any stigma against poor or desperate mothers. Where I live, the pro-life housewives who show up with picket signs at every protest are deeply prejudiced against families on welfare. I’ve seen them say horrendous, slanderous and abusive things about mothers who take advantage of free school lunches. I’ve seen them scheming to bully poor people on Section Eight housing assistance away from the neighborhood. This is absolutely anti-life. Any time you abuse poor families, you encourage them to abort future children. Any time you shame unwed mothers or pregnant teenagers, you encourage them to get rid of their babies as quickly as possible. You have to repent of your pride, and realize that you’re no better than they are, and then you have to act like it.
You may have to re-examine the methods you have of helping, as well, to make sure they’re not shooting you in the foot. If you were a desperate woman running to the abortion clinic for help, would you want to be confronted with picket signs, shouting and photographs of dead fetuses? Would you be dissuaded by someone screaming the Rosary into a megaphone, or would that make you run into the clinic even faster? Just think about what you would want, if you were in her shoes. It may surprise you.
That’s what needs to happen, for us to be a pro-life society. We need to change, at the economic, social and cultural and personal level, and become something it’s never been before, if we want to save mothers and babies. And neither political party is going to give us that. Both major political parties well help with a few things on my list and mess up many others. Everything else is up to us.
This is on us.
We have to convert our hearts, and we have to act. Part of acting will be looking at the whole picture of the abortion issue instead of at the caricature, and then voting for who we honestly think will do the least harm. But there’s no way it can end there. That will never work.
I’m glad that Mike Pence finally said the A-word and talked about abortion at the debate last night. It helped to demonstrate how wrong both major parties are, and what we need to do differently.
Now we can get to work at being truly pro-life.
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