I Am Pro-Life*

(*actually, wholly, totally, 100%, not-just-anti-abortion)

I AM PRO-LIFE.

I am anti-violence. Anti-death penalty.

I am against anything that would create an enemy of my neighbor – even my violent, criminal neighbor – and make him a monster deserving annihilation, rather than the beloved of God needing desperately to be reminded of who he is to whom he belongs.

I AM PRO-LIFE.

I am against the weaponizing of people, and especially the church. Our war is won and the Victor is Christ, who achieved victory through His own shed blood and no one else’s.

I AM PRO-LIFE.

I believe that no child, no matter where she was born, and no matter how she came under our care, should go hungry or naked or homeless or diseased. And so I believe immigrant children ought to be cared for as refugees, who’ve been sent or abandoned by parents or trafficking lords and have thankfully fallen into better hands.

>>Lord, may our hands be better hands!

I AM PRO-LIFE.

I am anti-abortion.

I believe that every child should be a wanted child, and that no child should be discarded as an unpreventable accident. So I champion a woman’s free access to contraceptives that promote her health and significantly decrease the abortion rate where universally available. I champion comprehensive sex education that provides young people with an accurate and full knowledge of their actions and consequences, and free, unhindered, unquestioned access to protection against pregnancy and more. Because while I cannot control their behavior, I can exercise due diligence by ensuring they know what they need to know, to prevent what they need to prevent. I can control whether or not I bury my own head in the sand and vicariously contribute to rates of abortions and STDs among our youth.

I AM PRO-LIFE.

I am not merely anti-abortion.

I champion the lives of the unborn, and the lives of their mothers on whose health these little ones depend. Therefore, I champion public services like WIC, food stamps, universal healthcare, public education, and subsidized housing, because an unborn child is no healthier than the woman carrying him. And if a pregnant mother is denied healthy foods, a safe home, and proper prenatal care, whether or not her bank account affords her those things, her unborn child will suffer too. Because no child should go hungry or sick just because his parents are poor. Not even the unborn.

I AM PRO-LIFE.

I am not merely pro-birth.

I champion the lives of the newborn, who return with their mothers to the same homes, same refrigerators, same incomes, same health care, and same neighborhoods as when they were in the womb.

So I champion universal healthcare for mother and child, WIC, food stamps, and public education that gives children born into poverty a chance to rise above. I champion grants and scholarships that give impoverished parents a chance at a higher education and better career, so their children may reap the benefits of a stable home.

I champion a working-mother’s right to respectable maternity leave, and to pump her child’s breast milk at work, and affordable subsidized access to child care while she works. Because no working mother should have to choose between paying her daycare provider and paying for dinner, or having to quit her job and doing neither.

I champion healthy, free school meals, because no child should starve simply because his parents either cannot afford to send him to school with lunch, or are working multiple jobs and thus are not around to make it for him.

I AM PRO-LIFE.

I am anti-war, because I believe even the “peace” presumably beget by war is only enjoyed by those whose hearts and souls and psyches are disconnected from the horrors of war. Because such peace is ever only temporary, and it comes at the grave cost of soldiers who return from the battlefield with unseen, unspeakably deep wounds that send too many into deep depression and saddle them with PTSD, and too often are the reason they take their own lives. And no one should have to live like that.

I AM PRO-LIFE.

Above all, I believe and hope and pray and champion a Living and Active Spirit of God in His church, compelling His people to be His hands and feet to LOVE and serve and champion the hungry and poor, the mother and her children both born and unborn, the pregnant teen and the violent criminal, the immigrant and the refugee… And to do so without condition, no questions asked, all the way, every time, so that these scourges of our age – war and violence and abortion and abandonment – can be done with once and for all.

I am a pacifist.

Or, as we say:
WHOLLY PRO-LIFE.

[EDIT: In a previous version, I said, “I can control whether or not I bury my own head in the sand and vicariously contribute to climbing rates of abortions and STDs among our youth.” It was poorly worded, and has been changed. I recognize that abortion rates among teenagers are NOT, in fact, climbing.]