16 June 2009

Pro-life

Upon reading an article in the Arkansas Times this morning, I was extremely disturbed by the wrticle's position on those of us who are pro-life. As many of you know, the abortion debate has continued now for a very long time, and probably won't ever be resolved of, as there are different ways of looking at both sides of the argument, but I'm not going to talk about that because that's not the point.

As many of you know, I happen to be a pro-life proponent. I believe that life begins at conception and the termination of any life, be it still in the womb, in prison, or in pain with a terminal disease, is an act of murder. I don't agree with the death penalty and I don't agree with abortion. I don't agree in giving someone the "freedom" to choose to terminate life at any stage after it has already begun because to me and most people who are pro-life, voting to allow people to choose or saying that someone has the right to choose is just the same as saying that someone has the right to grab a gun and shoot whomever they want because they don't like them. (I understand that there are women in dire circumstances sometimes who choose to terminate their pregnancies due to serious complications. I still don't agree that they have the choice to terminate that life within their womb.)

There are other ways to vocally and outwardly support the pro-life movement. Making a martyr of someone on the opposing side isn't really the best way to support the cause. What angers me most is that this person who claims to have acted on behalf of the millions of pro-lifers out there has done nothing but hurt our cause. How hypocritical is it to march against abortion yet think it's okay to murder an abortion provider while he's at church? Perhaps his actions were inconsistent with his faith, but that's not for me to decide. He'll have to deal with that when he meets his maker, which should be determined by that same maker, not by some zealot who thinks that it's okay to kill someone because they disagree with them. If that person were truly pro-life, there would have been peaceful protests made, like many around the country and locally that occur on a regular basis and use the most powerful tool that we have: prayer.

The article that I read was written by an abortion provider and as such was written with a "pro-choice" prospective. What angered me most about the article was that our position was painted as one of ignorance. In fact, the doctor who wrote the article compared the belief that abortion is murder to the belief that blood transfusions shouldn't be performed to patients who are dying because they are bleeding to death. Most abortions performed in this country are not performed because someone is dying and needs to terminate their pregnancy or they will not survive. How can an abortion be compared to a blood transfusion? They are two completely different things. For one, a blood transfusion doesn't end the life of the person giving the blood; number two the person donates his or her blood of his own volition. I don't see an unborn child giving up his or her life of his own volition in abortion. Abortion is something thrust upon that child without consent or knowledge. Therefore, this comparison is ridiculous and given merely to ridicule and demonstrate the supposed "ignorance" of our argument.

The person who committed this crime has done absolutely nothing to further the cause of life. In taking another man's life, he merely succeeded in verifying the stereotype of pro-lifers as ignorant, self-righteous people who will do anything and everything (legal or not) to end abortion because they are too dumb to understand or too religiously fundamentalistic to know better, when there are many many pro-lifers who are not ignorant at all, several of whom are doctors or who have been well-educated through various institutions of higher learning. Because a person has faith does not negate a person's intelligence. True faith validates intelligence.

Here endeth the rant.