Laura M. Rector writes:
I am a pro-life Christian.
On the Sunday of the historic vote on health care, I opened my e-mail to find a mass e-mail from Americans United for Life, basically calling the president a liar and health-care reform anti-life.
Recently, I opened my e-mail to find more of the same – despite the fact that analysts have shown that the law clearly marks abortion as something no American has to pay for without choosing to do so and also limits the reasons for abortion to rape, incest and endangerment to mothers' lives, as David Gushee pointed out in The Huffington Post.
I deleted both e-mails without taking action.
I did this for two reasons. First, it seemed like more of the same shortsighted politics that's a discredit to the pro-life cause, pushing the movement to be a machine of one political party. I'm unconvinced this is the way to resolve the problem.
In fact, since recent Gallup polls report that 39 percent of American voters are independents, I can only imagine that this group is actually hurting unborn babies by alienating some like me, who have a heart for the unborn but not for the movement's tactics.
Second, I don't think health-care reform is incompatible with the right to life. Being pro-life is more than being anti-abortion. We must value life enough to devalue any issue that undermines it.
Many in the current pro-life movement fail to recognize a need to broaden their agenda and define the movement by being pro-children and anti-poverty, not simply anti-Democrats. Unless we make a society where both mothers and children are sustained, abortion will always be possible.
The pro-life movement will continue to be ineffective unless it starts to pour as much or more resources into medical care for women, helping the poor, early childhood care and defending children's other rights as it pours into lobbyist groups.
And yet what is the state of children in our society? More than 18 percent of U.S. children live in poverty, according to the Children's Defense Fund. The same group reports 742,661 child victims of abuse and neglect in the United States in 2007, with 72 percent of such cases categorized as "neglect and medical neglect."
In the meantime, the United States ranks 41st in the world in maternal deaths, and it remains four times more deadly for African-American mothers to give birth here than for Caucasian ones, according to Amnesty International. They also show that our nation spends more on health care than any other nation – with pregnancy and childbirth hospitalization getting the greatest chunk of dollars.
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It seems like a good number of conservative pro-lifers think we can be broadly pro-life, but that pro-life goals should not be the pursued via State action. The reasoning is that governments are often controlled by anti-lifers and can be used towards anti-life purposes when captured by the likes of Obama and the Democrats. (Their reasoning, not mine).
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do recall this blog featuring an article that showed that countries with universal health care systems, including those with health care/health insurance systems run by the State, had more pro-life outcomes in terms of proportionately fewer abortions, better health for expectant mothers and newborn children, etc. So, I wonder what is really at work here, since the evidence would seem to weigh on the side of the pro-life social democrats.