Are you Pro Life, or do you just claim the title? Most Pro Life people aren’t really Pro Life, they’re just Pro Birth. They don’t care about the child after it’s born or when we send it off to war, they only want to ensure that the mother is forced to give birth to him or her.
Side note: This article is not relevant to all Pro Life people, since many of them already do the things listed below. I’m addressing this to Pro Life people who are really more Pro Birth than Pro Life. These groups are not fringe activists, they are actively working to ban and limit abortion, birth control, and women’s rights in general- and at the moment it’s working. They stalk abortion clinic workers, harass women entering clinics even if they’re just getting cancer screenings, and their efforts have literally put women in jail for having miscarriages. They have power and influence, and they’re using it to the detriment of women via social stigma, lack of rights, etc. I’m pleading with real Pro Life people to speak out against these fanatics, because they are NOT Pro Life. They are Pro Birth and Anti-Woman.
If you’re really Pro Life:
Stop pushing women to use adoption when the foster care system is overwhelmed with unwanted kids and you’re certainly not adopting them.
Pro Life groups talk an awful lot about adoption, and yet our foster care system still overflows. If they truly care so much about the unborn, why don’t they start adopting all these kids who need families? After all, they are the ones pressing for adoption to be considered. But few of them ever step up to actually ADOPT these kids that they helped force into the world.
Personally, I think that any Pro Life person who is able to adopt and doesn’t is a hypocrite. Of course there are some Pro Life people who still support a woman’s right to choose even if they personally disagree, who focus on bettering the lives of women so that abortions aren’t needed as much; those people are different and I have a lot of respect for them. But for the Pro Life people standing outside clinics, badgering mothers and railing on them to “just consider adoption!” and demeaning them for daring to choose abortion, they need to stop being so hypocritical. Until foster care isn’t saturated with unwanted kids and the process of adoption becomes easier, you don’t get to pressure women to choose adoption.
Stop opposing contraception, which helps to prevent countless abortions.
It boggles my mind to hear people oppose abortion and then also oppose birth control. Women are not baby factories. We are allowed to have sex without wanting to become a mother. You can personally choose to have lots of unplanned kids if you want, but you have no right to demand that other women forgo family planning just because you do. Also, why oppose free or affordable birth control? Even if birth control was a blatant free government handout, wouldn’t that be better than women having abortions because they couldn’t afford birth control? Wouldn’t it be cheaper than having to pay for Welfare for these kids because their parents can’t afford another child but also couldn’t afford birth control? Aren’t of the unborn worth a few dollars in government spending? We certainly spend enough on war, which ends life, so why not spend a few dollars to save it? Don’t expect impoverished women to support their families and somehow afford birth control in addition to all their other bills, and then deny them abortion when they get pregnant.
Stop opposing LGBTQ adoption.
A loving home is better than an orphanage or foster care. If you actually care about kids’ welfare, then start actively supporting the rights of ALL loving potential parents to adopt. If all those LGBTQ couples were allowed to adopt, we’d see a significant drop in the numbers of kids in foster care and orphanages. Think about it- there’s an entire group of people who can’t always have kids of their own without great effort and financial stress, and many of them desperately want to adopt kids nobody else wants. It’s perfect! It’s nature’s way of making sure all kids get parents! Put aside your prejudice and start supporting this, because it’ll solve so many problems.
Start working to better the lives of mothers and their children.
The US is a terrible place to be a mother- it’s the worst of all developed nations for maternal care and rights. The US also falls behind in economy, healthcare, minimum wage, etc. Focus on these issues so women don’t have to risk going into poverty if they keep a pregnancy. THIS is how we reduce abortions and improve society, not by shaming women and denying them abortion services.
Stop telling lies about abortion.
Abortion has far fewer health risks than childbirth, so pressuring women to carry a pregnancy to term actually increases their risk of medical complications and even death. But Pro Life groups usually say the opposite, they claim that legal abortion is very dangerous despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that says otherwise. By lying to women, they put them at risk. So what life are they really caring about? Isn’t the life of the mother important enough to stop lying to them? Apparently the unborn fetus’ life is so important that it’s acceptable to lie to women and put them at risk. Unborn always take priority over the born in the minds of many Pro Life people.
Stop promoting the Death Penalty and unnecessary war.
If all life is really so precious and every death is a tragedy that should be avoided no matter what, why are so many of you chomping at the bit to see other people die? I just don’t get it. If every single life is inherently precious, than any death should be opposed, right? Again, it seems that you are actually Pro Birth as opposed to Pro Life. But Pro Birth doesn’t sound as nice, does it?
Life and Other Musings 