Thoughts & Opinions: Are you actually Pro-Life?

Do you believe that life begins at conception? Okay, that is a philosophy that is true to many people's hearts. Life itself is a definition constantly changing, so take comfort in whatever definition you can find.

So, life begins at conception. And you believe every being has a right to life, right? Great. So what are the basic necessities to life... Food, water, shelter on the most primitive level. Clothing, fundamental education, and appropriate socialization to take one baby step farther. Let's take a full leap forward and say every being deserves safety, security, and a certain amount of liberty to pursue one's own desires and one's own definition of happiness. To quote some obscure document I read once, “Life, liberty, and the right to the pursuit of happiness” are considered inalienable rights, as fundamental as the right to breathe, to some men a few hundred years ago who wrote some paper that I guess defines our entire governmental system. There's a lot to unpack here. So, like I said before, baby steps.

The fundamentals: food, water, shelter. So, you want all fetuses to be brought full term, right? Because all life matters? I'd assume then that it makes sense to provide all women - who would otherwise choose to terminate - with these basic necessities, right? If they are to compromise their own well-being, lifestyle, and comfort for the sake of a child that otherwise wouldn't exist, do you plan on making their pregnancy as simple as possible? Give the mothers a comfortable space to live, nutritious food, and a safe environment that cannot be taken away due to a lack of funds, one's race, religion, class, age, etc.?

Beyond that, there are medical expenses. Will women have guaranteed medical expenses waived to the fullest to ensure that these precious embryos are brought into the world as healthy as modern science will allow? We are talking prenatal visits, literature to be read, regular exercise classes, dedicated doctors to each individual, and a whole mess of contingency plans in case of complications. Are you ready to raise your own taxes to pay for this?

Let's say the prospective mother does not want, or is unable, to raise a child. In this case, best case scenario would be adopting out to a loving family, right? In this sense, the birth mother could functionally be an egg donor who also leases out her uterus for nine months. A child should be in a loving, if not biologically related, home rather than an unhappy, unstable home where it was unwanted, right? Great, adoption it is.

Will the entire foster home system be revamped, vetted, and revised to ensure each individual child is given the physical and psychological care necessary to ensure a healthy upbringing in this environment until adopted? Will these children in government care receive fully accessible education? Will adopting a child for QUALIFIED and SAFE guardians become a more navigable system than the mess of red tape it is now?

Mind you, I am focusing on cases of accidental pregnancy wherein the sex is consensual. Let's take a few steps backwards and talk about prevention, contraception.

Will contraception be made free and EASILY accessible to all, regardless of healthcare and insurance? Or what about sex education. Will this course be turned into a full fledged mandatory class, and not a week of gym class dedicated to tampons and STDs? Will abstinence-only centric curriculums be discontinued? (On the well documented basis that abstinence only education is associated with higher rates of unplanned teen pregnancies) Will the curricula be fully comprehensive, covering topics ranging from but not limited to consent, menstruation, LGBTQ, pleasure, and acceptance? Let's face it, if you believe that unwanted pregnancies are the result of being irresponsible, then we should arm our youth with every weapon in our arsenal to help and encourage them to be responsible, right?

Alright, so let's say with all that, an unintentional pregnancy still occurs. Obviously the female will have the irrevocable physical burden for 9+ months. Will the unwitting sperm donor be legally held to the same standards of providing all care possible to mother and fetus for the length of the pregnancy? Will you choose to enact policies that will require the time and effort from the male counterpart that will attempt to be equal to the weight of the burden placed on the unwilling mother?

Now, let's talk about cases of rape. Let's say you want no abortion except in cases of rape. So, if that's the case, we should take all steps possible to prevent rape, right? That is only logical.

Will rapists be held to the same or similar conviction standards as murderers? If unwillingly taking a life is a capital crime, unwillingly forcing someone to make a life seems pretty bad too… and if terminating a pregnancy is murder, the mother is not the only one held responsible for the life she didn't want to create in the first place, most definitely so in cases of nonconsensual sex. Right?

I promise you I am 95% joking with my next example: when dogs can't stop humping things, their balls are chopped off. Sounds like a good idea for serial rapists. Let them freeze their sperm and give it to a willing woman if they want to be a father. But otherwise let's just cut off the bit of biology that so many people deem responsible for men's uncontrollable sexuality.

A specific case has been brought to light recently wherein a rapist was granted shared custody over the child that came about as the result of the rape of a 12 year old girl. After that rape, the man was convicted of a SECOND sexual assault on another underaged victim. Let's say a woman or girl is raped, gets pregnant, carries child to term, and raises the child. Will the rapist be banned from ever having interaction with said child ever? Will this be a blanket ban on rapist-to-rape-child-interaction unless overturned willingly by any mother who gave birth as the result of rape? Will the rapist be banned from interacting with ANY child without supervision? This is what I mean by holding rapists to the same standard of accountability as murderers. Unwillingly taking lives is horrible, as is unwillingly making life.

Let's take a quick tangential detour. You still believe all life matters, right? Great. So will you take steps towards caring for all life? You remember those fundamental rights we talked about earlier… well a lot of fully formed human lives have no access to them. Will you take steps towards caring for all life, then? Making food, shelter, safety, security, healthcare, work, and ‘the pursuit of happiness’ accessible to every human being? If you say no to this, you're not pro-life. You're pro-birth and anti-bodily-autonomy.

Let's talk bodily autonomy too. If I am dying and you have the only blood type in the world that could save me, no one could force you to give me some blood. Donating blood is quick and simple. But if you don't want to donate your blood to me, and you know I will die without it, no one can force you to donate. That would not be considered murder, because you have full rights to do with your blood as you will. If I do not want to give my body to support the life of anyone else, it is literally the exact same concept. Take the fertilized embryo from my body and put it in an incubator if terminating the pregnancy is not a moral option then. You cannot force an unwilling person to compromise their own bodily autonomy by all existing laws. Did you know that we can't even harvest organs from a brain dead human being if that person did not give their consent beforehand? Even if 20 lives could be saved from those organ donations, we cannot force that cadaver to give up those organs. Should we force away all bodily autonomy for everyone, or give existing, breathing, thinking women full rights to bodily autonomy that corpses get to enjoy..? Seems pretty uncomplicated, right? So would you fund scientific research to create fully functional incubators to carry embryos to full term outside of a living womb (releasing the biological mother of any responsibility)? If you say no to that, then the only way you can still be pro-life is if you agree with stripping all laws of bodily autonomy for all human beings. And even then, I do not think “pro-life” would be the most fitting term for you.

Did you make it this far? Cool. Only a few more questions left.

Do you understand that everything I just went over had nothing to do with your belief in any religion, and therefore church and state should remain separate? Will you support any legislation that takes steps towards implementing policies that correspond with the above beliefs? Will you vote for candidates who act in support of the above policies?

If you responded YES to these questions, then you truly are pro-life and probably a pretty decent human being.