All Human Life Has Dignity

One of the arguments that my pro-choice friends make  in favor of abortion is that they say pro-lifers only care about the life in the womb and not the life of a baby after birth.  The implication here is that couples faced with an unplanned pregnancy and who cannot or would not properly care for the baby once it is born should be allowed to abort because there would be no one to love and nurture a small child.   To the uneducated, this appears to be a sound argument.  After all, the lack of care for a small child born into a situation in which it was unwanted in the first place would be harmful and dangerous for the child.  And so the child should be denied birth and allowed to be killed and removed from the womb by an abortion provider.

In a perfect pro-life world, all human life has dignity and is wanted and respected.  But we don’t live in a perfect pro-life world.  Pre-born human life is the life we hear the most about because such life is the most vulnerable and killing this life is accepted and sought by many.  The pre-born are hidden from the rest of the world.  No one has seen a pre-born human being (except via x-rays, sonograms, and heartbeats) and some believe that they should not have the dignity nor the “wanted” and “respect” labels until their bodies appear before us in their fully dignified form on their birth day.  And so this is the form of human life that gets the most attention from the pro-life community.  But that is not to say that post-birth life is totally ignored and forgotten.  Quite the contrary. 

Pro-life communities, particularly religious communities, have social programs that give counselling and support to pregnant women, even protection from disagreeable husbands or boyfriends.  And after birth, these protections extend to the families.  Beyond this, adoption is a viable option.  I understand that there are many childless couples that have tried, but cannot conceive.  These couples are crying out for a baby and adoption agencies should be considered.  Indeed, post-birth life is important to the pro-life community and should not be falsely portrayed.

But beyond all of this is that word “dignity.”  Human life is above all animal life and plant life.  We have intelligence.  We have ingenuity.  We make amazing things happen.  We have come the farthest of all creatures through the evolutionary chain.  Even if you don’t profess a particular religious belief, it is simply beneath our dignity to be killing our pre-birth life just as much as it is beneath our dignity to be killing post-birth life.  My dream is that we will eventually all agree on these things rather than to think of ourselves as simply another animal that we can kill at will.  God help us!  Amen!