Lucas Weeks

I saw this post by Carolyn Yoder making the rounds on Facebook, and I decided to write a response.

Thanks for sharing this. I consider myself pro-life (I prefer anti-abortion), and I often wonder how someone with a tender conscience about abortion – but who would otherwise be left-leaning politically – thinks about the issue. Abortion is a touchy topic, and I have no desire to start a flame war. But I’d like to give the following rejoinders to each of the seven reasons listed in the original article:

1. Yes, we should all be consistent in our convictions. I cannot claim to love the unborn child at my local abortuary if I’m unwilling to love my actual neighbors. But pro-life families in this country are willing to love their neighbors in tangible ways. The key to understanding this, however, is to recognize that such families generally do not equate support for government programs with loving our neighbor. If support for higher taxes and more government programs means love, then I’m not a very loving person.

2. War is hell, no question there. But just like the free-spending Republicans are no longer the party of “small government” vs. the “big government” Democrats, it seems to me that both parties are eager to use drones and bombs and war to get what they want. It seems to me that Democrats have been just as hawkish in recent years as Republicans. I suppose I could be wrong about this, but it is the impression that I have.

3. I just flat-out do not believe that “programs” will change our society and make it more just and humane. I believe that God, turning the hearts of fathers back to their children, will do that. That is to say, repentance and faith. Abortion rates will decrease when men love their wives and children. Everything else is screwing around with the deck chairs on the Titanic.

4. This reason seems to be in bad faith. If the author believes that abortion is the taking of innocent life, then she believes that over a million babies are killed in this country each year by abortion. How many are killed by our bombing and wars and drone strikes? The numbers are so strikingly disproportionate that, as I said, this argument just seems to be in bad faith. And I say this as one who believes that much of what our military does in the modern world is unjust and evil. But the numbers just don’t compare.

5. Again, this argument seems to be in bad faith. Or maybe the author doesn’t actually think that a baby in his mother’s womb has any value? Is she serious when she compares closing veterans hospitals to closing abortion mills? A hospital exists to help someone heal and grow strong again. An abortion mill exists to end the life of a human being at a particular stage in his development. If you’re worried about all the “other services” provided by abortion mills, I assure you we could figure out how to provide them in other ways. Again, it’s hard to take this one seriously.

6. This reason for not supporting pro-life candidates raises issues of how we should organize our healthcare, whether the government should be responsible to feed school children their lunches, guns, our corrupt prison system, and environmentalism. These are all important topics that should be discussed, and the philosophical differences across party lines are significant. But as far as I can tell, the author’s point here is to say that these other topics are more important than the million babies that are killed each year by abortion. The author has it exactly backwards. On the contrary, a nation that cares for the widow and the orphan (and an aborted baby should certainly be considered an orphan) would get the answers to those other questions right. Instead, we wickedly slaughter innocent babies and think we will have the moral compass necessary to care about our corrupt prison system. It just doesn’t work like that.

7. There is no doubt that Republican politicians use the pro-life flag to get a certain constituency into their pockets. Welcome to politics in the USA. In fact, it appears to me that Donald Trump is doing this very thing. But it also appears to me that he is doing more to actually oppose abortion than any presidential candidate I can think of. Good for him.

I’m in total agreement with the author that we all have blood on our hands. May God have mercy on our nation.