How To Be Pro-Life

[MarysLittleFlower]

I totally agree and yes this works! I just wish I had done this more often instead of talking about stuff that's too different from the persons view. Its another thing if they ask or theres an important time to share. I think with pro life stuff it might be harder to do but you could still share personal stuff?  It doesn't have to be about you per se...but even stories of people you know. Like if you have a friend who almost got an abortion and then didn't, that could be a personal story about how now she's glad she didn't. Etc. I don't know... That's all I can think of! 

Edited July 16, 2015 by MarysLittleFlower

[Era Might]

My advice is that having a reverence for the womb should mean NOT turning it into a place for analysis and debate over an object. If one recognizes the womb as a sacred place, as a place of expectation and hope, as source of motherhood, then that means not turning what is contained in the womb into "a life." What is a life? It is a faceless object which scientists stick their instruments in to measure and analyze. I think we should reconsider this very language of being "pro-life" because it objectifies the womb. The modern conception of "life" is scientific: what we refer to as "a life" is that which scientists can measure and classify in terms of growth, process, etc., and which we can control because we can control the process of life. To be living is NOT to be "a life." The homeless person is not "a life" but a living person...when they become "a life" they become an object for control and intervention rather than a person to be lived with.

If we reverence the womb, then I think the only way to be pro-life is not to treat it as a battleground or an holding-place for a thing. The womb is a sacred source of motherhood, and abortion represents for motherhood what suicide represents for a person: the loss of hope and expectation. Here's an anecdote that I think represents "how" we should be "pro-life":

 

I once wrote a letter--it will soon be published--to a nun whom I have known since her girlhood and who is now in her old age the superior of a beautiful contemplative community. In this letter I reflected on my friendship with a woman who confessed to me that she intended to end her life. She told me that she had prepared herself for the next winter, and even chosen the spot under a tree where she would like to go to die. She was alcoholic, but still very much alive and clear, and said to me, Ivan, you are a chemist, you should know something about it. Tell me what poison to choose. She was a stubborn lady, I can tell you, not open to any arguments. And I know that she loved Johnny Walker's Black Label. So I wrote to my nun friend that I'm sorry that, at that moment, after bringing her to her home, I didn't go out, buy a bottle of Johnny Walker, and put it in front of her door in order to make sure that what she had told me did not in any way interfere with our friendship, as she must have felt from the look on my face. I will in no way help in a suicide; but at least three times in my life I have had to tell someone, always different people--in my way of life, this happened--"I will not open the window for you, but I'll stay with you." And this position, of not helping, but standing by, because you respect freedom, is difficult for people in our nice society to accept. I have just recently had evidence of this difficulty in believing that somebody like myself would suspend judgment at the suicide of a friend. But to put the mark of betrayal on it seems to me outside of my competence.

--Ivan Illich, "The Rivers North of the Future"

To define abortion (or suicide) in terms of ending "a life" is to lose all reverence for the person involved. What has died is the life inside the mother (and the suicide), and what can one do in the face of such profound despair but be with them and witness to hope and expectation, the kind of hope and expectation which Mary had when she visited Elizabeth. To turn the womb into a debate over "a life" is to give up all possibility of reverencing the womb. In the face of profound despair, such as abortion or suicide, one can only live in hope at a person's side, be with them, and witness to what "life" really means. To end the functioning of a body is a legal and scientific matter, but to have an abortion or commit suicide is to lose what is really life, that which lives inside every human heart and soul.

Edited July 16, 2015 by Era Might

[Era Might]

Just as an aside, I knew someone who told me she had an abortion, and it was something she could not forgive herself for. I honestly had no idea what to say to her. I guess there were probably no words I could say, or at least I was not the person the say them...maybe another woman could have something to say.

[Gabriela]

@Era Might: Wow. Well spoken, good sir.

@marigold: I think your strategy of coming strictly from a personal angle is a good one. Anytime I present my views (when people ask me), I frame them with, "Well, I used to be pro-choice/pro-capital punishment/on contraception, but then x, y, and z happened, and I changed my mind." Through explaining x, y, and z, I'm able to "make my argument"—i.e., show them my (Catholic) viewpoint. But because I contextualize it all in terms of my own personal experience, they don't (usually) feel threatened, AND they get a chance to see how someone who once was "on their side" moved in a reasonable way over to "the other side". Which I think really helps to improve understanding between the two factions on hot-button issues.

Your example of "adapting to the audience" of your dad by mentioning the ecological stuff is an excellent one. I think maybe you're not as bad at this as you think. 

Remember that, some people, even after they ask your opinion, and you explain it in terms of your personal experience, going out of your way to focus on what they're interested in—even then, some people are just going to remain hostile. It's unpleasant for us, but we can bear that cross for Christ, who told us not to deny Him. Think, though, of how much more unpleasant it is—spiritually—for that other person, who can't even be polite enough to restrain their fury when presented with a different opinion. Those people have it really bad. I always wonder why God sends me people like that, and I can't help but think it's not to make me uncomfortable (that's for sure), it's not even to give me a cross to help me grow—it's to show me right in my face, "Look at where this person is. You need to pray for her." Put simply: Those encounters are not for me. They're for them.

Edited July 16, 2015 by Gabriela

[marigold]

My advice is that having a reverence for the womb should mean NOT turning it into a place for analysis and debate over an object. If one recognizes the womb as a sacred place, as a place of expectation and hope, as source of motherhood, then that means not turning what is contained in the womb into "a life." What is a life? It is a faceless object which scientists stick their instruments in to measure and analyze. I think we should reconsider this very language of being "pro-life" because it objectifies the womb. The modern conception of "life" is scientific: what we refer to as "a life" is that which scientists can measure and classify in terms of growth, process, etc., and which we can control because we can control the process of life. To be living is NOT to be "a life." The homeless person is not "a life" but a living person...when they become "a life" they become an object for control and intervention rather than a person to be lived with.

If we reverence the womb, then I think the only way to be pro-life is not to treat it as a battleground or an holding-place for a thing. The womb is a sacred source of motherhood, and abortion represents for motherhood what suicide represents for a person: the loss of hope and expectation. Here's an anecdote that I think represents "how" we should be "pro-life":

 

To define abortion (or suicide) in terms of ending "a life" is to lose all reverence for the person involved. What has died is the life inside the mother (and the suicide), and what can one do in the face of such profound despair but be with them and witness to hope and expectation, the kind of hope and expectation which Mary had when she visited Elizabeth. To turn the womb into a debate over "a life" is to give up all possibility of reverencing the womb. In the face of profound despair, such as abortion or suicide, one can only live in hope at a person's side, be with them, and witness to what "life" really means. To end the functioning of a body is a legal and scientific matter, but to have an abortion or commit suicide is to lose what is really life, that which lives inside every human heart and soul.

Era, that is just... on another level of profound. I can't quite take it in, even.