In this political season, many people are bringing up the issue of being “Pro Life” as a means (in part or in whole) for justifying their vote for Trump, or that being “Pro Choice” is a reason to not vote for Gary Johnson.
This has come up in a number of of my friend’s Facebook posts, and as a “Pro Life” person I was recently in a conversation with a fellow “Pro Lifer” (someone I do not know) in a Facebook thread that literally made me shake my head it disgust. Never had I been so enraged and had my eyes opened by someone who supposedly believed the same things as me.
What was the issue you ask? Well this person basically said that anyone who is “Pro Choice” is a baby killer and is bad as Hitler. Here are some screenshots of the conversation to catch you up to speed:
Then in a different comment thread I replied to him about another point and in doing so I deduced he was voting for Trump (since he is the only possible “Pro Life” Candidate that I’m aware of), and he replied:
And later he replied to another person named Peter in the same thread and said:
Wow. Just…. Wow. And this is just one example of the same thinking I’ve seen in other conversations surrounding the topic of “Pro Life” vs. “Pro Choice”.
Ok, so lets back up a second…
At its core a Pro Life person is in essence making the statement “I value life”. This of course begs the question… “who’s” life do they value? Of course the obvious answer is “the unborn child”. So you could safely reword the “Pro Lifer’s” statement to say “I value the child’s life”.
What got me so upset was the idea that anyone thinking differently from that statement above must mean the complete opposite. In other words a “Pro Choice” person is making the statement, “I don’t value life at all” or “I want to kill children”.
Wow… that’s quite a strong accusation. Can you imagine someone telling you, “You don’t value life at all, and you are as bad as Hitler if you are Pro Choice?” Not the best way to win someone over with Christ’s love if you ask me… Remember, this person doesn’t know me and I easily deduced this person was a Christian based on their profile picture which had Christian references in it and also based on the mutual friend who’s Facebook post we were both commenting on. Maybe I was wrong in assuming he was a Christian, but I doubt it.
Now, I’m not going to get into the debate about these 2 sides of the issue. I won’t dive into the myriad of situations that get people debating about the various grey areas (rape induced pregnancies, medical emergencies etc…) that’s not what this is about. What I want to bring into the light is the conversation we need to have about how people who are Pro Life view and communicate about people who are “Pro Choice”. I think we need to step back out of the fray and listen to what we are saying and how it might be received by someone who may think differently from us. If fact it makes me wonder… what do Pro Choice people think of Pro Life people? Now that’s a conversation I’d like to have. Perhaps healing can occur and brokenness restored in asking that question.
Friends, people who are Pro Choice value life too, they just value it differently. Pro Choice people don’t WANT to kill babies. They don’t go out of their way to promote the death of babies the same way Hitler did with the Jews. Do they take action to make abortions easier to happen? I have to believe some of them do. Why? Because perhaps they value the life of the mother over the unborn child and they are acting in a way that values that life. Now I don’t 100% agree with the “Pro Choice” philosophy or all of its thinking on abortion, but I also don’t see Pro Choice people wanting to actively pursue death to babies. They are NOT psychopathic murderers that need to be stopped at all costs with our votes. So how then should we vote? That is a conversation for another post. 🙂
My hope is that we as Christians can start to pull back the hate and have our eyes open to ways we can better embody the Kingdom of God by showing love with our words and actions. We need to explore the question of how to love people who think differently than us. I would argue that casting judgement and accusations that people are murderers isn’t the right place to start. Perhaps we should refrain from making people feel guilty for thinking different. There is a better way to have this conversation, and I welcome it.