An enhanced view of life

Google “Planned Parenthood tipping point” and you’ll get over 100,000 references in no time. By now it’s a cliché: Could this be the beginning of the end of the shameful relationship between U.S. taxpayers and the nation’s leading abortion provider? And if that happens, might we expect the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) to dry up and go away? And dare we dream that Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in all states at any time for any reason, be overturned?

Nah, say the cynics. PPFA is a tough, cagey old bird who’s dodged many a bullet. The string of brutal undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) tarnishes its image, but it can afford the best lawyers and PR people; it will survive. As for overturning Roe v. Wade, dream on. The thing is, people like having sex, and will keep having sex, and getting careless, and ending up with unwanted products of conception. When the interests of an abstract human and a walking, breathing human in a jam collide, guess who loses?

They have a point, but abortion on demand has sat uneasily on the national conscience for going on 43 years, and that conscience grows more uneasy, not less. Polls have been trending against our overly generous abortion laws, and the CMP videos (which, strictly speaking, target Planned Parenthood’s traffic in fetal organs, not abortion per se) may stretch the gap wider. But defunding PPFA is only one small piece of the whole. The battle against abortion is really a war on the whole idea of elimination-for-convenience that has rightly been called the “death culture.” It’s much more than closing clinics; it’s promoting an enlarged and enhanced view of life.

After the latest PPFA scandal broke, a quote from Sister Joan Chittister was making the rounds on Facebook: “I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed.” Of course this is misleading and unfair: Crisis pregnancy centers provide practical help and spiritual support long after the babies are born. Protesters outside abortion clinics offer their homes and resources to desperate mothers-to-be. Hopeful adoptive parents far outnumber available infants—if women could only be persuaded to carry their babies to term, chances are the little ones would find homes in which to be fed and educated.

It’s not enough to shut down the avenues to abortion; where a family is created, a family should be nurtured.

But Sister Joan is right that sometimes the pro-life side of the argument appears to elevate the baby over the mother. It’s not enough to shut down the avenues to abortion; where a family is created, a family should be nurtured.

The question is how. Sister Joan explains why she thinks pro-lifers aren’t as interested in post-born children: “Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life, that’s pro-birth.” That’s also very haphazard thinking if she believes, first, that pro-lifers are opposed to all tax money going to the needy and, second, that tax money will meet all their needs.

A few months ago I met a man outside a church building where dinner for the homeless was being served. He was waiting for his girlfriend, who was inside with their baby having dinner—purposely going without, he wanted me to know, so she would have enough. He saw it as his manly responsibility to see that she got their baby fed, dressed, and to the welfare office on time. He never mentioned marriage, or work, though he appeared able-bodied. His child was being fed, educated, and housed—to be like him.

But he’s pro-life, at least regarding his own, and that’s a place to start. It was easier to truly help the poor before the public safety net stretched so wide, hunger being a keen incentive. Even so, every faithful church should consider how it can promote life in visible, practical ways (WORLD’s Hope Award nominees always inspire). As the abortion culture stumbles, it’s time to press life’s advantage even harder.

Email jcheaney@wng.org