There are many issues that will factor into the 2020 presidential campaigns—climate change, race and justice, impeachment, Russian interference and immigration. Perhaps the most divisive issue that will set the candidates and the two major parties apart will be abortion. The gulf between pro-choice and pro-life advocates seems to be growing wider as the Supreme Court moves closer to reconsidering Roe v. Wade.
I am a Democrat who isn’t comfortable with abortion and believes there has to be some middle ground between outlawing abortions and restricting only late-term abortions. To abort a fetus because sexual partners were thoughtless or too lazy to use birth control seems morally wrong. But denying abortions to women against whom crimes have been committed—rape and incest—or where the health of the mother or the child are issues seems equally wrong.
Perhaps this will seem odd coming from a confirmed Democrat, but if pro-life Republicans want to make their position more compelling to those of us in the middle, they should take the issue of abortion further than they do.
One of the dictionary definitions of “abortion” is “an arrest of development.” Certainly, no one could deny that aborting a fetus does this—it arrests the development of that fetus. But “an arrest of development” doesn’t apply only to fetuses.
Children living in under-developed countries where disease is rampant and mortality rates are high will also have their lives “arrested” or stunted. Children who attend schools with inadequate resources, crumbling facilities, and poorly-committed teachers know this form of abortion all too well. Given that many of these same children face hunger or non-existent health-care, the same “arrested” or “aborted” life awaits them.
When we face the shameful fact that men of color in this country are more likely to end up in the criminal justice system than graduate from college, we are witnessing arrested development; we are witnessing another form of abortion. And when we see refugees fleeing failed states in Latin America separated as families and jailed on our southern borders, we are once again looking into the face of another form of abortion. These refugees walked north in hope, but they met the arresting of their God-given development.
The truth is that in this country and in the wider world we are engulfed in so many forms of abortion. To say that a fetus has sacred value but then deny the same sacredness to the child and adult who began as that fetus is hypocritical. For those of us who are religious and believe that every human being is a soul, we must admit that unequal human rights—including the human right to education, health care, and affordable housing—is a scourge and an unacceptable form of abortion.
So, to my many pro-life friends, I ask you to be more consistent. If birth, as the beginning of the human journey, is sacred, isn’t the entire journey sacred?
