Blog | Doesn’t pro-life mean pro-government control over a pregnant woman’s body?
I wrote a piece recently detailed my views about faith and abortion and have been getting response from the piece every since.
Here is the full piece:
What some people get wrong about the need for a GOP-God divide
What fascinated me most was the response from one reader who chided me for not being pro-life - then revealing through an email exchange that she wasn’t pro-life by the definition I had been using.
She did not believe in government control over a pregnant woman’s body but wanted Roe v. Wade overturned.
Her definition of being pro-life sounded an awful lot like the pro-choice definition most people I know have, and that is to leave this delicate decision primarily up to the woman.
(In the piece, I described myself as anti-unwanted pregnancy. The fewer unwanted pregnancies, the fewer abortions and difficult decisions having to be made by women under stress.)
It was odd having an exchange with someone who believed being pro-choice was wrong while they also outlined that they believed just what most pro-choicers believe.
That made me curious.
How many people calling themselves pro-life are actually pro-choice if we go by the traditional definition?
There are some on the extremes who are actually pro-abortion, but most pro-choicers simply don’t believe the government should be making the final decision about a pregnant woman and her body even as they struggle to come up with ways to balance the woman’s rights with the need to respect the emerging life in the womb.
To that end, in your view, is pro-life about using the laws of the state to enforce a particular view of abortion?
Others seem to have had this same question:
2. Compromise. Not much interest. Rey Flores: “All human life must be protected.” Jennifer Hartline: “There is no amount of abortion that is morally acceptable.” GentillyLace: “If one believes that abortion is homicide, then compromise is ultimately impossible.” An exception was National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, who thought that “if the courts withdrew,” a stable compromise might be reached that would be more restrictive than current law, but he declined to say what it might look like.
This story was originally published November 26, 2014 at 12:12 PM with the headline "Blog | Doesn’t pro-life mean pro-government control over a pregnant woman’s body?."