Pro-Life or Pro-Choice: Morals Questions and the Issue of Abortion

How Christian is it to be a Pro-Life advocate? Yes, that is a serious question that was raised in my mind after reading Liz Brown's Pro-Life or Pro-Choice: Keep Your Morals to Yourself When It Comes to Abortion. No, I am not being cheeky, sassy, bold, sarcastic or irreverent, just honestly curious. I apologize to anyone who takes this article offensively, or as a personal attack, by my questions will never be answered if I do not ask.

I do understand that Christian values and morals would exclude abortion, and also that God has given Christians the duty of spreading His word across the world. In that sense, it seems like a very clear and uprightly Christian thing to do, campaigning for abortions to become illegal, or at least more highly regulated.

My own religious views do not differ in the sense that killing is wrong, but they do limit my comfort in joining the Pro-Life movement. The belief that others should be respected, which includes showing respect for their free will and not forcing my opinions on them, is highly important to me. I do realize that this as well could be considered as much Pro-Life as Pro-Choice; after all, in the case of abortion there is a person who receives no respect, no chance to exercise their free will and no voice in the decision: the child.

It was in considering free will that I came to an odd, ironic question in my own mind. Often in the Pro-Choice movement people refer to not wanting to "play God" as their reason for not making others' decisions for them. Is this refusal to make the decision for others not actually an imitation of God?

God does not want His children to sin, and yet He did not make them incapable of sinning, though it was surely within His power to do so. Even to this day, with the atrocities being committed and with so many people turning further and further from His teachings, He has not removed free will. To me, this says that even God did not feel that it would be right to impose His morals on people. So how can we, by definition flawed, imperfect beings less right and less intelligent than He, feel comfortable imposing our morals (or our interpretation of His morals) on others?

I do realize that so far this is more questions than answers; that is what I have, questions, and unfortunately not answers. Is it worse to follow God's example than His word? Is it right for those who are not omniscient, as He is, to make decisions for people that He was unwilling to make for them? Or did God give us free will to test not only our personal actions and choices, but also the strength of our convictions and whether we would stand for Him and His values when others did not?

When it comes down to it, my position as Pro-Choice is not likely to change soon. I cannot protect every child. If I help make it difficult or impossible for a woman to have an abortion, and a woman who would have had an abortion has a child who is then neglected, abused, tortured or killed, I would not want that on my conscience. I would never dream of telling a woman that she has to have an abortion, and to me telling a woman that she cannot have one is not a whole lot different. It is not my place to make someone else's decisions for them, particularly when I do not know what the outcome will be. I cannot, in good conscience, say that I believe that abortion is always wrong, anymore than I can say that it would always be right.

We are each responsible for our own lives and our own choices. It is not my job to save the world, nor to save people from themselves, their sins, or their mistakes. Free will is a beautiful thing, moral issues are not black and white, and all our choices carry responsibility. As Liz Brown said in her article, "Human life will be valued highest when people can respect life, no matter how that person has chosen to live it". Of course, this applies just as much to women who have a choice as it does to those who wish to take away that choice. There is a certain level of hypocrisy to consider in asking someone to expect your life and your right to choose, while at the same time you are not respecting your unborn child's life, or it's right to make any choices, but it is also not my place to save people from their hypocrisy. Choose wisely, and when you can, choose life, but in the end I hope you still are allowed to choose.