Last week a friend of mine asked me go with her to an open forum and movie screening put on by a Planned Parenthood student group at ASU called Vox. My friend is a member of Student’s For Life and had been asked to sit on a panel and serve as a pro-life voice in the night’s conversations. I gladly went along knowing it was going to be an interesting evening at the very least, being my first pro-abortion event.
The main argument of the pro-abortion side is easily enough identified but what I had not paid much attention to until that night was the ethos behind it all. The overall tone, framework, and perspective from which these abortion advocates looked at the issue, the foundation of their perspective as it were, had escaped my consideration.
The debate on abortion had always been clearly defined in my mind. Was the preborn a life? If yes, then it is to be protected. But for the pro-abortion advocates it is not as simple as taking the stand that the preborn is not a life. Many try to claim that point is irrelevant altogether, as some of their comments that night made clear:
“The un-born may be alive, it is debatable, but what we do know is this: That a woman is alive and taking away her right to choose is taking away her life.”
Comments like this made me see that the pro-abortion side had absolutely no consideration for the preborn as a life worth protecting. This became even clearer as comments continued to be made about how “happy” and “relieved” women were to be free of the burden that an unwanted pregnancy brings. Everything circled around a worldview of self-fulfillment concerned only with gratifying personal wants and desires; all serving as the goal of human living without regard to others.
When this became clear to me I began to think of just how much groundwork had to be done at the base of peoples’ perspectives in order to make the protection of the preborn relevant. The thought of just how much education is necessary was daunting at that moment. I thought of the countless lessons instilled in me by my parents, which resulted in the beliefs I hold today. This took years of work, in which my parents and other mentors labored tirelessly to help me form and establish my bedrock principles. While all this was making its way through my mind I remembered something Dr. Dobson said at the recent CAP Family Dinner.
He told all of us to hang in there. This is a long and tiring fight; not the work of days, or weeks, or months, but decades. So when I consider the work yet to be done and the years still ahead that must be spent on this road; I take heart, because I know protecting life and making a stand for those who cannot is worth the struggle.