Post-Roe Confusion and Grief



Then the man of God began to weep. (2Kings 8:11)

I grieve. I have never been able to comprehend the hard positions over abortion, the binary world of all this or all that. The human, political, spiritual and ethical issues are much too complex for the sign waving, name calling, rush-to-the-extremes mess we have now. Sides have hardened again, as if at war with one another at the expense of both women and babies and I grieve. We're plunging into chaotic positioning in every state. There is much I don't understand and I have questions—many, many questions—some have been with me for a long time.
  •  How can someone call themselves pro-life and oppose universal health care especially for women and children?
  • Why doesn't supporting health care get the same energy as criminalizing abortion?
  • How can someone call themselves pro-life and support allowing eighteen year olds to obtain military grade weapons with few if any controls?
  • How indeed can they call themselves pro-life and refuse to allow common sense gun laws of any kind?
  • How can people call themselves pro-life and attack or vandalize people who disagree?
  • Are the lives of the unborn somehow more valuable than the lives of children in a fourth grade classroom, or teenagers on the streets of Philadelphia?
  • How can the pro-life political movement call measures to prevent abortion, especially for poor mothers, a "distraction" from criminalization?
  • Isn't hunger a pro-life issue as well? Don't mothers need to feed their babies?
  • Isn't a living wage for families a pro-life issue for that matter?
  • Where are the pregnancy support services?
  • How can a pro-life position include no exceptions, even for the life of a mother?
  • Where the pro-life voices advocating for women's absolute control over their own bodies up to the point of conception?
  • Do women really believe that legal abortion protects them from abuse and neglect of their bodies?
  • When did abortion become the end all and be all of women's rights, pulling all the passion and energy from other things--equal pay, adequate medical services, domestic violence, rape prevention and care, living wage?
  • Has that laser focus on one issue actually harmed progress on women's rights?
  • When did abortion become become "reproductive health," as if it were simple birth control or a substitute for fully robust women's health care?
  • How did the unborn begin to be defined away as non-human even though each has unique human DNA at conception and is viable by the sixth month? Why?
  • How can people demand "choice" and vilify people who disagree with their positions, even to the point of violence?
  • How did we get from 'safe, legal, and rare,' to 'anyone, for any reason, at any stage of pregnancy?'
  • Is abortion the BEST we can offer desperate poor women? Seriously?
  • if we give ourselves the right to define who is human and who is not what are the implications for the infirm, the disabled, the elderly? 
  • When did the rights of one person include the right to take other rights from other people?
  • How do legal protections for the unborn harm women who also need protection?
  • How is late term abortion not infanticide when those little people are capable of their own unique lives?
  • How did we get into this mess?
We seem to be at war. The first casualties in war are truth and common sense. Those who attempt to stand in the middle end up shot full of arrows. I expect no less with his post. I grieve and can only pray.

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