My own journey to becoming pro-life was completed on the day I held my infant niece for the first time. In that moment, I could no longer understand how any man could be cavalier about the lives of children, or believe they had no right to speak up for them.
I used to be such a cavalier and disengaged youth. In college in the 80s, I had the usual lazy package of cliched attitudes - it was all up to individual women, guys should have nothing to say about it, etc. It was so easy to just repeat those talking points without reflection.
Someone at the college cafeteria table would say it was wrong to bring more children into this overcrowded, dying world. Someone would mention "a woman's right to choose." Nobody should be forced to bear a child! Everyone would nod, and the conversation was over.
Of course none of us knew how tiny was the percentage of "rape, incest, life of the mother" abortions. None knew how many abortions were happening in the later trimesters, or what the baby looked like by then. It was all just adolescent political posturing and cultural pressure.
One of my college classes was in debate and public speaking. "Easy credit. I'll never actually need this stuff," I thought, unable to hear the uproarious laughter of my future self. My very first public speech was a debate over abortion. I took the pro-abortion side.
My opponent was a pro-life young woman. The class said we both did well. She did better than she knew. She gave me the seeds of ideas that ripened over the next two decades, until the day I held my sister's first child, and my old debate partner claimed her decisive victory.
It makes so much of a difference, holding your first baby, especially when it's your own family, your bloodline. You see the echoes of your own father and mother. It's a primal response, I suppose. Babies viewed through glass are wonders. A baby held in your arms is a miracle.
Who was I, to say that little girl should not be here, should not have her chance to make the world bigger and brighter, to carry my family's name beyond the last tomorrow that I will see? More to the point, how could I not care if she was discarded?
There are so few abortions that truly pertain to the standard trinity of exemptions: rape, incest, life of the mother. I would wager most casual supporters of abortion on demand believe those numbers are VASTLY higher than they really are.
And even those conventional exemptions can become a little more difficult to process when you listen to someone who was conceived in rape express their heartfelt gratitude for being born. Nothing about abortion is glib or simple. It was never a bumper sticker issue.
Something went badly wrong with our society when we started telling men they had nothing to say about the survival of their children, their family's children, America's children - and therefore no responsibility either. Politics were employed to rewrite human nature in a bad way.
No monumental issue of life and death, no question of vast moral complexity, has ever been wisely addressed by telling half the population it has nothing to say on the subject, and no legitimate reason to care about it.
For much too long, we have been lazy and callous, treating apathy as enlightenment, debasing ourselves as men, women, and as a people by refusing to think long and hard about some difficult questions - in part because we were told we were no longer allowed to vote on it.
If we reclaim our right to vote on it, the vast majority of the country will reject the deranged extremism of late-term abortions and establish an uneasy comfort zone with early ones - but there will still be uncomfortable questions to be asked about many of those.
It's good to ask those questions. We will learn much by watching how our fellow Americans in various states grapple with them, and observe how their solutions are implemented. It won't be easy. It's really not supposed to be. We owe it to the future to be strong and thoughtful.
My little sister did not live to see as many tomorrows as I have. My niece is in college now, the same age I was when I took that debate class. I hope every man in her life is strong and thoughtful, beginning the moment he lays eyes on her. That's what this is really all about.
We all have a responsibility to the future, and to each other. It was foolish to argue that men should abandon their responsibilities to women and children, along with the rights needed to exercise them. It was foolish to answer profound questions by reciting slogans.
The world is not dying, the future is not lost, and the days to come should be filled with the joy of children, not bitter regrets. We all bear responsibility for the future. That burden is unfathomably heavy and yet delightfully light - precisely the weight of a baby. /end
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
