The Pro-Life Voice: We Deserve to Be Heard

With a constant stream of advertisements from Planned Parenthood and a biased media that makes the pro-choice community look like the majority, it’s easy to think that having a pro-life view makes you one in a million. However, recent statistics show that’s not exactly the case. A Gallup poll released this past May revealed that the percentage of pro-choice Americans is at a record low, with 50% of Americans identifying as pro-life. A survey conducted by Students for Life of America revealed that 44% of 18-24 year olds today are pro-life, while 45% are pro-choice. That’s not a big gap at all! The pro-life community is larger than we might think. Why, then, are people (including some politicians) under the impression that pro-choice is a big, overwhelming majority and afraid to move forward?

You can propose many theories for this, but I think the answer lies in the way that some members of the pro-choice community group women. I have heard arguments against pro-lifers that claim that our community  does not value women because we see them as homemakers who have no right to have their own career, own lives, and own voice: we are keeping them down by forcing them to have children. We group them into a category, making them conform to a specific stereotype. Not only is this untrue, but I see it as hypocritical.

 In Rachel’s last post, she mentioned an ad which stated that “Every woman who believes decisions about our bodies and our health care should be our own is troubled Mitt Romney supports overturning Roe versus Wade.”

Like Rachel, I disagree with this statement. This generalization of women being used by the pro-choice community is more insulting than effective. I am a woman. I value a woman’s agency and her right to think for herself. However, I do not believe that aborting a baby is a valid exercise of this right. Having access to education, having the right to freedom from any kind of abuse, and receiving equal treatment in the work force are all examples of rights women should have. Exploitation via the abortion industry is not something I consider a “milestone” for women. Back in 2004, the president of Feminists for Life, Serrin Foster, wrote an article titled “The Feminist Case Against Abortion”, in which she raised important questions:

“We  need to listen to the needs of women. Where are the family housing, the childcare, and the maternity coverage?   Why can’t a woman telecommute to school or work?  Why can’t she job share?  Why doesn’t she make a living wage?”

Instead of focusing on the real issues that affect women day to day, our government instead legalized the termination of unborn babies. This has silenced the real issues that women face when it comes to pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood, and has given both women and our nation an “easy out” where these issues don’t have to be addressed or resolved. Most people believe that all women are happy with this decision, and want to keep abortion legal in order to protect women’s rights.

This is not true.

I want to protect women’s rights in a way that does not end in the death of an unborn child. I want our society and our government to step up and really face the issues that burden women every day. We need better child support on the part of the father, better maternity coverage, and better living conditions for these women.

Abortion does not address these issues: it hides them.

It makes it easy for us to ignore the reasons why a woman makes the decision to abort her child in the first place. I believe that women deserve better than this. We don’t deserve to be silenced: we deserve to be heard.

Through Ohio Right to Life, I have met other women who feel the same way. I once thought that my stance on this issue was uncommon, but the pro-life community has proved to be larger and more powerful than I had realized. We are strong, and we have a voice. As soon as we all realize this, we can do amazing things that will create a culture of life and change the world for the better. There’s a common saying that says, “Stand up for what’s right, even if you’re standing alone”.

We are standing for what’s right, but we are not standing alone.