“I Am Pro Life and Pro Compassion” – My Perspective on Being Pro Life

I am pro life. I value life. I love everybody wholeheartedly, even those who have wronged me in the past, and I value everyone’s potential.

I was raised to value every potential life in the same way I value children, adults and every other living being. Thus, I have been calling myself pro-life ever since I can remember.

I’ve had my share of struggles in life, including unexpected pregnancies which I must admit have left a dramatic impact on my life especially during those times. I had to do it all alone, with very little help. I know what it means to suffer from post-natal depression…not once, but twice. I know what it feels like to be suicidal, wanting to end it all just because you feel you can’t handle life any more. I know how hard it is to struggle to get your constantly crying baby to sleep, literally ending up in tears yourself, for you feel you can’t handle the sadness and tiredness any more.

I look back to the years following that period and feel a different kind of pain in my heart. Going through all that and managing to get out of it fine with kids I love immensely, somehow gave me the ‘authority’ to speak out against pro-choice supporters.

Just thinking about it now makes me sick to my stomach. Yes, I have called women baby-killers, I have spoken publicly saying that pro-choice supporters do not deserve to be mothers, ever. I have experienced anger, rage, and to an extent, hate.

All these negative emotions were rooted back into the time when I was about 13 years old…I was shown The Silent Scream at school, a video which showed the ultrasound of a fetus being aborted, supposedly screaming in pain. I clearly remember containers with blood and baby pieces to this day, almost 30 years after…

I remember a woman in a group one fine day who I was debating with, bringing up the baby’s rights and condoning her for believing that she should have the right to terminate a pregnancy. On that day I acted in the most disgusting way possible…I wished she would never get to conceive as in my eyes she wasn’t worthy of a child.

I do not remember her name, her face, nor the group that this happened in. But although this was probably about 7 or so years ago, I am still devastated and very sorry for what I said to her, and I truly wish that my apology reaches her in some way or another, even though I wouldn’t even recognise her if she came forward.

Being Pro-Life Almost Cost Me An Amazing Friendship…

Through the years I had built a friendly bond with an amazing woman who was years older than me, and who had a daughter younger than me. I loved this woman as if she was my sister. We shared a bond like no other. She was there for me in some of my most devastating times. From across the miles she had the ability to bring happiness back into my life by showing me that she truly cared for me. She saw and valued me when I couldn’t even recognise and love myself. I felt closer to her than to most people I had around me.

On a particular day she told me that her daughter was pregnant for the third time, and that her boyfriend had just left her. Being the pro-life woman I was raised to be, I encouraged her to support her daughter and to help her make the right decision. But a couple of days later I could feel that my friend was troubled…eventually she confessed that her daughter had decided to have an abortion.

Being pro-life I took this really hard. I pleaded to my friend to give me time to see if I could adopt this baby and raise him as my own, especially since she was American and lived there.

I knew that financially I wouldn’t have handled it, but I just couldn’t take the fact that my own best friend’s daughter was choosing abortion. This almost broke our friendship…a friendship that so far had survived many obstacles.

We ended up having a fight because a lot of tension built up between us, and one misunderstanding led us to a couple of days not speaking to each other.

Eventually I realised I couldn’t take it anymore. I realised that our friendship was worth much more understanding and compassion than I was giving out. I couldn’t lose my friend. I didn’t want to. So I contacted her and apologised. And I truly meant it. She accepted my apology, and eventually I was on the phone with my friend whilst she was awaiting her daughter who was having an abortion in her country.

Eventually years later, my friend was diagnosed with multiple cancers and she lost her life to brain cancer. It has been a couple of years since I lost her, but the pain still lingers on, and to this day I keep thinking about what a big mistake it would have been if I had let an abortion ruin our friendship. Thanks to forgiveness and compassion, I was able to support her emotionally through texting and phonecalls whilst she was struggling with cancer and undergoing radiation and chemotherapy, until she was too weak to keep up, passing away in a couple of weeks’ time fully aware that I loved her as if she was my own biological sister no matter what had been.

New Perspective…

Today I see the issue of abortion in a different light. If I managed to hold on and refrain for taking my own life when I was struggling with post natal depression due to an unplanned pregnancy, it doesn’t mean that other women should struggle in the same way. I shouldn’t have any say in what another woman does with her own body and her own life.

How can I call myself pro-life when I’m not doing all I can to bring about necessary changes so fathers can all step up and be dads to kids they have created? How can I close my eyes to the suffering of so many women who are being left to struggle alone to raise their own babies?

How can I judge a woman for not being careful and use contraception, when I don’t have any idea what is going on behind that closed door? How can I point my finger at her when I have no idea how much she has pleaded different gynaecologists to undergo tubal ligation but was denied over and over due to her age for the sake of possible future partners who may want a child from her? How can we allow society to treat a woman as an incubator without trusting that she knows best about her own life situation?

Who am I to throw that stone at a woman who has had an abortion, and shame her and penalise her for not being able to give birth to it?

How can I go to church and pray, when in my heart I feel hatred for a woman who feels incapable of bringing a child into this world?

Being pro-choice doesn’t mean I have to have an abortion if God forbid I end up pregnant again unintentionally. Being pro-choice is about leaving that choice up to the woman carrying a pregnancy. Being pro-choice is about not interfering with another woman’s life, because she is the only one who knows where her mental, physical, emotional and financial capacity lay. Being pro-choice is not picking up that stone and kill that woman’s life by enabling her to be thrown into prison for the sake of that life within her…isn’t her own life worthy as well?

Just as I have judged others in the past, there will be woman who will come out and comment with disgust at what I have written here. I will probably be told that I cannot call myself pro-life, and that I am just another voice for the pro-abortion lobbying.

To pro-lifers I would like to ask that before you judge a woman for opting to have a termination, start lobbying to bring about changes when it comes to men being truly men and taking responsibility for impregnating women and leaving them to fend by themselves. If pro-lifers are expecting women to take full responsibility, they should also call out their partners in the same way. Laws are not being enough. Women are constantly struggling to feed their children whilst the courts take their time in taking action (if any action is taken at all), allowing fathers to miss months of child maintenance whilst they keep going on with their lives as if nothing has ever happened. Babies and children have their needs, and so many of these…and they need them now! It’s no use condoning women whilst so many mothers and their children are struggling alone with barely anything to eat. If you call yourself pro-life, start by being pro those who are already alive and struggling. Help out and make a difference in their lives.

Today I will be called a traitor for acting pro-life when I am not. Well let me say this…I would rather stand up for that woman whom you’d rather throw stones at and kill whilst shouting proudly that you’re pro-life. I would rather be called pro-compassionate than pro-life if those are the connotations that come with the pro-life phrase.

---

If you too have an experience which you’d like to share with us please feel free to contact us or write to us in strictest confidence on [email protected]