Are we really pro-life?

Abortion has been in the headlines regularly over the past few months. Some states are banning it while other states are expanding access, and everyone has an opinion, including the governor of the state of Alabama, Kay Ivey. Ivey issued a statement in May after signing the Alabama Human Life Protection Act, a bill that greatly limits abortions in the state of Alabama. Ivey wrote, "To the bill's many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians' deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God."

Ivey was right about every life being precious. 

Ivey was right about every life being a sacred gift from God. 

However, when we declare that all life is a sacred gift from God but only defend certain forms of that life, I fear that we are doing a poor job of convincing anyone that we actually believe what we say. When people hear us say that all life is precious and see us fight only for life in the womb, they may logically conclude that we don't actually believe that all life is precious but rather that only some life is precious, that only some people are made in the image of God, that only some lives are worth fighting for. Can it be that these inconsistencies cause the people around us to question our credibility? I lament that some people may be uninterested in the gospel that we preach because they see such discrepancy between what we do and what we claim to believe.

Opposing abortion without providing access to health care, child care, and sex education suggests that the only valuable, precious life involved belongs to the baby and only while it is in the womb. Can we also recognize the value of the child's life 5 days after it is born? Five weeks after? Five months after? Five years after? What would it look like to acknowledge that the child's mother is also an image bearer, a valuable and precious life?

As Christians, can we fight for life outside of the womb just as ferociously as we fight for life inside of the womb? Can we champion those who come to our border fleeing for their lives from violence and poverty as much as we champion the unborn? Can we advocate for black women, who are over three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, as much as we advocate for the children in their womb? Can we contend for residents of Flint, Michigan as much as we contend for babies before they are born? Can we cry out for women, knowing that one in three of them are affected by sexual assault in our country, as much as we cry out for life in the womb? The incarcerated? The addicted? The disenfranchised? The death-row inmates? The LGBTQ community? Muslims? Neighbors detained in inhumane conditions along our border? Students fearful of gun violence in their schools? Can we defend them now as much as we defended them before they were born? Can we oppose police brutality, racism, misogyny, and white supremacy as fiercely as we oppose abortion? Can we weep for Oscar Alberto Martínez and his daughter, Angie Valeria? What about Mike Brown, Philando Castile, and Trayvon Martin? Can we weep for them as much as we weep for an aborted baby? Or is it that we aren't actually pro-life at all, but rather just pro-birth? 

We value unborn life as precious, and rightly so, but our frequent failure to take equally strong stances on other issues pertaining to the sanctity of life beyond the womb and the dignity of image bearers after they are born leaves a hope-starved world still starving for hope because what they hear us say about valuing all life does not match what they see us do. Why have we bought the lie that we must choose which image bearers we will fight for? 

By associating the pro-life position with the defense of life in the womb to the exclusion of life after the umbilical cord is cut, we have accepted a definition that is far too narrow. When we pick and choose which lives we are going to fight for, we misrepresent Jesus Christ who reached out and touched diseased people who were untouchable and sat at a well and offered eternal life to an ethnic enemy. The innocent, sinless, God made flesh, died unjustly in our place to save people who don't deserve his grace. We did not deserve to be fought for, yet Christ died for us. How then can we, having been fought for and won by the sacrificial death of our blameless savior when we were his enemies, not fight for others indiscriminanately? 

Have we chosen abortion as the cause that we will fight for because it is the battle that requires the least of us? Could it be? Being the voice for babies in the womb is more comfortable than being the voice for the addicted and incarcerated. Fighting for the unborn is less complicated than fighting for reparations. Opposing abortion requires us to relinquish less than opposing white supremacy or speaking out for immigrants in our communities because I can fight for unborn babies without having to consider the personhood of people who don't look like me. I can fight to overturn Roe v. Wade without having to examine how I have benefitted from unjust systems or how our history of stolen land, stolen people, oppression, and violence and our complicity in these atrocities have created racist systems of health care, education, housing, and criminal justice that operate under thinly disguised white supremacy that quietly keeps power and privilege far from the vulnerable and marginalized. I can fight against abortion without having to consider our history as a country that has never been a place where all people are seen as equal, or even as people, and how my own silence has hurt my neighbors.

All of this can change, though. It starts with asking questions, finding answers, reading books, crying, lamenting, repenting for the lives not esteemed and the voices not heard, and listening to residents of Flint, Michigan, to the incarcerated, to immigrants, to women who are considering or have chosen abortion, to members of the LGBTQ community, to our neighbors who don't look like us or talk like us or believe what we believe. I say this not as one who has no more repenting to do and who fully and completely honors all image bearers all the time, but rather as one who has a long way to go and wants to continue onward with God's people, that the world around us may see that when we say that every life is precious and a sacred gift from God, we really mean it and we actually believe it. I say this in hope that being pro-life would mean that we fight for the life of all image bearers regardless of age, ethnicity, gender, class, religion, and citizenship status, even if it means that our views no longer fit nicely into a political party or align with a candidate's platform. Until the pro-life position includes life beyond the womb, it is not enough.