You Decide: Either/Or?

The results of this poll by Vox are so interesting to me.

How can someone be both pro-life and pro-choice? Or neither pro-life nor pro-choice? This survey confirms something I see all of the time: people are increasingly uncomfortable with the either/or positions of the current political debate around abortion. They are looking for new ways to think about the issue. But as seen in the 3-minute video in which the poll was taken, there isn’t a lot of clarity on what a new way would look like.

Why do so many people seem to waffle on their views around abortion?

Two trends stand out:

First, there is an underlying assumption that we have to make a choice: the rights of the child or the rights of the woman; the woman’s right to control her body or the child’s right to be born.

The problem with this either/or assumption is that it bypasses the very design of pregnancy. Pregnancy is a unique time where two lives are intertwined. Think about it: there’s really nothing else like it. By design, it’s impossible to help one life while bypassing the other, because anything you do to one impacts the other. It’s futile to ignore this design, separate the two, and try to decide which one should be given priority. What’s more, these kinds of debates don’t actually help the very women or children we’re so passionately debating about.

Second, even people who hold the view that abortion ends the life of a child can still maintain that a woman should have the right to abortion. When I led a pregnancy counseling agency, we would often hear pregnant women say, “I know abortion is ending a life, but I just see no other way. Abortion is my only option.”

Hard to understand how someone can feel like this ? Think about it this way: When does our society say it’s permissible to take the life of another human being? Only when the life of another person is in danger. When someone’s survival is at stake, we extend grace: it’s permissible to take one life to save another.

Research shows that this survival instinct is the primary reason a woman can believe abortion is wrong and feel she needs to have one anyway. Her decision is about convenience or selfish ambition – at least not the way many people so often frame it – it’s about survival. She often feels like her life is over. Her future, dreams, and even sense of self are threatened. In her mind, abortion is the only way she can survive.

We know that God wants both the woman and the child to thrive. So how would he have us engage this?

I believe the answer lies in a new either/or decision.

We can either continue to engage in dialogue about whose rights are more important, wrestling with ethical dilemmas while the real needs of women and children get lost in the noise…

Or we can work to rewrite the narrative that says a woman’s life is over when facing an unplanned pregnancy. We can start having conversations that respect God’s design for pregnancy and believe he has a way to help both the woman and the child.

At ProGrace, we have chosen to take the latter route. We’ve launched as an organization because we want to see something miraculous happen. We don’t want any woman to feel that her survival is threatened, and so we are working to create a cultural reality where both women and children thrive during and after unplanned pregnancy. We share our message because we believe it grieves God’s heart for a woman to feel like she must choose between abortion and overwhelming struggle as a mom.

It’s going to take a lot of work to establish this culture when everything in our society points to the opposite. But because we believe it’s the only thing that will bring God’s heart to this issue and make a lasting difference, we have committed ourselves to it.

There’s no either/or about it.

Angie Weszely, CEO & Co-Founder of ProGrace

@angieweszely

* Brandtrust Emotional Inquiry, Caris 2009