Because those are 2 completely different things.
This is going to be a deep dive, and it is not going to be comfy, but if you’re game, I invite you to think deeply about some of the assumptions you have held to be true. You might come away finding that they were not as true as you thought – which is always disconcerting. I get that. But in the waters in which we currently swim, we owe it to ourselves, and our neighbors, and our nation – to think more critically, and not just blithely recite mantras that we’ve held to be true, but never really examined.
Necessary Disclaimers:
1) I am staunchly pro-life. All life. Every human life. From the womb to the tomb of every race, tribe, and ethnicity. Thus, I am also anti-abortion, but that is a secondary issue, not a primary issue. Pro-life means being FOR life, not against abortion.
2) This post is not primarily a political post – though it does have significant political implications. The main idea is to get at the basis of our presuppositions and the reasons that we vote as we do. The political conclusions you draw are yours, but I think you owe it to yourself to examine your “why.”
3) The conversation that follows is only the tip of the iceberg. I acknowledge that. There is always a danger to addressing such a huge topic in one post. Justice cannot possibly be done. I have given a plethora of links for more research, and if you feel some resistance in your mind about the issues herein, I encourage you to look them up and to do your own research. I don’t claim to have covered this issue exhaustively or hit all the arguments. I just want to start people thinking – before it’s too late.
It is a long-held mantra – “if you aren’t really sure how to vote, just vote pro-life.” In other words, if you’re given two less-than-desirable presidential choices, and you don’t really like either of them – just vote for the one who claims to be pro-life. And while this has long been an accepted adage, it was never more so than in the 2016 election. Thousands of thinking evangelicals felt stuck. They didn’t like the person or character of Trump, but they couldn’t stomach Hillary and her pro-choice stance. So, reluctantly, they took to the voting booths and voted “pro-life” – casting their vote for the candidate that said the right things about abortion.
But I wonder if we’ve ever stopped to ask the question – “Why?” Why do we vote pro-life? Now, I’m not asking why we are ARE pro-life. That one is easy. We are pro-life because we believe that life starts at conception, and because every human life is made in the image of God and has value – and that only God has the power to give and take life. That’s the Biblical rationale for being pro-life, right? If you’re an evangelical, we’re probably on the same page so far.
But my question isn’t about BEING pro-life, it’s about VOTING pro-life. What are we hoping to accomplish with that vote? When you ask an avid Republican pro-lifer that question, the answer is usually a poorly articulated statement about reducing abortion rates and possibly hoping to overturn Roe vs. Wade by stacking the SCOTUS deck with conservative pro-life judges. But let’s examine that claim.
As Dr. Phil says – “How’s that working for you??”
Well, the fact of the matter is, it’s not working very well. Historically speaking, abortion rates always drop most significantly under Democratic administrations, and they rise under Republican administrations. Don’t believe me? Here are the stats. As a matter of fact, Roe vs. Wade was passed under a Republican administration in the first place in 1973. The highest legal abortion rate in our nation’s history was in 1990, squarely in the middle of the HW Bush administration. The biggest drop in legal abortions? The entirety of the Obama administration.
Well, what about overturning Roe vs. Wade? We are now almost 50 years out from that landmark decision, giving women the right to choose what happened to their bodies when faced with an unexpected, or unwanted, pregnancy. In that time period, we have had 20 years of Democratic presidencies, and 28 years of Republican “pro-life” presidencies. That seems like plenty of time to have overturned this decision through conservative legislation, doesn’t it? And yet, it hasn’t happened.
And it won’t.
There’s no going back, folks. We are not a Christian country. We need to give up that misnomer. We are a country that values individual rights. (Just take up a discussion with some anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers – who, coincidentally, also generally tend to be pro-lifers – if you want to get up close and personal on this issue…) While it is unfortunate, we have come too far. A decision that is based on a woman’s rights over her own body is not going to be overturned in our day. But maybe that news isn’t as bad as it sounds. Because, again, let’s return to the facts. Legislating morality rarely works. Abortion is too much a part of our culture and our reproductive conversation to go back now. Even if legislation were to pass to make it illegal (which it won’t), it won’t stop abortions. It will only drive the practice underground, returning us to the back-alley, clandestine clinics of the 50’s and 60’s. Is that what we want??
“OK – but even if RvW isn’t going to get overturned, we can’t vote for a president that isn’t pro-life.”
Why?
“Because they are pro-abortion.”
(Although pro-choice would be their preferred wording.)
And wording is important. It sounds like splitting hairs, but for many pro-choice people, they really are just pro-choice. They also want to decrease the incidence of abortion – and in many cases they HAVE done just that, as demonstrated by the statistics above. How? By working to eliminate the reasons that women seek abortions in the first place.
“Well,” conservative Republicans exclaim, “the reason is because they got pregnant! And they should just stop having sex and not get pregnant!”
So, now we are back to legislating sin.
Has that worked well in any area of YOUR particular life?? (Just curious…)
The problem is, we’re looking at this backwards. Abortion is not the problem. Abortion is a symptom of a larger problem – or rather a series of problems.
Conservatives who are avidly anti-abortion, AND who are not fans of the Black Lives Matter efforts, are quick to point out that black people don’t believe their own mantra, as more black babies are aborted than white babies every year in America. Again, we are pointing at a headache and calling it the problem, when the issue is really a brain tumor. Tylenol is not the answer.
Yes, more black babies are aborted every year than white babies. But the reason is not that black lives don’t actually matter to black people. It is actually the reason the Black Lives Matter movement (as a concept) is a critical conversation. Because another evidence of the racial disparities in our country is this disparate statistic. Black women seek abortions more often than their white counterparts for a plethora of reasons – lack of access to healthcare, lack of access to contraception, higher levels of stress, weaker social support systems, lower socio-economic levels, lower educational levels, and the list goes on. There are underlying issues that contribute to the higher rates of abortion among black women, and those issues lead us back to the racial oppression and disparities that have been previously addressed.
So why do abortion rates drop so dramatically under Democratic presidents? There are many reasons, but a few of them are a push for greater access to free contraception and toward more affordable healthcare. But the biggest reason is free contraception. This is also a sticky-wicket for conservative Republicans, who are historically opposed to providing women with contraception. Why? They believe that by giving women access to contraception, they are encouraging promiscuity.
When has “forbidding” something ever been a successful means of reducing its incidence? Think about your kids, if you have them. The minute you tell kids they “can’t” do something – what is the one thing they want to do? THAT thing. Forget kids. Ask yourself! Do you like being told you can’t do something? Nobody does. Forbidding things always has the opposite consequence. Even for God!
(This is an entirely different conversation, but that is actually part of the point of the law – to show us how completely incapable we are of following rules that forbid. Enter the Gospel, and grace… But that is for another day.)
Thoughts and feelings about contraception aside, the evidence shows us that we are actually counterproductive in our insistence to “vote pro-life.” If our tactic has had effects that are so dramatically opposed to what we desire, doesn’t it behoove us to rethink our strategy? Are we not, possibly, voting on the wrong side, if every time we vote in a Republican president the abortion rates go up? Is this pro-life? Is it even anti-abortion??
And that only addresses the issue of being anti-abortion. Because if you start to peel back layers, you find that many, if not most, pro-lifers, are not actually FOR LIFE – they are just against abortion. Because it is often those same outspoken opponents of abortion that are also opposed to gun reform, despite massive numbers of gun deaths in our country every day (109 gun-deaths every day in 2017). They are also pro-death-penalty.
And then there are other “life” issues that need to be addressed in this contradictory agenda. What about immigrant lives? Are we FOR them as well? If someone is being hunted down by drug lords in their country and they flee to ours, wouldn’t being “pro-life” also mean that we would want to preserve those lives? What about young black men who are killed by police or vigilantes – just because they were there? Pro-life means we fight for them as well. Or what about the high maternal and infant mortality rates among people of color in our country? The United States ranks 138 out of 184 – higher than countries like Libya and Bosnia in maternal mortality! How is that acceptable? For infant mortality, the US ranks 170 out of 225 – behind Serbia, Cuba, and the entire European Union. We have to care about this! Women and babies in the United States are dying due to a lack of access to adequate healthcare, poor nutritional status, and educational disparities. Women with lower levels of education always have higher rates of death in pregnancy – worldwide.
Can we truly call ourselves pro-life while turning a blind eye to the senseless loss of life all around us – just because it is not tied to an abortion? Is that the way of Jesus? Jesus is God, and God is pro-life – and he never mentions abortion once. Not once! But do you know what He does mention? Loving the homeless, the poor, the widows, the orphans, the hungry, the immigrant, and the refugee. These are commands He has given us directly – commands for life – to love and preserve the life of all humans, all image-bearers. In fact, He goes so far as to say, that when we defile or ignore one of these lives – we have done that directly to Him.
Maybe we need to take a hard look at our policies, and at the results of our “pro-life votes.” If lives are actually being lost – both born and unborn – as a result of the legislation, policies, and programs that are either put in place or dismantled by those votes – we have some difficult questions to ask ourselves. We need to take a hard look at the root causes of the things we oppose, and stop addressing the fruit alone. Bad fruit is caused by bad trees with diseased roots planted in poor soil. But you don’t fix the problem by cutting off the fruit. You find out why – and address the deeper reasons.
Christians – I ask you – are you really pro-life? Or are you just anti-abortion? Because while it is well and good to be against the killing of unborn children, you cannot rest on that stance while death is all around you, often as a result of policies you have touted and voted for. It’s time that we open our eyes and ask ourselves some hard questions. What is life? Vote pro-LIFE.
Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) Let’s vote on the side of abundant life – for everyone.
I don’t know what that means for you, but I suspect it will at least mean that you think harder, and dig deeper, and pray with your ears and heart open to know the heart of Jesus for all of His children. I think we can readily acknowledge that our current system is too messed up to work. We are forced into false dichotomies and double-bind dead-ends. But while we must work to reform the way we do government, and hopefully dismantle the horrible two-party system that we’re currently stuck with, we must start to think harder about what we are doing when we walk up to a voting booth. While there may not be a clear win, let’s not let our worn-out mantra façades drive our choices. Let’s be people who think, and pray, and act justly.