Pro-Lifers Embrace Mother and Unborn Child, Resist Either/Or

By Dave Andrusko

National Right to Life

In a short essay in THE SCIENCES, Professor Stephen Jay Gould once addressed the question of why–with all the available metaphors we could employ to understand/describe fetal development – we’ve settled on either “increments of progress” (from simple to complex) or as “steps in refinement” (from inchoate to sharply differentiated).

Gould comes to the interesting conclusion that “some stories can proceed in only a limited number of ways, because the logic of their development (or the limited capacity of our minds) permits no other resolutions.”

Tutored by the media, many noncombatants in the battle to protect unborn life can only understand the abortion debate as an either/or proposition: you are either for a woman’s “right to choose” or you believe the baby’s right to life outweighs any maternal right.

But this is to radically miss an ageless truth: 

The fates of mother and child are inextricably bound up one with another. There is no way to divorce the two. As many sadder but wiser aborted women remind us, a pregnant woman is a mother; the only issue is whether she is the mother of a living child or a dead child. Tragically, post-abortion syndrome flourishes because abortion is the ultimate betrayal experience.

It is this poverty of imagination that allows false alternatives to flourish. Not so in our Movement. This the greatest movement for social justice of our time is rich in understanding of the human condition which is why ours is a full-service Movement, committed to women and to their unborn children.

You might say that America today is like a ship upon the ocean, caught in a terrible storm. But because of your unwavering help and loving guidance, one day our vessel will return safely to port.

And when it does a grateful nation will pour out its gratitude to a gallant band of everyday people whose steadfast witness saved America in her darkest hour.

Website: National Right to Life

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