7th September 2020
By Ruth Bushell
In her first blog post for APS our new Student Support Officer tells us about her pro-life position and why its so fundamental to her world view.
I have been pro-life since I knew what it meant to be so. What started as a repulsed knee-jerk reaction to hearing abortion being described in an RE class has developed into an all-encompassing philosophy. Being pro-life does not just mean you are opposed to abortion and euthanasia; it means your entire outlook on the world is based on the belief that human life is innately valuable and precious.
I define my position as being pro-child and pro-woman- but that is absolutely not in order of importance, each party is equal!
Why Pro child?
At a certain level this one is very simple. I believe at every stage of development the pre-born is a human. Despite what the pro-aborts say this is not a controversial idea! Science supports it. There are hundreds of examples in biology books I could give you in which it is stated that a distinct human life starts at the point of fertilisation, here’s one I found earlier if you don’t believe me:
“Almost all higher animals start their lives from a single cell, the fertilized ovum (zygote)… The time of fertilization represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny, of the individual.”
[Carlson, Bruce M. Patten’s Foundations of Embryology. 6th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996, p. 3]
Being pro-child means being pro-EVERY child. This seems obvious but I think its key to really emphasise how the pro-life position is an egalitarian one, that to be pro-life is to be unconditionally so. One of the formative experiences of my pro-life journey was hearing the Beethoven argument for the first time. For those who don’t know it, the story goes that a doctor is addressing a group of medical students. He describes a dysfunctional family, an alcoholic father, a sickly mother and numerous children who nearly all have some form of disability. He then asks the students ‘the mother is pregnant again, should she abort her child?’ They answer in the affirmative and the doctor then turns to them and says: ‘congratulations gentlemen, you’ve just killed Ludwig Van Beethoven’. It’s
a great analogy for shocking people but I think it can also be dangerous. I’m a Beethoven fan as much as the next man and spent many an hour as an edgy 14 year old head banging to the 5th symphony, but it is not Beethoven’s compositions that made his life worth saving. It was simply the fact that he was a life. A unique human being. The Beethoven Argument can be interpreted as saying that Beethoven not existing would be a tragedy but that his siblings being denied the right to exist would not be. Were they born only for the sake of their genius brother? Are their lives now only worthwhile to us as a useful story? Of course, the answer is no. Even amongst the suffering and deprivation of their lives each child was worth saving. I find being pro-life is refreshingly simple in this respect; we are not called to put a value on every human life, we already know it. It is the same for us all. For the Beethovens and Einsteins but also the disabled, the criminal, the forgotten.
It is for the sake of the disabled, the criminal and the forgotten that being pro-life also means being anti-euthanasia and anti the death penalty. Both of these things seek to get rid of those members of society deemed worthless. We as pro-lifers believe the concept of a ‘worthless human’ is a tautology. As with abortion, euthanasia masquerades behind a facade that claims it is all about ‘choice’. But someone choosing to die by any means should not be encouraged, much less celebrated. It is a symptom of a sick society that does not support its most vulnerable.
Why is pro-life pro woman?
BPAS claims that by the time they are 45, 1 in 3 women will have had an abortion. That is a staggering, horrifying number which I never fail to be shocked by. It essentially means that a third of all women feel unable to raise a child in one of the most developed countries in the world. They have been sold a narrative that tells them they can go to university, pursue a career, be successful-but not with a child by their side. Our society tells women motherhood is not an asset but a drawback that it doesn’t want to assist her with. Feminism to me means enabling women to reach their potential in every respect. Abortion denies this potential and tells woman a sacrifice is required for her prosperity. I don’t see getting an abortion as a matter of choice. It’s an act of desperation made so much harder by a society that would rather cover up deep socio-economic problems; such as poverty and domestic abuse, with a sticking plaster called abortion than properly address them. The evidence for this is stark; last year women living in the most deprived area of the UK had abortions at over double the rate of women living in the least deprived area. As pro-lifers we should do what society doesn’t and ask -and really listen to-why women feel abortion is their only option and why the elderly feel euthanasia is theirs. And when we have the answers we should act. Act for women, for the pre-born and for all who are dehumanised by a society that seeks to lessen the worth of certain human lives.
