This is Personal
Why I fight so hard
So, this post is more self-therapy than anything else. Who knows whether it’ll ever even see the light of day. But hopefully I can work through something and come out the better for it.
Abortion legislation and debate is all over the news. So is immigration and the horrors at the border. People are arguing about healthcare, economics, free speech, the prospective candidates for president, and many more issues. But abortion is the one that draws all my attention and all my ire. Many would call me a hypocrite for that, seeing that I’m not spending half as much energy fighting for children that are already born. Perhaps I’m afraid that I am one. Maybe that’s why I’m writing all of this.
Why do I fight so hard on abortion and not on other things?
Focus Is Key
There was a very clever analogy made by a pro-life activist a while back. When pro-choice activists attacked her, claiming that her focus on abortion was hypocrisy unless she also came up with solutions for child poverty, hunger, abuse, etc., she pointed out something that helped shed some light on the subject. To paraphrase, she said that no one blames the American Diabetes Association for not fighting cancer. No one claims that they’re hypocrites for focusing on one thing, and not spending money or efforts on finding cures for heart disease or spina bifida or anything else. Their mission is to fight diabetes, and they leave other diseases and problems for other people to focus on. Thus, we have the American Heart Association and various cancer-fighting organizations, and many more. No one has an issue with that. In the same way, she said, she and her group focus on abortion, because it is a human rights violation that needs to be stopped. It’s not the only one, by any means, but that’s what other people and groups are for. Focus is not hypocrisy.
We are limited beings. Every one of us only has a certain amount of time, attention, and energy to give. Trying to do everything at once leads only to burnout and low-quality work in all areas. We need focus. We need something specific and actionable, too, not just a generalized “improve the world” or “fight oppression”. I’ve mentioned before that our incredible capacity for connection through technology has created the illusion of unlimited knowledge and power. Though it may take little physical energy to scroll, tap, click, read, and type, there’s a lot of mental and emotional energy wrapped up in what we do online. And those things are not as disconnected as they may seem. Emotional stress has physical consequences. Anxiety and anger trigger the body’s threat response, which it can’t keep up for very long. So when thousands of voices insist that we must all be angry about every injustice in the world at all times, they ask the impossible.
(Side note: yes, we’ve all heard the quotes about “good men doing nothing” and “nothing human is alien to me” and all of that. By no means am I advocating for apathy or idleness. But the “whataboutism” — as in, “what about this injustice over here that you’re not focusing on?” — has to stop. And yes, consistency is something to strive for. Approving of one human rights violation while denouncing another is hypocrisy; but focusing on one more than another, while disapproving of both, is a humble acknowledgement of human limitation. That’s what I’m trying to defend here.)
So what should we focus on? Well, that’s complicated. There are thousands, even millions, of good and worthy causes to take up. Determining which one is for which person takes wisdom and self-knowledge. It’s also in a large way not up to us. Things grab our attention or get under our skin, completely outside of our control. Each of our personalities, histories, and social environments influences our desires and decisions.
My Personal Calling
One of my sisters has pointed out that when my first child was born, something fell into place in a big way for me. I had always enjoyed taking care of babies and small children, and most of the paying work I’d had in the past was babysitting. But motherhood cemented something in me. I had found my place, my calling, my destiny. This is the way I serve God and my fellow man. Everything else revolves around that. (Stories are also my “thing”, but in more of a meta way, as a lens for interpreting the world.)
Abortion advocacy devalues motherhood. People who promote and celebrate abortion are declaring that taking life is better than giving life. The false dichotomy of child vs. success implies that parenthood is not success, that nurturing and raising young human beings is lesser than a corporate career. Even the most “compassionate” arguments, those that stand on the prevention of suffering, imply that the suffering I and many others go through for our children is not worth it, that it’s a foolish choice and one we need to be saved from.
Now, I’m not saying that these are necessarily the intended messages. But this is what I hear: “Your calling is actually oppression. Your domain is actually your prison. The people you love and sacrifice for are actually your enemies. Being you — a fertile, nurturing woman — is such a horrible fate that we’re willing to kill to avoid it. You’re too stupid to know what’s good for you. Everything you treasure is worthless, and so are you.”
My Past
I grew up in an independent fundamentalist Baptist church. This post and the next few in the series will go into more detail about that. The relevant part for now is that in order to be really saved (we were told), we had to have enough will, reason, and faith to make a real decision for ourselves. Childlike faith and love were devalued and ignored, as children were assumed to be simply covered by a blanket grace of God until they reached the “age of accountability”. This “make sure you really mean it” message did great damage to me, as I describe in the linked post: I could never be secure or at peace, as my own decision-making capabilities were never perfect, and I could always look back and say “I didn’t know then what I know now.”
Abortion advocacy does the same thing, assuming that those who are too young to have will and reason are not people. Even those who put the personhood of the unborn very early — say at the first sign of brain activity, or independent movement, or even heartbeat — are still claiming that we only become worthy of life and salvation by reaching a certain level of maturity. As such, they poke at my spiritual wounds from the past.
There’s also the more recent past. My son, who is now six years old, has been “slow” at understanding and speaking verbal language since he was two. He’s been classified as autistic for educational purposes, though never officially medically diagnosed. As such, I’ve had to face the social and cultural stigma surrounding disability and anything outside of “normal”. Abortion rhetoric is full of ableist assumptions. Related to what I discussed above, having a disability or caring for a child with a disability is seen as such a terrible fate that abortion is preferable and merciful. This is a slap in the face to the thousands of people living and thriving with disabilities and disorders, as well as the people who love and care for them. When I hear abortion advocates implying that my son and I would have been better off if he had never been born…well, that’s when I’m ready to punch someone’s lights out.
My Present
The nemesis, so to speak, of the fundamentalist Baptist is the paedobaptist. And this is what I have become. I presented both of my children for baptism, to enter into the community of the church, when they were infants barely a week old. Why would I do that? There are many reasons, which I don’t have the space to explain here. What follows is one that tipped the scale for me.
When a baby is born, they already know and love their mother. I have experienced this very vividly. The child can’t possibly know everything about their mother; they don’t even fully understand that she is a person separate from themselves. Heck, they don’t even know yet what it means to be a self. But they know her voice, her smell, and her touch. They know that her presence is safety, comfort, and nourishment, while her absence is loneliness and terror. Now, this knowledge and love can grow. It must, if the child is healthy and isn’t separated from the mother. Eventually, the child will come to know the mother as a person, with a name and a history, and to appreciate her in new and fuller ways. Eventually, we all come to a greater understanding of the person and the process by which we were brought to life. But that greater understanding, that growth, is not what makes us alive. It is a natural consequence of being alive. And it is present even in the fuzzy knowledge of a newborn who cries for mama.
God is much farther beyond us than a mother is to her baby. Yet He reveals Himself clearly, though not completely, to His tiny creatures. If He is omnipresent, omnipotent, and desirous to save all of His chosen people, why couldn’t He make Himself known to the youngest infant? It won’t be the same as an adult convert’s understanding, of course. But in some way, babies are able to know, love, and trust. King David expresses something like this in a few different psalms (22:9 and 71:6, for starters). John the Baptist also experienced the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in utero, jumping with gladness at the news of Christ’s coming (Luke 1:41–45). The infant’s faith can grow, of course, and will if it is nourished. And what better way to nourish faith than to accept them into the community of believers, encouraging and loving them as little brothers and sisters in Christ? Instead of a bland, impersonal grace that ignores the child’s actual response until adolescence, we affirm the reality of little hearts that have experienced the love of Jesus and love Him in return.
This is my mission. This is my passion. This is who I am.
Conclusion
I am the child of a sovereign God. He put me together in my mother’s womb. He directed the course of my life, leading me through the lies so I could more clearly see the truth. He put me where I am, when I needed to be here, in order to accomplish the purposes He had in mind. He didn’t create me to solve all the world’s problems. That is not my job or yours or anyone else’s but His.
I can’t stop and I won’t stop advocating for the life of the unborn. As part of that, I will try to teach my own children — and act out in my parenting — the truth that they don’t need to be grown up or perfect or “normal” to be immensely valued and loved. And I don’t need anything beyond them in order to be successful. They are not in my way. They are walking along the way with me, following the one who said “Let the little children come to Me.”
I hope and pray that someday, they’ll find their passions and their callings. Maybe they will take up the same cause, in their own unique ways, or maybe some other injustice will pull at their hearts because of the way they have been made. Perhaps one will become an advocate for immigrants or for people in poverty. Perhaps one will minister to those in prison or homeless. There are many, many good things to do in this world. Let’s not shame anyone for doing any of them.