Pro-life is the movement that works to prevent abortion. They believe that life begins at conception and by having an abortion and ending that life a grave sin is being committed.
The opposing opinion is pro-choice. This movement is hard to hammer down, some people believe life begins at conception and others do not. There are varying opinions of when a woman "should" have an abortion, but the one thing that holds pretty true to the pro-choice movement is that the decision about whether or not to have an abortion is up to each individual women.
I personally don't like the idea of having an abortion. I think fetuses are a life and deserve a chance at being born whenever possible. I also refuse to align myself with the pro-life movement, and I know that I'm not the only person in this boat.
First, the pro-life movement is extremely controlling. And force is never the way to stop somebody from doing something. When a young girl is pregnant and scared and feels like she doesn't have any other option, accusing her of contemplating murder is not going to help the situation. Telling her boyfriend that driving her to the abortion clinic makes him an accessory to murder also does not help the situation. Jesus would not be so mean and forceful. He would not shove images of bloody fetuses in the face of a scared teenager. The solution is love, compassion, understanding, and education.
The pro-life movement also doesn't tend to support real education. In order to have an abortion, you have to be pregnant. So the best way to prevent abortion is to prevent unwanted or unplanned pregnancy. And the best way to prevent unplanned pregnancy is to educate women and men (including teenagers) about how to not get pregnant. There are more unplanned pregnancies in less educated environments than in very educated environments. Because in very educated environments the people know about all the options (and usually can also afford various options or have health coverage for various options) of birth control, while in less educated environments people don't have the knowledge or means to have as many options for birth control. The pro-life movements solution is people should just stop having sex, well good luck with that. I think education is a more realistic way to prevent pregnancy.
One of the biggest reasons I can't bring myself to identify with the pro-life movement is it's insistent on using "tag words" and propaganda that may or may not be true without digging deeper to into the real issues to solve the real problems. A real thing that happens that everybody can agree on is that there are tests that can be done during a pregnancy to find out various things about the baby. Is it a boy or a girl? Is it healthy? Is there a possibility that the baby could have a disability? There are even tests that can be done to find out if the baby has diseases that will lead to early death, to vision impairment, and a slew of other things parents may or may not want or need to know before the baby is born. After these tests, some people choose to terminate the baby. Terminating a pregnancy because of a possible disability is terrible. Saying that pro-choicers are out to eliminate and kill people with disabilities is stupid.
It is also true that a lot of minority women have abortions. This is a term that pro-lifers have labeled "black genocide". Don't you think there might be other factors contributing to the fact that lots of black babies are being aborted? Like to aforementioned undereducated environments that are generally mostly minorities, of which black is one. If 30 black women get pregnant and 10 white women get pregnant and 10% of each racial group has an abortion, then 3 black babies and 1 white baby were aborted. This is not genocide, this is the racial gap in education and wealth. Does it really make sense that the pro-choice movement, made up of mostly liberals, who also generally fight for racial equality, would commit a crime like black genocide because they want less black people around? Or does it make more sense that the pro-life group made up of mostly rich white dudes would completely ignore the fact that some people are not rich white dudes?
Like I said before, the solution to less abortions is not telling women they don't get to have control over their own bodies. It's educating men and women on how to be safe and healthy and not have unwanted or unplanned pregnancies. Women spend enough time being told they have no control over their own lives, choices, and bodies, calling them murders for wanting that control back is not going to get you very far. I am not pro-abortion. In fact, I would rather people not have abortions when given the choice. But maybe she should be given the education and the choice, and with love and compassion abortions will decrease. Instead of just yelling.
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