The other day I was accused of being something that, to be honest, I hadn’t heard of before (and I’ve heard a lot different accusations!). It’s a seemingly innocuous term and at first I puzzled at what it meant. The term and accusation that was levelled at me was that I was pro-birth. Notice I wasn’t accused of being pro-life – which is ordinarily how I would label myself and am quite comfortable to be accused of being – but pro-birth. This arose out of a discussion that had developed over the course of a few of days (via Twitter) on the subject of abortion – a discussion which has been interesting and which I will go into further in a separate post (soon to be published) – but on the branding of the term pro-birth, I had to pause.

Shortly, it occurred to me that the term was to mean a world view which would hold that – under every circumstance of pregnancy – the mother must bear the child to full term; that the mother must birth the child, no matter what. It then occurred to me that the term is used as a euphemism for someone who forces their view onto others (namely, in this instance, that a pregnant woman must give birth), effectively making (forcing) an un-welcomed decision onto another, inhibiting their freedom of choice. In a nut shell, being pro-birth “robs” women of their choice.

I’d like to think that I’m open to the criticisms that come my way (I try to look at them as opportunities for self-evaluation and improvement; I also think this is a biblically sound manner in which to live a Christian life and certainly appears to be the psalmist’s approach (Ps 139:24)), hence, I pondered the pro-birth label for a while and searched inward to see if there was truth to it.


I concluded that this is not my stance; I am most decidedly pro-life. To be pro-birth, I would have to have no regard for the well-being of either the mother or the baby after the birth-event. Such a view is the antithesis of the pro-life position, which regards human life as sacrosanct from conception to natural death. Sure, there would be some activists within the pro-life movement who may very well be best described as pro-birth, but such a stance is not the substance of what it means to be pro-life.

What may be in question with regards to a pro-lifer’s stance is the level of involvement they may be obligated to enact towards mothers who elect to birth their children – and there would be varying ways in which such an obligation and servitude would be carried out. There are, of course, whole institutions geared toward this very task of ongoing care and support for new mothers (Crisis Pregnancy Centers are everywhere in the States as well as in other areas of the world); such establishments are born out of, and act out of, the pro-life ideology while a pro-birth stance – as I understand it – is another ideology altogether.

I’d actually say that the pro-birth and pro-choice positions are sibling ideologies – at least, they are similar in the manner with which they advance their views: with intolerance and indifference.

(And let us not forget that if pro-choicers want to labor a point about the obligations of pro-lifers in post-birth scenarios, that the pro-choicer must also then be prepared to fulfil the same obligations – after all, if they promote choice – one of which is to birth the child – by their own argument they must follow through with care, compassion and support for the mother and child, too. To do otherwise is not to be pro-choice at all, but to be pro-death.)

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