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.
