The other day, I posted a short piece by Patrick Kelly from the Knights of Columbus that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The piece was timed to coincide with weekend Roe v. Wade commemorations, and it celebrated the magnificent contributions pregnancy resource centers have made toward promoting life and supporting pregnant women over the years – a compassionate, charitable work that predates the 1973 Supreme Court decision.
In my public post, I included the following pull-quote from Kelly’s article regarding the centers:
The Guttmacher Institute…complains they are “typically staffed by volunteers and employees who lack medical training and licensure.” It’s a strange criticism from those for whom a “successful” medical procedure always ends in the death of a human being.
In response, a friend of mine made this (public) comment:
Of course, WSJ ignores the health of the women with that crack. I guess for them being pro life really does stop at birth – at which point they are pro chaos.
Here’s what I wrote in reply.
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Hey, friend. Normally I wouldn’t respond to comments I find offensive, but this one, really, is beyond the pale.
When extreme medical emergencies that threaten the life of the mother arise…, AAPLOG believes in “treatment to save the mother’s life,” including premature delivery if that is indicated — obviously with the patient’s informed consent. This is NOT “abortion to save the mother’s life.” We are treating two patients, the mother and the baby, and every reasonable attempt to save the baby’s life would also be a part of our medical intervention. We acknowledge that, in some such instances, the baby would be too premature to survive.
Anyway, maybe that sounds like so much sophistry and ethical mumbo-jumbo, but you can hardly accuse those who embrace that stance of “ignoring” women’s health. Pro-life people are just that: Pro-life. The baby’s life. The mom’s life. The life of the elderly, the infirm, the brain-injured. The poor, the marginalized, the incarcerated, the immigrant. “I have set before you life and death,” God tells the Israelites, “therefore choose life” (Deut. 30.19). It’s a command that pro-life folks (like me) try to embody and promote every day. Sometimes we do it well; sometimes not. Even so, we’re always striving to foster a world in which killing is never required to solve problems. Never.
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