The abortion debate is obviously one of the heated debates around right now, and it reveals a lot about humanity. Our terms we use to define people are important to us. We like to put people in boxes and check them off as “understood” but really we just close the lid and don’t allow their identity evolve to us.
One way I’ve noticed this in our culture is the pro life movement. The name itself has devised a way to not have conversations. By deeming themselves as for life, the opposing side is of course, for death. They have intertwined their argument and stance within their title so that there isn’t room for any debate. The conversation is over once they find out you are “for death.”
It’s also laced with a bit of self-righteousness. As if they are the only ones who care about life or are thinking in the right terms. The same could be said about pro-choice. Elevating self with a belief is a dangerous path and leads to judgmental attitudes towards opposing ideologies.
We keep circling around the debate on whether it is life or not. It seems obvious it is something similar to life, I mean it is in the process of becoming life at least. In my opinion, not based on anything religious, is everything is there to make the child when the chromosomes meet and unite at conception. Thinking about my own son, everything to make him who he is and is going to be is there in the mashup of cells, chromosomes and other biological things I don’t remember from high school. But the fact it is life or something close to it, shouldn’t matter.
We take life all the time. The death penalty, times of war, pulling the plug on hopeless cases, DNRs, or police shootings in justifiable and unfortunately unjust ways. The question isn’t are we okay with death, the question is when are we okay with it? And the government shouldn’t decide that for us, in my opinion.
But besides that. We should be careful how we identify, our names categorize us into groups and predetermine our conversations, or lack of, for us.