Genuinely Pro-Life

After Abby was interviewed by CBS on April 8th, I spoke with the reporter briefly, off the record. It was evident that the reporter was interested in helping whoever needed help, with no regard to the person's age, race, etc. I explained to her that I shared her perspective, in that while I was in Cambodia, I worked to help Cambodians get clean water, because the lack of clean water was responsible for approximately 74% of all deaths in Cambodia around that time.

I'd experienced a bit of water-borne disease myself. After walking through the pool of rainwater that remained in a schoolyard, I realized that the school had no bathroom, and that wasn't just water. During my next visit to Cambodia, I helped dig the holes for appropriate-technology bathrooms at various public schools, most of which served over 1,000 students each. Being genuinely pro-life means caring for whatever population's life is most in danger. Quite frankly, being pro-life has much more to do with respecting human life in a general sense, and far less to do with abortion, abortifacient contraceptives, and the abortion industry in a specific sense. Perhaps what I mean when I say that I am genuinely pro-life is that I am WHOLE LIFE.

I can say that, because the day that the abortion industry ends, those who are pro-life will continue to show love to those in need. Some of us will focus our compassion on the victims of other societal ills. Many will continue to offer help and hope to young mothers. I think that those of us who are pro-life activists are very much like the CBS reporter that interviewed Abby, except that we have acknowledged that the abortion industry is the greatest threat to the life and liberty of Americans, and we have chosen to address it.

As other reporters have asked me in the past, she asked some question like, “What got you into the pro-life movement?” I don't remember exactly what words I used, but I'll try to provide a summary of my answer. My answer may seem like an irrelevant rabbit trail. It’s not.

In Cambodia, visits to Choeung Ek and Toul Sleng (S-21) shook me to the core. Decades after a genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, the country's devastation was still visible. In the United States, I read whatever I could about Cambodia's history. While reading, one day it hit me that what the Khmer Rouge had done to Cambodia, Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry were currently doing to America. The two atrocities have their differences, but they also have their similarities. Though passionate about many things related to Cambodia, when it came to the topic of abortion in America, I realized that my apathy was a result of ignorance. I hadn't even prayed about abortion. I had never thought about abortion or its role in American culture. I prayed that God would make abortion bother me.
Since that time, I've read the epitaph given to 16,433 unborn children, whose grave is marked with a single stone. I've stood an arm's length away from cardboard boxes of aborted children who were packaged up inside cardboard boxes, stacked on the street. I've seen a woman's expression after a botched abortion, as she was placed into an ambulance. I've seen the tears of women who've had abortions. I've heard first-hand from women who've been raped by abortionists, and women who've been forced by their fathers or boyfriends into having abortions. I've heard the gruesome details of recurring nightmares that keep returning, a decade after an abortion. I've met people my age, whose parents had considered abortion.
Needless to say, abortion bothers me, and I am genuinely pro-life.