The Joy of Parenthood

Commentary by Cantice

This weekend a friend and I attended the Georgia Right to Life Annual Conference. It was my friend’s first conference (my second) and understandably, she had some preconceived notions about the people she would encounter. To her surprise, nobody wore a baseball cap with buttons shouting “abortionists deserve to die”-type slogans. My friend enjoyed Scott Klusendorf’s (the keynote speaker’s) address on how to engage the pro-choice other side in meaningful discussion.

Many of you might be wondering how I came to feel so comfortably a part of the pro-life movement. The short story is that while in college, more than a couple of my friends became pregnant by the spring of my freshman year. Prior to this time I was passively pro-choice, believing that abortion was wrong, but that a person should be able to choose. For all my religious jargon, I knew that I didn’t have the substance to endure the nine months of shame that pro-life single mothers bore, nor was I unselfish enough to allow motherhood to alter my plans for academic and professional greatness. Maybe that’s why, when I was promiscuous, I feared pregnancy worse than death. I thank God that before I ever had to make a personal decision for or against life, my heart was turned to sympathize with the unborn.

As college drew on, I became more than passively pro-life. I read “Jane Roe” Norma McCorvey’s book, Won by Love, and began researching abortion procedures. A friendly local organization sent me a video called “Silent Screams” and others that either showed aborted baby remains or ultrasound footage of abortions being performed. Through sonography, one of the films depicted a gestating baby trying to escape the suction apparatus that would annihilate its tiny body. Before viewing the films, I was pro-life for religious reasons. After the films, I realized that abortion could be opposed on the basis of human rights violations.

Add to this negative milieu the fact that Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, was sacrilegious and a proponent of eugenics. (For those wondering, eugenics is the proposed improvement of the human species by encouraging or permitting reproduction of only those individuals with genetic characteristics judged desirable.) That said, it should not be surprising that Sanger and others marketed contraception to African Americans in a eugenic experimentation that “peacefully” related to the violent actions of Nazi Germany against Jewish and Polish populations in Europe. But I digress.

It is my belief that today and in the years to come, more people will need encouragement to choose parenthood. As a community, we are backward in our thinking when we shun pregnant singles but condone extra-marital sex. I worry that married couples who aspire to be wealthy, but not to be parents, do not fully embrace the vocation of marriage. I fear that a society that prefers abortion over birth has lost its fear of God and its hope in the future. No abuse that a child could suffer is more gruesome than death at the hand of its parents. But a society that expects nothing more than abortion from its citizens deserves the abortionist and the unregretful consenter as its neighbors.

Abortion Reality Link: www.abort73.com

Response to The Joy of Parenthood
By Wanda

I think almost every woman I know has had a pregnancy scare. I believe that abortion is immoral since it can only be performed during the 6th week of pregnancy which is 3 weeks after the heart has been beating and blood has been flowing through its veins. Calling abortion a right is a fallacy, however, I will not condemn anyone who has had an abortion or condone it. Each individual makes decisions in their lives that they have to answer to God for, whether good or bad. I do know that many women who have experienced it were never the same again.

Now, on to my disagreement with your position that parenthood is a vocation of marriage. Are you trapped in 1602? Do I need to call Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett Brown from ‘Back to the Future’ to bring you into the year 2006? Parenthood is wonderful; Marriage is wonderful; if it is for YOU. Neither marriage nor parenting is a commandment given by Christ, although somehow I am sure you and your cronies have figured out some way to state it is. There are couples who decide not to have children, delay having children, or can’t conceive a child naturally and that doesn’t mean that they are not fulfilling their marital vocation. How can we assume that pursuing wealth and not having children is not a couple’s vocation? Who is to say that they shouldn’t wait? Why is it selfish and less ethical to decide to not have children? Valuing life not only means protecting it through Pro Life, Gun Control, Crime Prevention advocacy but also allowing those with life the opportunity to live in the liberty of Christ.