That Common Argument - “Pro-Lifers Don’t Care For The Baby After It’s Born”
Submitted by Stand for Life Blog
What is one statement abortion proponents often resort to when they really can’t defend the killing of the innocent unborn: The pro-lifers only care for what’s in the womb. They don’t care for the baby and mother after it’s born. Obviously, this is just a distraction to attempt to nullify the pro-life argument, but it can easily be refuted.
First, let’s examine their assertion that pro-lifers don’t do anything to help the mother and newborn. Hundreds of pregnancy centers throughout America assist the woman while she is pregnant, but also after the baby is born. Most conduct parenting classes along with helping with specific needs for the newborn baby and mother. Many Catholic parishes are involved with groups such as The Gabriel Project which helps with the woman through her pregnancy until well after the baby is born. Then there are the thousands of pro-lifers who assist individually with women who decided not to abort their child.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume they are right, that pro-lifers do not help with the mother and baby after it is born. How would that change the fact that an unborn baby is being killed in the name of abortion? It doesn’t change that fact at all. If you see your neighbor being physically abused by her husband and you do nothing about it, does that change the fact that the abuse occurred? What if someone said that you can’t assert that the abuse is wrong unless you take the neighbor into your house to protect her. Of course, helping out this woman would be a great thing to do, but whether you do or not doesn’t detract from the facts of the original abuse.
In a related argument abortion proponents will say that if a woman lives in poverty or other dire circumstances then they should be allowed to abort their child. They often claim that the pro-lifer ignores the circumstances of the woman’s life. Obviously, many women come from undesirable situations, but do we allow to kill the born children who are in those same circumstances? Of course, not. Their rebuttal to that argument is often that it’s different because one child is born and the other isn’t. So right there is the crux of the whole pro-life, pro-abortion debate. They do not feel the unborn is as valuable as a child outside of the womb and that it is not deserving of equal rights that born persons enjoy. The pro-life argument can then be focused on when does life begin and that the unborn is just in a different location than the born child.
These criticisms of the pro-life view are designed for the sole purpose of distracting from the fact of what really happens in an abortion. No matter how many times the discussion is thrown off course, the focus should be on reiterating the truth that the unborn is a human deserving of all of the rights that a born human has.
