When my wife and I chose so many years ago to quietly abort our first child, we thought the government couldn’t possibly allow legal murder. We assumed that, because abortion was legal, it must be morally licit.
We couldn’t have been more wrong. That tragic, irreversible mistake has haunted us our whole lives. It took decades of hidden grief — and then years of heart-wrenching healing, repentance, and reunification as a married couple — for us to begin to move forward from the destruction wrought by that decision.
It’s also a very important demonstration of the weight of responsibility our lawmakers carry. In crafting laws, they actively shape the perceived moral stakes of all sorts of behaviors, especially abortion.
We cannot concede any argument to the abortion industry on the sanctity of human life. Bickering over the point at which children may be legally killed in the womb is not meaningful legal protection, nor does it recognize the dignity of children at the earliest stages.
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What’s more, fixating only on gestational protections from abortion without addressing the underlying causes does nothing for the vulnerable women who are seeking abortions in the first place. It leaves them defenseless and alone, standing helpless at the center of our existing pro-abortion culture.
Softening pro-life laws to the point of allowing the vast majority of abortions to continue simply plays politics with human lives. These are lives we can never get back; these are decisions that men and women can never take back. It fails utterly to take the necessarily holistic and long-term perspective, which good politicians must and can do.
We owe women our loyalty, charity, attention, and help. We owe women policies that offer support, to empower and inform them. Such policies will also, inevitably, form a larger pro-life culture. I know this because 76% of Human Coalition clients who are planning to abort say they’d prefer to choose life if they felt they could do so.
And so, pro-woman policies are also pro-life policies. The protection and support of vulnerable women is the protection and support of their preborn children. But it’s also the case that pro-woman policies are politically popular.
The value of expanding the child tax credit, for instance, is a rare point of bipartisan agreement. There are compelling mainstream defenses of paid parental leave from both political camps, and bipartisan legislation aimed at expanding it already exists.
According to one poll, an overwhelming number of Americans support pregnancy resource centers despite them being aggressively demonized by self-interested abortion activists.
They welcome and support women facing the hardest choice of their lives. They give them material resources, medical references, medical support, and a community. They help educate them about their pregnancy, about what they can expect during and after it — and what their choices are for managing their health and that of their child’s.
Holistic and meaningful community support for women will strengthen our society. It generates loving, empowering systems. It helps women have hope instead of fear in their pregnancy — when they need it most.
Vulnerable women and preborn children deserve equal protection under the law. Further, they deserve laws that communicate just how precious they are — and how seriously we take the work of protecting and supporting them.
LifeNews Note: Jeff Bradford is the president of Human Coalition, one of the largest pro-life and pro-woman organizations in the U.S., and author of the new book “Beauty from Ashes.”
