How I am "Pro-Life" and how I am "Pro-Choice"

About being Pro-Life:

▶️ I believe human life, at every stage, in every circumstance, is worth as much as my own life:

▶️ This is why I want good nursing home care for the elderly and infirm

▶️ This is why I want poor mothers to be able to take their feverish babies to a doctor today, now

▶️ This is why I want to make sure all world citizens who are in danger have access to a safe place, and then access to resources to rebuild lives that are not lived in crisis

▶️ This is why I want to protect all groups of people who are marginalized and face either legal or illegal discrimination; our marginalized minorities die earlier than our majority and live much harder lives; we need to change that so that it changes our understanding about their right to life! #blacklivesmatter #lgbtqaxlivesmatter #syrianlivesmatter #allLivesMatterIsaCopoutWhenTheyClearlyDoNot

▶️ This is why I want to teach and protect freedom of religion and freedom of conscience

▶️ This is why I want to provide value-infused sex education to young teens:

  *️⃣ infused with the belief that they deserve to cherish their own bodies and their own hearts and their own futures, and to take care not to injure the bodies, hearts, or futures of potential or actual sexual partners

  *️⃣ infused with the belief that babies are so important that they should not be conceived until there is a loving home to bring them into

  *️⃣ infused with the belief that they are capable of making healthy choices and that their elders will stand with them as they learn all they need to learn in becoming responsible adults

I know we have differences of opinion about the things we believe and the things we should have as mutual goals.  

I know we have differences of opinion about how we can best achieve our mutual goals.

I know we have difference of opinion about what we decide together and what each person decides.

These differences are why I am glad to be a citizen of the USA, and why I am Pro-Choice in these ways:

▶️ I believe there is a difference between “ethical” and “legal”, and I believe there are many personal ethical choices that are devastatingly wrong but nevertheless must be allowed legally 

▶️ I believe an unborn baby deserves its mother’s protection, but that the mother’s rights deserve legal protection

▶️ I believe women who have been groomed culturally to see themselves as primarily sexual objects (and as morally bound to be mothers before they are real and free humans) deserve to know they are free moral agents, not the property of the men in their life, and certainly not the property of any government

▶️ I believe women must, individually and collectively, assume their individual and collective responsibility to grow up and become the free moral agents that have the wisdom to see how every choice – big and little – impacts the well-being of themselves and of all people

▶️ I believe the best way any local, state, or federal government can foster a pro-life world is to protect the right of each woman to own her own body and her own moral choices and her own responsibility to own her impact on others

To those who feel compelled to step in, guns blazing, to defend all the unborn babies being murdered:

▶️ Step back and look at all the innocent people around the world that are being starved, murdered, and oppressed, and consider how easily you dismiss your own personal responsibility to do anything – guns blazing – to protect them

▶️ Take your impulse to save babies and use it well:

  *️⃣ Educate yourselves about how our economy, health care systems, educational systems, and culture create the need to choose abortion over birth

  *️⃣ Create and rebuild systems and laws that provide all that single and poor women need to avoid pregnancy and to care for their children and for themselves well

  *️⃣ Commit yourself to providing for the babies that are born from the cradle to the grave

We all deserve to take a step back from battle and not just load up our guns one more time.

Our lives can be spent building together a saner world for our grandkids and for their grandkids – one where they can look back and see how pro-choice and pro-life ancestors made sure they were born and also made sure they had no reason to abort their own children as a means of birth control.