Can you read this and not be moved?
Several weeks ago, I received an email from someone I was already connected with through my former radio show and now the blog….though I didn’t know it. She mentioned her conversion to Catholicism (all the way from atheism), and from being militantly pro-choice to unapologetically pro-life. That’s a powerful statement and a compelling invitation to learn more about that person’s journey.
Fortunately, Jennifer told her story, recounting in personal detail the different stages of rejecting the truth while staying open to reason. Which ultimately led back to the truth. It’s one powerful story.
Some snips just don’t do justice to it all, but a few things to think about…
I remember one day when my husband was in the middle of reconsidering his own pro-choice ideas, he made a passing remark that stuck with me ever since:
“It just occurred to be that being pro-life is being pro-other people’s-life,” he quipped. “Everyone is pro-their own-life.”
It made me realize that my pro-choice viewpoints were putting me in the position of deciding who was and was not human, and whose lives were worth living. I (along with doctors, the government, or other abortion advocates) decided where to draw this very important line. When I would come across Catholic blogs or books where they said something like “life begins at conception,” I would scoff at the silliness of that notion as was my habit…yet I found myself increasingly uncomfortable with my defense…
Her honest witness is extraordinary.
I read the Court documents from Stenberg v. Carhart in a state of shock…It took my breath away to witness the level of evil that normal people can fall into supporting. They were talking about infanticide, but completely refused to label it as such. It was when I considered that these were educated, reasonable professionals who were probably not bad people that I realized that evil always works through lies. I also took a mental step back from the entire pro-choice movement. If this is what it meant to be “pro-choice,” I was not pro-choice.
Yet I still couldn’t quite bring myself to label myself pro-life…
Even as I became more religious, I mentally pushed aside thoughts that all humans might have God-given eternal souls worthy of dignity and respect, because it got too tricky to figure out when we receive those souls, the most obvious answer being “at conception” as opposed to at some arbitrary point during gestation.
“Arbitrary” is the key, because reason alone clarifies that what comes into being at conception is of the species homo sapiens, and talk about personhood and assigning value to that person is simply a matter of semantic gymnastics. Jennifer increasingly realized the role terminology plays in grave cultural matters.
All of these thoughts had been percolating in my brain for a while, and I found myself increasingly in agreement with pro-life positions. Then one night I was reading something, and a thought occurred to me, and from that moment on I was officially, unapologetically PRO-LIFE. I was reading yet another account of the Greek societies in which newborn babies were abandoned to die, wondering to myself how normal people could possibly do something like that. I felt a chill rush through my body as I thought:
I know how they did it.
I realized in that moment that perfectly good, well-meaning people — people like me — can support very evil things through the power of lies.
The revelation that they are lies comes through the desire for truth and openness to wherever that journey leads. Jennifer continues to share hers through her blog, and I recommend bookmarking it as a favorite – to be inspired, challeneged or even changed.