Hard-wired for life?

There’s so much in the news sweep, I was ready to close out for the day. Then I ran across this little item, and found it intriguing. How do pro-lifers become pro-lifers? Some seem to always have been that. And then there are the other stories.

HOW DO PEOPLE BECOME PRO-LIFERS? What turns people into passionate foes of abortion and related issues like euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research? I’m not referring to those who supported the pro-life position because of their family upbringing or religious faith or because of a political requirement as, say, a Republican candidate in a red state. I’m talking about people who, as adults or mature teenagers, were either pro-abortion or basically indifferent to the issue. Then something changed their mind, prompting them to take up the anti-abortion cause. Perhaps they began defending the pro-life position without realizing they’d flipped. In any case, what caused the change? What happened?

Weekly Standard Executive Editor Fred Barnes is telling a profoundly personal story here, and relating it to the stories of several other well-known figures who used to be rather indifferent to the pro-life argument. It’s so endearing in its humanness, and its humanity.

One common thread is obvious. All of us, because of the circumstances we found ourselves in, were forced to think about the taking of a life and what that means in both practical and moral terms. Most people avoid thinking about troubling moral issues like abortion or euthanasia. We couldn’t.

And the other common thread is that something happened to make us choose life and choose it firmly and reject death. I think it was our conscience that intervened or, if you prefer, the basic human instinct that favors life over death. Or it you are a Christian, as I am, it was God.

Now I’m sure there are many exceptions to our experience. Not everyone who contemplates abortion or euthanasia is bound to take the intellectual path that five of us–six, including my wife–did on the way to becoming pro-lifers. But I suspect there are many more than like us than not. And many more to come.