This is not a joke. But it's also not quite as interesting as it sounds. I joined NARAL's mailing list a few months ago in an effort to stay up-to-date not only with the pro-life groups I support, but also with the pro-choice groups I oppose. I am a strong believer in the benefit of "seeing things from the other side." Unfortunately, seeing things through Keenan's eyes proved to be not only difficult, but distressing.
Her email was a heated response to CBS's decision to air a "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life" Super Bowl ad produced by Focus on the Family featuring Florida football star and Heisman trophy winner Tim Tebow and his mother. The ad itself is simple, positive, and uncontroversial. At the end of its 30- second duration, it encourages viewers to visit Focus on the Family's website to read the Tebows' full story.
Here's the brief version. Tim's parents, Bob and Pam Tebow, were pregnant with their fifth child when they travelled to the Philippines to do missionary work. While there, Pam contracted amoebic dysentry and required medication that might threaten the life of her unborn baby. After telling Pam that she was merely pregnant with a "mass of fetal tissue," her doctor advised her to get an abortion. She ignored her. And on August 14, 1987, she gave birth to a perfectly healthy baby boy: Tim Tebow (Lifenews.com).
The Tebows' story is inspiring and encouraging to women. It reinforces the certainty that women do possess the strength and courage to handle difficult pregnancies. It reminds us that challenging circumstances will always exist, but women and families are more than capable of handling them with proper assistance and care. And it makes us thankful that Tim Tebow, who may go down in history as the greatest college football player of all time, is in the world today.
But Keenan was not inspired or encouraged. Instead, her email asked me to "focus on [my] anger and... on the 30 states where anti-choice forces are gathering support for 'personhood' measures." She informed me that "Focus on the Family's ultimate message is to deny women the ability to make the choice that is right for them and their family." She concluded her email by calling it "...absurd that CBS would give a radically anti-choice group like Focus on the Family a platform to expose its extreme agenda to millions of people."
I feel sorry for Keenan. I feel sorry that she is making a concerted effort to "focus on [her] anger" while encouraging others to do the same. I feel sorry that she has become so blind (for Satan blinds us all, at times) as to see 'personhood' as an atrocity she must fight and Focus on the Family as a group with an "ultimate message" of denial. I feel sorry that she truly and honestly believes pro-lifers are "radically anti-choice" people with an "extreme agenda." And most of all, I feel sorry that she is so scared.
Keenan is scared to have the pro-life message spread to 100 million Americans this weekend. She is scared that Tim Tebow's story might touch the hearts and lives of women who are faced with a life-or-death decision. She is scared for our nation to "see things from the other side."
But it is time for America to see abortion for what it really is– not as the "quick fix" that the media portrays it to be, or as the "simple procedure" Planned Parenthood pretends it is. It is time for pro-life groups to stop being labeled as "extreme" and "radically anti-choice." What's extreme is deciding that children under nine months of age can be killed just because they are too small to defend themselves. What's radically anti-choice is denying millions of babies a lifetime of choices just because they are inconvenient.
We are never going to get anywhere in the abortion controversy until pro-choice leaders see things as they actually are. While they are entitled to their own views, they are not entitled to their own realities.
I am deeply thankful to Tim Tebow, Focus on the Family, and CBS for showing America "the other side." And I pray that Nancy Keenan, and all pro-choice Americans, will maybe, just maybe, see that side for what it really is.
Vita Pro Omni!
yes women can cope with difficult pregnancies and circumstances when given the proper assistance and care, but that type of care is certainly hard to come by if you aren't a privileged person. Chances are, if you are privileged yourself you have NO IDEA how privileged you really are. I'm not pro-abortion, but I am pro-humanity. I do think abortion is a devastating choice, but the decision to always choose life isn't always that easy for some people in really disastrous circumstances. Maybe your "other view" that you are so interested in examining isn't the "pro choice" side, but instead the side of the desperate, the hurting, the underfunded, unsupported, homeless, jobless, prospect-less, those who WON'T care about their children the way your mother cared for you. Not all women are the same...
ReplyDeleteHi! I'm really glad you commented. Thank you so much for your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteYes, I am very blessed. Sometimes I wish we could spend a day in a homeless person's shoes... or a prostitute's shoes... or a starving child's shoes... just so we could begin to realize how fortunate we actually are.
You are also right that proper assistance and care can be hard to come by- but it is out there. I think it is our responsibility to make it ever MORE available, MORE useful, MORE comprehensive... so that women's needs are met better than they are now. We have a lot of work to do, but there are also a lot of people already doing it full-time, which is so encouraging!
I think we have to be careful when we start evaluating a person's right to life based on external circumstances. (I am assuming you agree that the unborn are human beings based on your comment that "abortion is a devastating choice.") Is it tragic when a woman is in an extremely difficult situation financially, emotionally, physically, mentally...? Of course. I cannot even imagine what many women go through. Do we have every responsibility to help that woman in every way we can? Absolutely. It would be wrong not to. But we have to remember that we are dealing with TWO lives in every pregnancy: the mother and the child (The simple fact that the woman is pregnant tells us that). We need to help BOTH. And the child is innocent (just as the mother often is)- unable to control the circumstances, whether good or bad, of his parents.
Both women with unborn and born children face incredibly challenging circumstances. So if a woman with a 5-year-old girl suddenly loses her job, her house, her husband, or all three, is she justified in taking the life of her daughter? Why not? That little girl will probably not be cared for the way my mother cared for me... But nonetheless, we would never say she can rightfully kill her. We recognize that her daughter is a human being with as much of a right to life as a child in a wonderful home. We can't discriminate against a child just because she is from an underprivileged family.
An unborn girl who is 3 months old is just as much of a person as a born girl who is 5 years old girl. One is just bigger and stronger than the other. If we aren't justified in killing the 5-year-old, we're going to have to have some pretty compelling reasons as to why it's okay to kill the 3-month-old.
I am pro-humanity, too... that is why I am pro-life. I think the pro-human thing to do is to protect ALL humans, not just the big and strong ones.
I know it is not always easy to choose life- at ALL. I completely agree with you there. Sometimes situations are so, so horrible. And I know you are trying to think about the women in these situations (I am, too), but at the end of the day, even if there isn't always an EASY answer, there is a BETTER answer. And the better answer is life. Every woman, child, and family deserves better than abortion.