Fresh Perspectives on What It Means to Be Pro-life
Over the past year I’ve tried to find some fresh perspectives—though-provoking articles and personal stories—on a contentious, divisive, confusing, and sometimes tiring debate. These are some of my favorite new resources. Please peruse, read, question, think, and pray your way through these resources. And feel free to share your thoughts with me.
This article and its follow-up piece cogently argue that the nineteenth-century women’s rights advocates were passionately anti-slavery, pro-women, and pro-life and anti-abortion. It’s a fascinating study of a movement that has a lot to teach us today.
The author explores the two competing visions that every woman encounters when she considers an abortion—the life she had imagined for herself, and a future that she does not know. This is a profound and moving meditation on how Christians can trust God for stepping into the future they don’t know.
A brilliant book on the worldview that must undergird our pro-life ethos. Snead “proposes a framework for public bioethics rooted in a vision of human identity and flourishing that supports those who are profoundly vulnerable and dependent―children, the disabled, and the elderly.”
This download states a bold vision: Birth in the United States should be free. It argues the case and then offers a roadmap to congressional legislation. Whether you agree or disagree with this plan, as pro-life Christians we need to think and plan for ways to offer resources (beyond basic supplies) so women can choose life.
Dr. Patti Giebink, M.D., worked full-time performing abortions at the only Planned Parenthood in South Dakota. So how did she wind up leaving Planned Parenthood, serving Christ among the poorest of the poor, and advocating for pro-life legislation in South Dakota? Well, read her story.
Brooke Alexander found out she was pregnant 48 hours before the Texas abortion ban took effect. She wanted to have an abortion; instead, she gave birth to twins. This may have been intended as a pro-choice article, but, to me, it conveys a pro-life ethos. This young woman seems to be saying something like, abortion should still be available, but I’m so glad I chose life because I love my two kids! But read it see what you think. It’s a powerful piece of journalism.
In 2019 The New York Times wrote a series of editorials titled “A Woman’s Right.” Law professor and pro-life Alvare offers her rebuttal to the basic premise in the series—namely, that “respecting unborn human life enough to discourage or restrict abortion is manifestly anti-woman.”
Thirty-one years ago Francis X. Maier and his wife faced a critical choice—an ultrasound revealed anomalies in their unborn child. Maier writes, “It’s a curious moment when the bill comes due for your personal convictions.” He heard a compelling voice saying, “Sure, abortion is wrong in most circumstances, but…” Read the article to find out what happened. For a similar article from a woman’s perspective see Perfectly Human What my daughter taught me about beauty, worth, and the gift of being
Warning: This is a sobering, even dark article about the impact of the sexual revolution on the pain caused by abortion, especially the pain caused by men who don’t care for their unborn children and the women who bear those children. But it does raise the following question: What is the role of fathers in caring for their unborn children?
Do you ever wonder (as I have) why the 27 books of the New Testament do not seem to explicitly condemn or even mention abortion. Michael Gorman convincingly shows that this silence actually highlights why the early church was universally pro-life on abortion.
