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Pro-life
IS Pro-choice by Kelvin Bryan Tan Graphics by jeftan@mac.com |
| JOINING A PRO-LIFE GROUP WAS THE LAST THING I expected to do when I left to study in the United
States. I was going to major in politics and I was a firm
believer in the libertarian, utilitarian philosophy set
out by J.S. Mills. I strongly believed individuals should
be given the right to choose (economic liberalism). Like
most Catholics here, I believed abortion was wrong, but I
wouldn’t stop anyone else getting an abortion, and I
definitely wouldn’t want the government to interfere
in anyone’s choice to get an abortion. My experiences in
the States challenged the views I so dearly held on
to. My initial impression of pro-life groups wasn’t favourable. Bombings of abortion clinics and other extremist acts of pro-life radicals dominated the news when I got there. I felt that pro-lifers kept their arguments on an intellectual plane and never went down to the ground to feel the anguish of pregnant women having to make the painful decision to abort a baby conceived out of wedlock. I felt they condemned without lifting a finger to help. My first brush with the issue of abortion came early in my first year. I had offered to give free English tuition to the spouses of foreign graduate students. The wife of a Chinese graduate student was assigned to me. Three weeks into the lessons, she told me she was pregnant and she wanted to abort her baby. Unfamiliar and new to the country, she had few friends and found having a baby too intimidating. She didn’t want her freedom curtailed and the baby was a burden to her. I was probably the only guy she could talk to other than her husband and I was ill-prepared to give her the assurance and help that she needed. You see, when you are up front with a person actually dealing with the issues of abortion, your brilliantly crafted intellectual arguments simply fall flat. So here I was, telling her about the joys of having a baby with absolutely no clue what I was talking about. I pointed out several places where she could get financial assistance. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance to follow up with her because she stopped the lessons after a while. I was fearing the worst and expected her to have an abortion. It was only during my following year in school when I met her at a photocopying shop. I didn’t dare broach the subject. Seeing me, she told me how happy she was to have had the baby. This incident led me to inquire more about the campus pro-life movement. I didn’t want to be caught flat-footed the next time I found myself dealing with someone who wanted an abortion. |
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Next  The pro-life
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