Live Action has released another video in the Pro-Life Replies series, which tackles common pro-abortion arguments and rebuts them with pro-life responses. In the video, a common talking point — that the pro-life movement only cares about babies before they are born — is discussed and debunked.
Though the abortion industry frequently claims that pro-lifers don’t care about women or their children (after they are born), the reality is, the pro-life movement is there to give support and resources far beyond just pregnancy.
Brandi Swindell, founder and CEO of Stanton Healthcare, said she hears this argument all the time: pro-lifers only care about babies before birth, but couldn’t care less about what happens to them after being born. To “prove” that they support all lives, pro-lifers are subjected to what amounts to a litmus test; they have to support a specific government policy, or agree that people in poverty or people with disabilities have a poor quality of life… and therefore, are better off dead. But Swindell said there are three reasons pro-lifers care about all life — from conception to natural death.
First, focusing on birth to start with is because it’s the most pressing issue. “Telling pro-lifers you’re just pro-birth is like saying to a heart surgeon, ‘You don’t care about health overall! You just care about people’s hearts!'” Swindell said. “Preborn children are the only group of innocent human beings that are legal to kill. And not only that, they are being killed at a rate of over 2,000 children per day in the United States.”
There are far more preborn children killed each day than people dying of heart disease, which is said to be the leading cause of death by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). “Being pro-life means supporting every innocent human being’s right not to be killed,” Swindell said, adding, “Since preborn children are the only people this right is not afforded to, birth itself becomes, by default, the focus of anyone who supports the right to life.”
Second, Swindell explains that it isn’t necessary to eliminate every hardship from a person’s life in order to save someone from death. “Imagine this: a team of firefighters get an emergency call for a family trapped inside a burning house,” she said. “They aren’t going to say, ‘Well, unless we can provide food, lodging, and a good college education for the kids once we save this family, we should probably just let them die.’ They are going to do their best to save those people, and they will be good people for saving them, even if the firefighters don’t provide new housing for the family after saving them.”
Saving someone’s life is never wrong, and it doesn’t mean there has to be a guarantee of a perfect life after the fact. All lives are worthwhile and valuable, even if there are hardships on the horizon.
Finally, the most important rebuttal to this pro-abortion argument is that pro-lifers simply aren’t just “pro-birth.” As Swindell explained, many pro-life organizations do all they can to provide for pregnant women, mothers, and their children, both before birth, and long afterwards.
“The organization I founded, Stanton Healthcare, is part of one of the largest movements of life-affirming medical clinics and pregnancy care centers in North America, with over 30,000 volunteers providing the women who walk through our doors with more than $62 million in donated services and compassionate women’s health care, all at no charge, last year alone,” Swindell said. “This includes ultrasounds, prenatal care, diapers, formula, baby clothes and toys, wellness care, life coaching… the works. These are services for the duration of the pregnancy, and even after the baby is born.”
And that’s just one organization; overall, the pro-life movement provides $270 million in support and life-affirming medical care every year.
“So when people say pro-lifers are just pro-birth, I say, ‘I am not just pro-birth,'” Swindell concluded. “I support and care about all kinds of important issues. But as a pro-lifer, I’m focused on the preborn, because they are the only group of people whose lives are not protected by the government. And if we don’t protect and guarantee the right to life of every person, then no freedom or right is ever secure.”
