Why I am Pro-Life

Nowadays there many that see the pro-life stance as evil and will view this as more than my explanation – but an admission of some form of guilt. I can assure you that it is not an admission of anything. I aim for this to be a firm explanation for why I oppose elected abortion, which I believe is history’s worst idea.

First of all, for those that do see me as a villain for being pro-life – here is my origin story. When I was around sixteen years old or thereabouts, my life was much like my peers. I was drinking on the streets when I should not have been and looking for the next party. On one of these outings I happened to come across a girl I knew vaguely – meaning we had previously gotten drunk in the same groups. I was surprised to see her. Not only because she was a couple of years older than I was and could have gone to any bar or club instead of drinking on the streets but I had also heard a rumour that she was pregnant, which I presumed was false because she was the drunkest person in the group that night. Fast forward an hour or two and I find myself sitting on a wall having a heart-to-heart with her. By this time I was at least tipsy myself and decided to tell her about the rumour I had heard. When I told her I had heard she was pregnant, she told me she was but not anymore. I assumed she lost the baby – a tragedy that has affected people I had known. Perhaps I was naïve, but I had never heard of an abortion at this stage in my life. I continued the conversation, offering condolences in that awkward and disjointed fashion befitting the abilities of a tipsy/drunk teenager that can’t find the right words. My vocal stumbling was interrupted by my counterpart brashly claiming that it was her choice, that she had an abortion. My head likely tipped to one side the way a dog’s does because they cannot comprehend what they are hearing. Thankfully I am no dog. I asked what abortion meant. This was followed by some of the strangest minutes of my life. There was a teenage girl tearfully explaining the process of an abortion that she had recently had to a teenage boy who was baffled by the idea. My mind was blown. I remember asking, or more accurately explaining that I thought that was what adoption was – for when someone is pregnant but did not want to keep the baby. I could not get my head around why the baby was killed. I still can’t. There were countless questions I could have asked that night that did not come to my mind, thankfully. The conversation ended. I was confused. She was a mixture of sad, defensive and righteous. Then we continued with our night. That was it. I don’t think we ever spoke again – not because of the conversation but we just moved on in different circles as teens who vaguely know each other often do.

That conversation with a girl I vaguely knew was the beginning of my strongest held belief – abortion is wrong. I have no doubt that I would have eventually came to this belief at some point, but that is when it happened for me and perhaps I was lucky that I was introduced to the topic naturally, even if uncomfortably. It is hard to say how I would have reacted if abortion was introduced to me as a good thing or the solution to a problem. I would like to think I would still recognise it as horrifically wrong. I have spent the best part of two decades trying to unpack why it is wrong from every logical and moral standpoint imaginable but the truth is that I knew abortion was wrong the instant I knew it existed and what it was. All of the logical and moral questions do confirm what I believe, that abortion is wrong, but confirmation was never needed for me. So why is there even a debate about this? I do not know. Who can possibly believe that abortion is moral? I don’t know that either. I will point out that abortion is a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide with a marketing budget to match. And from where I stand, it appears the goal of the marketing is to convince people that they can do a selfish thing and dress it up as a good thing. When it comes down to it, abortion is a selfish act. Abortion is ending another life because you believe your life will be better because of doing so.

This is where we can start to divide people into categories of how they think on this topic. To be clear, that does not mean that this would be an indication of who they are or a judgement on them as a person – simply just three modes of thinking on this topic. Rather surprisingly, I do not think that those with a view on abortion fit into only two categories, being pro-life and pro-choice. In fact, I think the third group is probably the largest of the three. For the benefit of truth and humour, I will call the three categories The Good, The Bad and The Stupid. Again, not a judgement on a person entirely, just on their thinking on this, admittedly, hugely important topic. Obviously The Good refers to people that are pro-life, but this does not mean that they are good people, only that their thinking on this topic is good. Now to look at the other two categories – The Bad and The Stupid. These categories are often lumped together and called pro-choice, but this is a mistake because they are not the same. It is this mistake that leads to people thinking that there is more pro-choice people than pro-life. Thankfully, it is easy to separate these two ideas. This can be done by looking at why people are pro-life and evaluating the reasons that people disagree with the pro-life stance.

From my point of view and from what I can see in the rest of the pro-life community, the pro-life stance can be explained with a simple sentence. I, and I think we, believe;

“Without exception, it is wrong for one human to intentionally end the life of an innocent human in an attempt to simply improve their own”.

That is it, plain and simple. This is why I am pro-life. It is not because I want to tell women what to do or because I am sexist. I just want to live in a world where it is agreed to be wrong to kill other humans for self-benefit. To separate people into The Bad and The Stupid, you need their response to this. If people disagree with the statement, then I believe that their thinking here is bad, in the evil sense. If you disagree with the statement that I have made, I do not believe that it is fair for you to be able to name the only exceptions. If you think that human should kill other humans to improve their own lives, this opens us up to carnage. Now for The Stupid. Again, I feel like this needs to be reiterated again so that I do not hurt people’s feelings, but I am not calling anyone stupid, only saying that their thought on this topic is stupid. The Stupid applies to people that agree with the statement that I made, but somehow think that this does not apply to abortion. They often think it does not apply because they do not believe the human foetus is a human or that it does not have a life or maybe some other illogical reason that this statement does not apply. Thankfully the science was proven hundreds or maybe thousands of years ago. It is difficult to argue with those that disagree with the statement – The Bad, because we can not force people to agree with us morally. People are free to think that it is acceptable to kill others in order to improve our own lives, but I am also free to think that these are bad and dangerous people. Those in The Stupid category just need to be educated but struggle with the fact that they are wrong about this topic. I do believe they will eventually have to accept that they are wrong and will then have to place themselves one of the other two categories, The Good or The Bad. Only when the third category of The Stupid is eradicated, will we be able to count the two remaining categories as Pro-Life and Pro-Choice. It is surely inevitable that once this has happened, the Pro-Life will outnumber the Pro-Choice by a factor of thousands. If not, we are fucked. If we knowingly fall on the wrong side of the statement that I made, then abortion will no longer be the only exception. Murder for money will be another exception because it is actually morally equivalent so we should not be surprised when this is considered “morally acceptable” in circumstances where people are desperate for the money.

I wrote this on December 9th 2022 and so far in 2022 there were more that 40.1 million registered elected abortions worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. To put that into context, there had been around 125.7 million people born in 2022. The number of abortions only refers to elected abortion, so not including those for reasons to save the mother’s life – just those that the mother chose to kill the baby for her own benefit, or more accurately, for what she thinks will lead to a better life for herself. This means that over 24% of the new life created this year has been ended before they were given birth to. Of all of the crazy things going on in the world, this is the craziest. We are quite literally exterminating around quarter of a generation of humans. To add to the lunacy of this, often times these lives are ended with a degree of perceived moral superiority. An indicator of how evil abortion is, is that the only reason that any of it is allowed to happen is because some choose to categorise the life of a foetus differently to other human life in order to legalise the killing.

The only question that should ever need to be asked is, “is a foetus human?” The answer is clearly yes, as we have all known this all of our lives. The word foetus indicates the stage that the human life is at, similar to toddler or adult, but they are all humans. Life is created when a male and female have sex and the sperm meets the egg. You may have been taught this by your parents or your school, but we all know it. There seems to be a growing number of people saying things like “I do not consider it human” or something to that affect. The only reason anyone would ever use this sort of language is to justify abortion, but they are being dishonest. It is like saying that we don’t consider a tomato a fruit – it only needs to be said in this way because we know that in reality it is a fruit. We say it because we want to treat tomato differently to other fruit, but not putting it in a fruit salad. Thankfully with the question of when life is created, it is settled science, and has been for centuries. If this fact is now being disputed and there is an alternative view as to when life is created, somebody needs to explain what that alternative view is and we can discuss its merits. Although, I do not expect any other theory to present itself, as it is as concrete a fact as we have ever known that life is created by a male and female having sex. When you hear someone start to dispute this, beware that they starting a lie. That lie usually ends with “because it is not a life, you can terminate it or kill it”. There is an irony that people are so keen to vindicate killing something, while at the same time claiming that it is not a living thing. Orwell called this “Doublethink”. The only times when people start to categorize particular human life differently is when they are planning to do something abhorrent. The three worst things that I know of in history all have these same traits. Slavery, the Holocaust and abortion. They all follow the premise that some human life is categorized differently in order to justify mistreating the particular sub-section of humans which fall into a category. We are all thankful that in the vast majority of the world both slavery and the Holocaust are things of a distant past. But abortion remains and is in fact often praised. From time to time the morality of it is brought to our attention, as happened recently in USA when Roe vs Wade was overturned. This led to passionate support of abortion in America and then to my home in the UK. People were packing the streets of London to literally celebrate being allowed to end another life, that has done nothing wrong apart from being inconvenient to the parents. Barbaric. Evil. Insane. I can’t think of enough words to describe the madness of looking positively at ending another life, especially an innocent one.

As tends to be normal these days, only one opinion is allowed publicly. This time the allowed opinion was that abortion is a good thing - somehow. When I shared a pro-life opinion on social media at the time, I lost friendships. As mentioned earlier, some people see me as a villain for this. There were also many that privately told me that they agree with me but would not dare say it online or even to their partners. This in itself is telling. There is a fear to say what you think if you believe anything that is opposed to the ‘allowed’ opinion. This creates a false notion of how many people believe either one thing or the other. In the case of Pro-Life vs Pro-Choice, people are afraid to say anything if they are pro-life because they will be attacked (which I can confirm will happen) but if you are pro-choice, the same crazy mob praises you if you say so. This incentivising and disincentivising leads to the only opinions that people see being those that are pro-choice, making you think that most people are pro-choice. This is then compounded by people pretending to be pro-choice so that they get the praise, when the reality is that they have never really thought about it. It is not true however, most people are not pro-choice. It is just the most rewarding opinion to share if you value social media. Even people that attempt to take a neutral point of view are attacked from both sides, which doesn’t help, although I do not think there can be a neutral view on this topic. The neutral view tends to be that we should be tolerant of each other’s viewpoint, as though pro-life people are free to not have abortions but should allow pro-choice people to do so. This is like saying that people that are against murder do not have to murder but should be tolerant of murderers because it is their choice. Sometime people that are claiming to be neutral, or even pro-choice, are only pretending to believe that because the alternative is socially unacceptable. If someone claims to be pro-choice but says that “they themselves could never do it” are only saying what they think is socially acceptable. There is a reason that they could not do it themselves. There is a serious lack of honesty in the conversation that is easy to overcome with any amount of dialogue.

Thankfully, most people know that the “thing” inside a pregnant woman is another human, even if they are pretending to dispute this. I had many private conversations with people after I posted my pro-life opinion and more people agree with me that disagree. You might think that that is because people are more likely to reach out privately if they agree, which is true, but I also had many people reach out to criticise my view. Those conversations were always the same. People would be angry that I was pro-life but did not have a reason for being pro-choice. The most common reasons for people being pro-choice seems to be that they or someone that they know had an abortion and that they are happy because of it. But, the fact that some people have done something and are happy because of it does not make it a good thing. In fact, people doing selfish and even bad things without consequence will usually lead to some happiness, albeit short term and shallow happiness. For instance, if I steal someone’s life savings and am not punished for it, having the money might give me some happiness but it does not make the stealing moral. I am sure everyone seen examples on social media were people said they support a teenagers right to choose abortion because they are not ready to have a baby. The examples at times said that instead of being a teen mother, the person can go on to do and be whatever they want. That is great for the person that had the abortion, aside from having to reckon with what they done, but guess who it is not great for, the baby who was killed so that the teenager could go do and be what she wanted. It does not matter how much someone benefitted from killing a baby, none of this justifies the killing. This can be a difficult conversation with someone who has either had an abortion or knows someone who has, more so the latter. I have had conversations with both and in my experience the ones who had abortions know they did something wrong but when it is someone they knew had an abortion and not themselves, it is more difficult to admit that the person they know did something wrong. Their loyalty to their loved one forces them into a pro-choice stance, because it is easier to say you are pro-choice than it is to acknowledge that someone you love did something so wrong. I think it is only because abortion is so extremely wrong, that we cannot admit to it being wrong when someone we love does it, because we would be forced to re-evaluate how we look at that person. If your friend cheats on their partner and gets caught, it is easy to say that they did something wrong but you still love them in spite of it. You do not need to pretend that cheating is a good thing. If your friend murders their partner, you might take a different approach and reconsider that friendship. This is because the action the person has taken is so very wrong that it is difficult to align with still loving the person that takes the action. Abortion offers a loophole here, so that you can pretend that the person has not done anything wrong and that loophole only exists because people have went to great lengths to legalize a practice that is worth a fortune. And to make something as clear as I possibly can, I do not think that all people that have had an abortion are bad people. If we lived in a world where we all pretended that stealing was a noble cause, there would be more thieves because the thieves did not realise they were doing anything wrong. When people are in difficult situations and doing something wrong would help them out, they would often do the wrong thing – now imagine they are being told the thing they need to do is not even wrong.

Some of the reasons for abortion include, the mother does not want to be a single mother, cannot afford to give a baby a good life, could not go on to get a degree or just plain and simple does not want the responsibility of being a mum. There are many more reasons that people give as justification. The crazy part is that every single justification for abortion, can be made when talking about killing a toddler. Is there anyone that thinks that if a mother cannot afford to give her two year-old a good life, she should be allowed to kill him or her? No, and why not? Any mother of a two year-old can have these same concerns but we all agree that if a mother kills her two year-old, so that her life would be better, that woman deserves to be locked up for the rest of her life, and many think they would deserve worse. The only difference in killing a two-year-old and killing a foetus in a womb, is that we know the name of the two year-old – we have memories with two year-olds. The foetus’ do not have anyone to fight for them because nobody got the chance to meet them. Someone that I have admiration for is David Goggins, a former US marine and current ultra-marathon running athlete. I have no idea where Goggins stands on abortion but the reason that I admire him is that he is determined to use every bit of his potential. I have read his books and listened to him in countless interviews and he often explains his motivation by saying that he imagines standing in front of God at the end of his life. He imagines God telling him what the maximum of his ability would have looked like and comparing what he actually did. Goggins is determined to be able to say he reached that maximum and lived to the fullest extent of his abilities. Now, I am not religious, so I don’t think much about standing in front of God but I appreciate the sentiment behind this. What if at the end of your life there was a way to see what your fullest extent could have been, that is a motivation to do what you believe you can or should. What if you could see more than that. What if at the end of your life you were able to see the fullest potential of not only yourself, but of the people that you affected, including those babies that were aborted. What if at the end of our lives we were able to meet them and they were able to either thank us for at least wanting them to survive or they were able to ask why you supported their death? If people had to answer for why they support the killing or huge parts of many generations, they would act and think differently. They would take time to consider what they believe instead of claiming to be Pro-Choice because it is popular. Most would admit that there is no justification for the killing of other innocent humans simply because the victims to not have the ability to stand up for themselves. No reason is enough to justify this and every single attempt at a justification which boils down to the life of the mother will be better if she has the abortion is selfish, evil and ridiculous. I do not mean to be patronising but I need to tell people, we should not be killing other humans so that our own lives are better. If we cannot all agree with this fundamental principle, then civilisation falls apart.

Now we can move onto the extreme examples, which should not take long.

Some people think abortion is justified if there is evidence before birth of potential disabilities. Does that mean that we should be allowed to kill people with disabilities? If so, what level of disability puts people at risk? I personally take the extreme view that we should not be allowed to kill people just because they are disabled. I hope I am not in the minority here.

Some people think abortion is justified if the mother is under 16. I will say that if the pregnancy if not a risk to the mother’s life, I disagree with this. If the mother is so undeveloped that giving birth may kill or seriously endanger the mother, abortion should obviously be permitted. This is the same at any age. If the mother is at risk, she should be permitted to have an abortion for her own safety (this is not the same as elected abortion). I doubt there is anyone that thinks the mother should not be allowed to do this to save her own life.

Finally, we have rape leading to pregnancy. This is the hardest one to discuss and thankfully these cases are exceptionally rare. This is the one case where I can understand the desire for an abortion, but I do not believe it is justifiable. I know I will lose a lot of people here but please hear me out. I do not think the rape justifies the killing of the baby, as the baby is innocent. There is another debate to have about the death penalty as a punishment for crimes like rape. I know carrying the baby will be very difficult for the mother who was raped and I have total sympathy for those women. I personally think that there should be high levels of aftercare for these women provided by the government, charities and society at large so that they can deal with this in the best way possible. Obviously this will likely leading to the baby being adopted in many cases, which again the government should assist in. A side-note here is that in 2022, adoption hit a record low in the UK and most countries that have legal abortion at the same time as fertility is also at record lows. This is obviously in part because abortion is easier than adoption for the mother but we are losing thousands of lives to this thinking. I think as a society we should do everything possible for the mother in this case, but that should not extend to abortion because, as I said before, the baby is innocent here and does not deserve to be killed. Although the existence of the baby is a result of the rape, we have to separate the two. The rape and a potential abortion are not linked. I have heard that people say the baby will be constant reminder of the rape, which is true and that is exactly why most often this will lead to the baby being adopted. I think that is probably the best outcome. The truth is, in the 9 months after a rape, you will not need reminding about it nor will an abortion make you forget about it. Even if it was possible for an abortion to reduce or cure the trauma of rape, it still should not be allowed. I will say it again, the baby is innocent here. The way I think about it is, if a woman was raped in a hotel and the hotel always reminded her of the rape, I have total sympathy but do not think she should be allowed to burn the hotel down, even if the desire to do so is understandable. I think most people would agree with that, which is strange because it shows that we would be more protective over a hotel than another human.

So to summarise, the only time that ending the life of a baby should ever be an option is if it offers a serious risk to the life of the mother. The rest is selfish and wrong. This does not mean that everyone that does it is selfish and wrong, but maybe they just made a mistake or didn’t realise at the time that what they were doing was wrong. This is what I believe. I do not believe that people that do bad things are always bad people. I believe in mistakes, learning from mistakes and forgiving mistakes. I believe that good people do bad things when they are desperate. I also believe that people pretending that bad things are good things is dangerous. I can forgive almost anything but before this is possible the person needs to acknowledge that they done wrong. I believe for instance that I could forgive murder of a loved one, although I am glad I have never had to find out. I believe even in the case where someone has done the worst thing imaginable, there is a road back for them. The road is long and they need to explain how it happened, what they were thinking and why they done what they done. If someone does something wrong, knows that they did wrong, show remorse and make changes to ensure they would never do it again, forgiveness is possible. If someone does something wrong and continues to claim that what they done was right, there cannot be forgiveness. That is where we are with abortion – we are committing murder of innocent humans on mass scale and pretending that what we are doing is morally acceptable and even virtuous.

I will end with two final points and a quote.

Firstly, it gets on my nerves that pro-life is always linked to religion. I am not religious at all. I could not possibly care less what is written in the Bible or any other book when it comes to abortion. That is not where I get my morals or principles from. I actually suspect that it is pro-choice people that attempt to link abortion universally to religion because they know more and more people are anti-religious these days. I’m not anti-religion per se, but I am not religious either. Let’s stop pretending that being pro-life is exclusively a religious trait because it is not. One of the ten commandments in Christianity is “Thou shall not steal”. Imagine trying to claim that not stealing was a moral exclusively held by religious people and using that to justify stealing. It is plain stupidity.

Lastly, a point of optimism. Although there is a huge debate on the issue of abortion right now, the future is not only pro-life but, fiercely anti-abortion, which is exactly my stance. I know this to be true because I have argued with many pro-choice people and they all cave. Every single one of them. Don’t get me wrong, I have had a few text message exchanges with people that say they will never change their mind, but when it has come to actual conversations that I have had with pro-choice people, every single one has changed their mind. I am not exaggerating when I say the conversation rate, when people are open to talking about the topic in detail, is 100% success rate of turning people from pro-choice to pro-life. Many people will not believe that, which is okay. In fact, it’s fun. If you do not believe it and you are pro-choice, test me. I have no doubt if we talk about it openly and you do not run away from the details, you will be converted too. I would love to have more conversations with people that claim to be pro-choice so I can convert them one at a time. But most of them won’t do it because they are afraid to talk. Not afraid of me, not at all. They are afraid of themselves. We live in an interesting time, were everything is recorded and remembered. Pro-choice people do not want their opinions on record in any detail and I do not blame them. Here is why; There was a time when slavery was legal. There were a small number of people making the argument that it should be illegal. Eventually the numbers of people trying to abolish slavery grew, until it was a real debate. Imagine it was recorded that you were one of the people on the side of slavery or even in the middle claiming everyone should be tolerant of the other side. If that debate was going on now, those records would be there. Forever. That is where we are with abortion. Everything is recorded and will be remembered in many years. That is why pro-choice people never want to talk or debate and in the exceptional case that they do want to do it, they are forced into highlighting their true morals by acknowledging that they are okay with killing another human for self-benefit but only when they choose when it is allowed. I don’t blame them for avoiding the topic in any detail, they would rather stick to slogans. It easy to say it is a woman’s right to choose, but it is not as easy to defend what you think women should be allowed to choose to do. I am a man, so you might not take this seriously (which is sexist by the way), but I do not think women should have any more freedom to kill an innocent life than men do. None of us should have that right. If you are one of the people that think this is a woman’s issue and that only their opinion matters, you are wrong. It is like saying that only murderers should have an opinion on the morality of murder – it is plainly stupid. As time goes on, conversations will be had on the topic and people will be forced into looking deeper at this. Pro-life people will never turn pro-choice, but pro-choice people are constantly turning pro-life when they look closer. It only goes one direction and that is why there needs to be millions spent on advertising by the people that make money from abortion to convince the youth to take that position early. It is the responsibility of the rest of us to have honest conversation about what abortion really is. If we have the conversations and people still decide to be pro-choice because they believe that they should be able to end another human life for their own benefit, they are entitled to believe that. At least they are honest in that belief, but they will eventually be in a tiny minority, as if they were advocating for slavery today. The future is almost universally pro-life. That is certain. It just takes time. Maybe instead of saying people are pro-choice, we should say that they are “still pro-choice” underlining the certainly that it will not last. Great tragedies never do. But they always last longer than they should have.

Martin Luther King Jr said, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” I believe this is true.

Thank you for reading. I welcome feedback and further conversation on the topic. You can reach out to me by emailing mraaronbenedict@gmail.com

What you do with this blog is up to you. You can either think about the topic and where you stand on it. Or you can ignore everything I have wrote, call me a bad person and move on. That is about you.

Aaron