Pro-lifers care more about women than pro-choicers do

Following the Michigan Senate’s recent approval of a “Choose Life” license plate, an op-ed cartoon in one of the Sunday papers depicted pro-lifers rolling up their car windows to avoid impoverished children begging on the roadside. As usual, pro-lifers are portrayed as caring more about babies in the womb than about women or babies after they’re born.

Apparently there are some so fiercely committed to abortion that they cannot even bear the notion of encouraging the choice of life. But to accuse pro-lifers of not caring about women and children outside the womb as an argument against pro-life license plates (or pro-life initiatives in general) is a blatant lie that deserves exposure.

First, the “Choose Life” plates would actually help fund programs that assist women facing unplanned pregnancies, supplying them with food, housing, clothing, education, baby supplies, and the like. The plates are not about state-sponsorship of repealing abortion rights, as some opponents have also charged. They’re about letting private citizens publicly display their desire to change hearts, while supporting women facing unplanned pregnancies. Really, what is wrong with that?

Truth be told, since Roe. v. Wade, it is pro-lifers – not abortion supporters -- who have taken the lead in offering vital services to mothers and children in need. Countless volunteers do all they can to help these women, including driving them to doctor appointments, providing free ultrasounds, and helping them with housing, clothes, education, jobs and baby supplies.

This is done largely through approximately 4,000 crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) in our country -- at least 27 of which are in Southeast Michigan alone -- as well as local pro-life ministries like Abigayle House, Mary’s Mantle, and others across the country that exist solely to provide material and emotional support to pregnant women and mothers in need.

Also, let’s not forget the Catholic Church, perhaps the single most influential pro-life institution in the U.S., and one of -- if not the -- largest private donor of financial and other assistance to those in need, including pregnant women and single mothers. Add to this the many other Christian outreach services that commit time and private resources to helping women long after they give birth. Tell me one pro-abortion group that offers this kind of help to women interested in carrying out their pregnancies.

These pro-life resources are funded pretty much the old-fashioned way, too: through private donations. In contrast, the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, receives more than one million dollars a day from our government, while partnering with groups like NARAL Pro-Choice America to support legislation across the country – such as California’s recent Reproductive FACT Act -- that compels pro-life CPCs to speak the government’s approved message, not the pro-life message, and seeks to shut down CPCs altogether.

So who really cares about women here? If abortion supporters want to claim that title, then they need to start acknowledging the harmful effects of abortion. Instead, they ignore myriad studies that link abortion to increased cancer risk, anxiety, depression, substance abuse and other maladies. They reject efforts to require abortion clinics to share this information with women, or to show women an ultrasound before an abortion so women can make a truly informed decision. Abortion supporters even reject legislation that would require abortion clinics to meet the same standards of cleanliness and licensing that your average hair salon must meet.

Moreover, while congressional Democrats decry the Trump Administration’s recent decision to eliminate funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), abortion advocates ignore the UNFPA’s complicit partnership in some of the most unspeakably brutal population control programs around the globe – euphemistically called “family planning” and “reproductive health” -- including China’s genocidal one-couple, one-child policy, in addition to abortion, forced sterilization and savage eugenics programs throughout the developing world. Almost exclusively, it is women and children who are the victims of this fanatical crusade against life.

But why deny these truths? It’s simple. Abortion is a big money maker. So with statistics showing that almost 80% of U.S. women who see their baby in an ultrasound decide against abortion, CPCs (who provide free ultrasounds) become a major threat to the abortion industry. And as public opinion on abortion continues to change thanks to ever-advancing medical technology, it’s become much harder to push a blatant pro-abortion agenda. Hence, the truth must be buried and false claims about pro-lifers must be perpetuated.

I applaud the Michigan Senate for approving the “Choose Life” plates and hope the House will follow suit. In fact, in this dark time we’re in, where the most simple “Choose Life” initiatives invite ridicule, and the ending of innocent life becomes profitable, isn’t now actually a really good time for us all to promote the God-given sanctity of human life that so many seek to destroy?