What Does Pro-Life Really Mean?

While returning from a short but wonderful weekend trip to my family in my home town, we stopped at two gas stations along the way. In each restroom, I saw some sort of pro-choice propaganda. The first time, I was like “that’s really odd.” However, the second time, I thought “is there something the universe is trying to tell me?” I went through a lot of thoughts and while listening to Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations with Elizabeth Gilbert, I realized that the answer was merely to use my voice and my medium to talk about life and death. I have another post pending that was difficult for me to write. It is even more difficult for me to post. In it, I mention that this blog was made as a way for me to talk about the things that are difficult to say. Sometimes I post about my personal life and sometimes I post about my professional life. But the views on my blog are all mine. They are always inspired by something real going on in my life, but the point is that I open the door for conversations. I don’t know that I have been doing a great job of that lately. So, here we go. Pro-life.

First of all, I am pro-choice. I am not pro-abortion. Extremely early into my current relationship we had the conversation that I would never have an abortion unless my life was in danger. I told him not to suggest it, and I told him that if it wasn’t okay with him he could get out. I would rather be alone and have to figure it out, than have someone who resented me and my child. But what shoes me so much abuout the pro-choice/pro-life argument is our inability to value all lives Why is it that we can have heated arguments about whether or not somebody should be able to choose what they do with their uterus and their entire future, but we can’t have the same conversation about cancer treatment and affordable health care? It does not make sense to me that we feel more comfortable discussing unborn lives than existing lives. (Note: black lives matter feeds into this as well).

Life and death conversations should not be easy to have. Everybody has been affected by death, and everybody has a different experience with new life. These experiences range from none to severe loss. And when you’re a woman, there is usually shame and judgement involved when the subject comes up. This is another thing I really don’t understand. Why is it that we as women have such a hard time supporting other women? I have also noticed that the people who tend to share posts about female CEOs and entrepreneurs who have done well, but then in one-on-one sort of relationships there is shame. This also surprises me, it’s almost like people use social media to compensate for their own personal short comings. How is this not another pro-life argument? Regardless of your views on the traditional meaning of pro-life, how can you have a discussion about pro-life without considering the level of respect that you have for women?

This post isn’t directly about equality. I do feel like if you were to go back and re-read everything with the mentality of it being an equality issue, you will see that it applies completely. Although I am not directly arguing for equality, I think it is a necessary step we need to take in our lives. I think that everything starts with you yourself changing and spreading that change throughout the world. If the universe was sending me a message today, it was that I need to force people to talk, I need to force people to make respect a conscious effort, and I need to remind people some things are much deeper than face value.