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It is possible to be morally pro-life and politically pro-choice at the same time.

Abortion remains an incredibly polarizing issue but it doesn't have to be.

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Pro-choice and pro-life demonstrators face off

The legality of abortion is one of the most polarized debates in America—but it doesn't have to be.

People have big feelings about abortion, which is understandable. On one hand, you have people who feel that abortion is a fundamental women's rights issue, that our bodily autonomy is not something you can legislate, and that those who oppose abortion rights are trying to control women through oppressive legislation. On the other, you have folks who believe that a fetus is a human individual first and foremost, that no one has the right to terminate a human life, and that those who support abortion rights are heartless murderers.

Then there are those of us in the messy middle. Those who believe that life begins at conception, that abortion isn't something we'd choose—and we'd hope others wouldn't choose—under most circumstances, yet who choose to vote to keep abortion legal.

It is entirely possible to be morally anti-abortion and politically pro-choice without feeling conflicted about it. Here's why.


There's far too much gray area to legislate.

No matter what you believe, when exactly life begins and when “a clump of cells" should be considered an individual, autonomous human being is a debatable question.

I personally believe life begins at conception, but that's my religious belief about when the soul becomes associated with the body, not a scientific fact. As Arthur Caplan, award-winning professor of bioethics at New York University, told Slate, “Many scientists would say they don't know when life begins. There are a series of landmark moments. The first is conception, the second is the development of the spine, the third the development of the brain, consciousness, and so on."

But let's say, for the sake of argument, that a human life unquestionably begins at conception. Even with that point of view, there are too many issues that make a black-and-white approach to abortion too problematic to ban it.

Abortion bans hurt some mothers who desperately want their babies to live, and I'm not okay with that.

a man holds a sign for pro-choice arguments reading "our life - our decision"a man holding a sign that says our life - our decisionPhoto by Aiden Frazier on Unsplash


One reason I don't support banning abortion is because I've seen too many families deeply harmed by restrictive abortion laws.

I've heard too many stories of families who desperately wanted a baby, who ended up having to make the rock-and-a-hard-place choice to abort because the alternative would have been a short, pain-filled life for their child.

I've heard too many stories of mothers having to endure long, drawn out, potentially dangerous miscarriages and being forced to carry a dead baby inside of them because abortion restrictions gave them no other choice.

I've heard too many stories of abortion laws doing real harm to mothers and babies, and too many stories of families who were staunchly anti-abortion until they found themselves in circumstances they never could have imagined, to believe that abortion is always wrong and should be banned at any particular stage.

I am not willing to serve as judge and jury on a woman's medical decisions, and I don't think the government should either.

pro-life and pro-choice demonstrators face each otherIt is possible to be morally pro-life and politically pro-choice at the same time.


Most people's anti-abortion views—mine included—are based on their religious beliefs, and I don't believe that anyone's religion should be the basis for the laws in our country. (For the record, any Christian who wants biblical teachings to influence U.S. law, yet cries “Shariah is coming!" when they see a Muslim legislator, is a hypocrite.)

I also don't want politicians sticking their noses into my very personal medical choices. There are just too many circumstances (seriously, please read the stories linked in the previous section) that make abortion a choice I hope I'd never have to make, but wouldn't want banned. I don't understand why the same people who decry government overreach think the government should be involved in these extremely personal medical decisions.

Protestors gather outside Supreme Court after Dobbs decision

a crowd of people in front of the Supreme Court after Dobbs decision

Photo by Sarah Penney on Unsplash

And yes, ultimately, abortion is a personal medical decision. Even if I believe that a fetus is a human being at every stage, that human being's creation is inextricably linked to and dependent upon its mother's body. And while I don't think that means women should abort inconvenient pregnancies, I also acknowledge that trying to force a woman to grow and deliver a baby that she may not have chosen to conceive isn't something the government should be in the business of doing.As a person of faith, my role is not to judge or vilify, but to love and support women who are facing difficult choices. The rest of it—the hard questions, the unclear rights and wrongs, the spiritual lives of those babies,—I comfortably leave in God's hands.

Most importantly, if the goal is to prevent abortion, research shows that outlawing it isn't the way to go.


The biggest reason I vote the way I do is because based on my research pro-choice platforms provide the best chance of reducing abortion rates.

Abortion rates fell by 24% in the past decade and are at their lowest levels in 40 years in America. Abortion has been legal during that time, so clearly, keeping abortion legal and available has not resulted in increased abortion rates. Switzerland has one of the lowest abortion rates on earth and their rate has been falling since 2002, when abortion became largely unrestricted.

Outlawing abortion doesn't stop it, it just pushes it underground and makes it more dangerous. And if a woman dies in a botched abortion, so does her baby. Banning abortion is a recipe for more lives being lost, not fewer.

At this point, the only things consistently proven to reduce abortion rates are comprehensive sex education and easy, affordable access to birth control. If we want to reduce abortions, that's where we should be putting our energy. The problem is, anti-abortion activists also tend to be the same people pushing for abstinence-only education and making birth control harder to obtain. But those goals can't co-exist in the real world.

Our laws should be based on reality and on the best data we have available. Since comprehensive sex education and easy, affordable access to birth control—the most proven methods of reducing abortion rates—are the domain of the pro-choice crowd, that's where I place my vote, and why I do so with a clear conscience.


This article originally appeared on 01.22.19


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Texas valedictorian drops her commencement speech to get real about state's anti-abortion bill

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Lake Highlands High School valedictorian Paxton Smith made waves with her commencement speech this week, as she discarded her approved remarks and spoke about Texas's anti-abortion "heartbeat bill" instead.

Smith told D Magazine that the speech she had prepared and submitted for approval was about media consumption and how it had shaped her view of the world. But she had also prepared a different speech, one that addressed something far more important to her.

When the time came to step up to the microphone, she took out a folded piece of paper tucked into her shirt and delivered the second speech instead. Clips of her remarks have since gone viral on social media.


Paxton Smith Speech at Lake Highlands Graduationyoutu.be

Here's her speech in full:

"As we leave high school we need to make our voices heard. I was going to get up here and talk to you about TV and content and media because those are things that are very important to me. However, in light of recent events, it feels wrong to talk about anything but what is currently affecting me and millions of other women in this state.

Recently the heartbeat bill was passed in Texas. Starting in September, there will be a ban on abortions that take place after 6 weeks of pregnancy, regardless of whether the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest. 6 weeks. Most women don't even realize they're pregnant by then. And so, before they have the time to decide if they are emotionally, physically, and financially stable enough to carry out a full-term pregnancy, before they have the chance to decide if they can take on the responsibility of bringing another human into the world, the decision has been made for them by a stranger. A decision that will affect the rest of their lives.

I have dreams, hopes, and ambitions. Every girl here does. We have spent our whole lives working towards our futures, and without our consent or input, our control over our futures has been stripped away from us. I am terrified that if my contraceptives fail me, that if I'm raped, then my hopes and efforts and dreams for myself will no longer be relevant. I hope you can feel how gut-wrenching it is, how dehumanizing it is, to have the autonomy over your own body taken from you.

And I'm talking about this today, on a day as important as this, on a day honoring the students' efforts in twelve years of schooling, on a day where we're all brought together, on a day where you will be the most inclined to hear a voice like mine, a woman's voice, to tell you that this is a problem. A problem that can't wait. I refuse to give up this platform to promote complacency and peace, when there is a war on my body and a war on my rights. A war on the rights of your sisters, a war on the rights of your mothers, a war on the rights of your daughters.

We cannot stay silent."

Smith told D Magazine that it "feels great" to have said what she wanted to say to her graduating class.

"It also feels a little weird," she added. "Whenever I have opinions that can be considered political or controversial, I keep them to myself because I don't like to gain attention for that kind of stuff. But I'm glad that I could do something, and I'm glad that it's getting attention. It just feels weird for me personally, that I'm linked to the attention that the speech got."

As of yesterday, Smith had not faced any direct consequences from school administrators, though a couple of them had told her that they could withhold her diploma. She will be headed to UT Austin in the fall and encourages everyone to register to vote and stay involved in local elections.

Brava, Ms. Smith. Thank you for using your voice and moment in the spotlight to speak up for the right all people should have to make personal medical decisions without government interference.

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Pro-life pastor's post argues that an unrepentantly sinful leader is deadlier than abortion

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

We've heard that character is on the ballot this election—but also that policy matters more than personality. We've heard that integrity and honesty matter—but also that we're electing the leader of a nation, not the leader of a Boy Scout troop.

How much a candidate's character matters has been a matter of debate for decades. But one of the odd juxtapositions of the Trump era is that arguably the most historically immoral, character-deficient candidate has been embraced by the evangelical Christian right, who tout morality more than most. Trump won the right's "moral majority" vote by pushing conservative policies, and there is a not-so-small percentage of "one issue" voters—the issue being abortion—who are willing to overlook any and all manner of sin for someone who says they want to "protect the unborn."

So when a prominent, staunchly pro-life, conservative Christian pastor comes out with a biblical argument that basically says "Yeah, no, the benefit doesn't outweigh the cost," it makes people sit up and listen.


John Piper is the founder of desiringgod.org and the chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. He spent 33 years as a Baptist minister and is the author of dozens of books on Christian theology, including a handful of best-sellers. And he recently published a post that, while certainly not endorsing Biden, makes a biblical argument for rejecting Trump.

In what he called a "long-overdue article," Piper pointed out the sins of "unrepentant sexual immorality," "unrepentant boastfulness," "unrepentant vulgarity," and "unrepentant factiousness," and questioned why so many Christians only consider such sins toxic instead of deadly.

"These are sins mentioned in the New Testament," he wrote. "To be more specific, they are sins that destroy people. They are not just deadly. They are deadly forever. They lead to eternal destruction..."

Piper added that such sins don't just destroy people, but nations as well.

"I think it is a drastic mistake to think that the deadly influences of a leader come only through his policies and not also through his person," he wrote.

"This is true not only because flagrant boastfulness, vulgarity, immorality, and factiousness are self-incriminating, but also because they are nation-corrupting. They move out from centers of influence to infect whole cultures. The last five years bear vivid witness to this infection at almost every level of society."

Piper even gave a biblical example of precisely what he means by the character of a leader leading to death for a nation.

"There is a character connection between rulers and subjects," he wrote. "When the Bible describes a king by saying, 'He sinned and made Israel to sin' (1 Kings 14:16), it does not mean he twisted their arm. It means his influence shaped the people. That's the calling of a leader. Take the lead in giving shape to the character of your people. So it happens. For good or for ill."

He also explains how Christian arguments along the lines of "policy over personality" ignore the real damage done by having a leadership position filled with a person whose character is destructive:

"Christians communicate a falsehood to unbelievers (who are also baffled!) when we act as if policies and laws that protect life and freedom are more precious than being a certain kind of person. The church is paying dearly, and will continue to pay, for our communicating this falsehood year after year.

The justifications for ranking the destructive effects of persons below the destructive effects of policies ring hollow.

I find it bewildering that Christians can be so sure that greater damage will be done by bad judges, bad laws, and bad policies than is being done by the culture-infecting spread of the gangrene of sinful self-exaltation, and boasting, and strife-stirring...

How do they know this? Seriously! Where do they get the sure knowledge that judges, laws, and policies are less destructive than boastful factiousness in high places?"

Piper then specifically addressed the "But what about abortion?" question, articulating both his strict abortion-is-baby-murder stance and his belief that abortion deaths don't outweigh the broader death and destruction caused by a selfish, braggadocious leader.

"I think Roe is an evil decision. I think Planned Parenthood is a code name for baby-killing and (historically at least) ethnic cleansing. And I think it is baffling and presumptuous to assume that pro-abortion policies kill more people than a culture-saturating, pro-self pride," he wrote.

"When a leader models self-absorbed, self-exalting boastfulness, he models the most deadly behavior in the world. He points his nation to destruction. Destruction of more kinds than we can imagine."

Piper made it clear that his purpose in writing the post was not to convince anyone to vote a specific way (an editor's note indicates that he won't be voting for Biden or Trump), but rather hoped that Christians would "be given pause" by examining the consequences of choosing a leader with "a pattern of public behaviors that lead to death."

It's a serious statement from a serious Christian leader, which Christians might want to seriously consider. You can read the full article here.

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We asked moms how, and when, they taught their kids about abortion. Here's what they said.

Many parents feel hesitant to bring up the topic of abortion with their kids.

But considering that abortion isn't covered in school sex-ed classes, avoiding it leaves kids to the task of learning on their own from the internet, TV, or billboards — all littered with anti-choice propaganda and misinformation.

Talking to kids about abortion can be hard. Most of us have our own personal feelings about abortion, and many of us have our own experiences with the procedure.

But untangling abortion facts from abortion politics is important in order to help de-stigmatize a necessary medical procedure. And shattering stigma can have a profound effect on our children's future health and their ability to access certain forms of medical care.

Some parents shared how they discuss abortion with their kids. Here is what they had to say:

1. Talk about abortion as one possible outcome of pregnancy.

Sarah Tarver-Wahlquist is a member of the Tucson Abortion Support Collective in Tucson, Arizona. Sarah's oldest child was 8 when she started discussing abortion with him. When he responded, aghast, and asked if abortion was “killing babies,” she regretting having waited so long to start the conversation.

“We now talk about abortion as one possible outcome of a pregnancy,” says Sarah, “And we talk about some of the statistics — that one in three women will have an abortion in her reproductive life, and that the majority of people who have abortions are already parents — to emphasize that abortion is a normal part of life and a decision that many people will choose to make.”

Sarah explains the different ways that people can feel about their pregnancies, and she tells her kids that it's okay if it feels weird for them to think about abortion.

She tells them, "I know you remember when I was pregnant and how happy we were, and how we talked about our fetus as our baby. That was our experience, but it isn't everyone's experience, and it's our job to support people to make their own decisions about what is best for their lives."

2. Talk about the reasons people might terminate their pregnancies.

Rachel C. from Denver says, “Basically, I explained it as a woman could be pregnant and for whatever reason need not to be. Maybe she's sick. Maybe she isn't ready to be a mother. Maybe the fetus is very sick. So she can have an abortion.”

Nekole S. from Seattle reminds her girls (8 and 12 years old) that it takes a lot to raise a baby. “They also know my dad didn’t really stick around and they know some of the implications of that.”

Nekole says that personalizing it can help kids understand and relate to reasons a person might have an abortion.

Rachel adds that she reminds her kids that it's important to let pregnant people choose what they need to do to keep mentally, physically, and emotionally healthy — and that not everyone wants to do that, which is why it's so important.

“We talked about how some people don't want [abortion] to be an option,” says Rachel.

3. Talk about why the choice is important.

“My discussions with my kids haven't been because I needed an abortion myself, but because in this age they have been exposed to the idea pretty young,” says Grace A.

When Grace began to consider talking about abortion with her kids, she remembered a story from her childhood, Watership Down, that helped her understand the concept of abortion when she was a child.

“In the book, the rabbits explain re-absorption of litters into the doe's body as a gift from "Lord Frith," fulfillment of a promise made to Elahrairah the rabbit prince that no rabbit would ever be born into conditions that were not good for it (lack of food for the warren, overcrowding, sick mother, hunters close by).”

Grace used that story to explain to her kids how pregnant anythings could choose not to bring little ones into a bad situation and that we should trust that the pregnant person knows best.

4. Nerd out on the science of it.

Nekole loves to talk about the science of reproduction whenever she talks to her girls about pregnancy and birth control. She talks about the cells and how they multiply and divide, the sperm and where it comes from, and the egg and where it comes from.

When she talks about fetal development, that's when she brings up abortion. Nekole had an abortion at five weeks, and she's openly discussed it with her girls, explaining exactly what was taken out of her uterus at that stage of her pregnancy.

“I think what’s helpful is I know how I think/feel about it, so the narrative is always the same whenever we visit it,” Nekole says.

Since her abortion was the result of an unplanned pregnancy, she also uses that story to illustrate the importance of always using protection.

“My story is that I got pregnant having unprotected sex when I was still bleeding, so it's a nice segway into condoms no matter what,” she says.

5. Talk about what happens during an abortion.

When Samantha D.'s daughter was six, Samantha's friend stayed with them at their Pittsburgh home when her friend was having an abortion.

Her daughter asked lots of questions, like why their friend wasn't feeling well. Samantha's friend said that it was okay to discuss what was happening and so she was able to tell her daughter about what happens during an abortion while she observed someone experiencing one.

Sam let her daughter lead with questions, and she answered accordingly. “She asked if there was a baby in her right now, and I told her that the sperm and egg had combined, but it was not growing into a baby anymore because my friend had taken medicine to stop that process,” says Sam.

Sam's daughter seemed to understand, and Sam says she was very considerate of her friend’s comfort. “She even acted as a mini doula by serving things to her, asking her about how she was doing, keeping quiet and generally calm in her presence, and relaxing with her to keep her company as she rested.”

Ultimately, Sarah Tarver-Wahlquist says, talking to kids early and often about abortion is much bigger than a conversation about a medical procedure.

She says it's part of a bigger narrative of talking to them about the importance of autonomy, consent, and choice. And the earlier it's discussed, the healthier kids' attitudes and understanding of abortion will be.

This story originally appeared on Ravishly and is reprinted with permission. More from Ravishly:

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