Better Off Dead

The best thing I can say about them is that at least pro-abortion advocates are becoming more open about what they believe instead of hiding behind euphemisms like "choice" and "reproductive freedom". The honesty, inhuman as it may be, of those who have recently questioned whether newborns are worthy of protection under the law are simply the natural extension of the worldview that sees all people through the lens of how useful or how inconvenient they are to judge whether they are worthy of life or not.

The latest example, grotesque and disturbing for certain but also enlightening, comes from Shannon Bradley-Colleary, writing for the Huffington Post. This self-described "Author, screenwriter, wife dominatrix, mom butler" offers us a glimpse into a troubling worldview in her essay I'm Pro-Choice Because I Love My Kids. What exactly does loving your kids have to do with abortion? Nothing really other than the false nobility of a worldview that sees killing off children that might cause trouble later in life. The entire essay centers around the search for her stepbrother "Joey" and her reaction to discovering that he grew up to be a criminal and meth user. This makes him someone who would apparently have been better of having been aborted.

Every child deserves to be wanted, safe and loved. I don't deny there are damaged women out there who use abortion as a means of birth control. A former friend had five abortions. Those pregnancies were her cry for help. But I can't help thinking those babies were better off not being in her care.


There are also situations, in my opinion, where abortion is the only humane path to take for both mother and child. I remain firmly in the pro-choice camp not just because a woman should have the "right to choose" (although that is a powerful platform for me), but because every child deserves quality of life and when a child is unwanted there's a much higher risk he'll perpetuate the problem, having unwanted children of his own, if he even survives childhood.

What is lost here is that Joey, at age 12, was a normal kid that she loved to play with and build forts with and have lemonade stands together. When he was age 12 their parents divorced, she went with her parent and he went with his and they never saw one another again. What happened to Joey is unknown but it certainly sounds like he was part of a family of serial marriages and divorces. Ms. Bradley-Colleary describes him as the "oops" child of her first step-dad, a man who she describes as cruel and capricious. Of course Ms. Bradley-Colleary apparently grew up in a less than ideal childhood and turned out OK, as do countless others who get a less than ideal family situation and somehow overcome. What ever happened to Joey? We don't know and neither does she apparently. Is he dead? Or did he turn his life around? I have a friend who was a drug user and dealer in his youth. If he had died then, would people have said he was better off never being born? Today he is a college graduate, a husband and a father and someone who is helping others. I don't think my friend would have been better off being aborted.

What sort of mindset sees snuffing out the life of a child before she is even born to break some sort of cycle of abuse and unwanted pregnancy as justified? The mindset of the Left. A mindset that sees people as having value only so far as they are "productive" and not inconvenient. A child that might, MIGHT, grow up in a less than ideal home could possibly be an inconvenient burden on people like Shannon Bradley-Colleary. They might not get a decent job or they might be a criminal or a drug abuser. They might but based on this pro-abortion mindset that unknowable possibility is sufficient reason to want them dead before they inconvenience the rest of us.

This mindset sees "unwanted" children "better off dead" and punishes children for the potential misbehavior of their parents. What is unsaid but very real is the assumption by usually well-to-do, educated, white liberals that low income people are somehow more likely to abuse their children while college educated, enlightened parents are less likely to abuse them. We see on display the general arrogance and disdain of the Left that sees fit to proclaim who is or is not worthy of life based on the level of inconvenience they will potentially cause the rest of us. Implicit in this is an elitist and racist mindset, ironic because these are precisely the sort of people who allegedly defend the poor, the downtrodden and the minority from the evil Republicans. Does the "quality of life" she describes come only from the "wanted" children of affluent parents or at least parents who desire them? Where does she get the authority to pass judgment on who does or does not deserve life, or when it is or is not "humane" to carve up a child before vacuuming him out of his mothers womb?

The implication of her essay was that her step-brother, a child she spent many wonderful years with, would have been better off had he been aborted. Of course that misses the point that for those children who were aborted we will never know if they will indeed have been happy and successful in life, as if that is the basis on whether or not a child should live or die. A child who is killed in the womb never gets the chance to be happy or sad, to succeed or fail, to live a long life or die young. Those uncertainties are part of what makes the human experience and they are denied to millions of children in the name of the god "choice".

I guess if you love your kids, you are "pro-choice" in the hopes that your children will not have to deal with hooligans and drug abusers who by rights should have been aborted rather than being allowed to live. If that is what it means to love your kids, I guess I don't love mine. I would prefer to teach my children that every human life, made in the image of God, is valuable, that no one is beyond redemption and that God never makes mistakes. Ms. Bradley-Colleary's step-brother Joey was not a mistake, he was a little kid who had an allegedly abusive father and an unstable home life. As a child he didn't commit any crimes but he should have been punished for the mistakes of the adults who failed to care for him?

Never forget the worldview that is behind the "pro-choice" movement. It is the same worldview that fueled Baal worship where children were sacrificed in fire to appease these pagan idols. The bloody altars and sacrificial flames have been replaced by clean clinics with magazines in the waiting room but what is going on behind those doors has its origins thousands of years ago. We are a people called to love our enemies and pray for them, even people with a perverse unregenerate worldview like Ms. Bradley-Colleary. It can be hard sometimes but we must because we once were like them. Take time today to pray for Shannon Bradley-Colleary, for her step-brother Joey, for those children who are abused and neglected, for women who are terrified and facing an unplanned pregnancy, for those who work in Planned Parenthood clinics making a living from murder. Pray that God would work in their hearts as He worked in mine and in yours. If He can save us, He can save anyone.