What Pro-Life Means to Me

What if being pro-life did not mean telling a woman what she must do, but instead meant creating a world in which fewer women felt that abortion was their only choice?

I consider myself pro-life, but I do not believe being pro-life requires me to hate, shame, or control women. I believe abortion should remain available in exceptional circumstances such as rape and incest, but I also believe our ultimate objective should be a society with fewer abortions—not more. Moreover, I want to say that I am not a moral relativist. My ideas for resolving the moral and ethical issues that plague our world are designed to work in a pluralistic world shared by atheists, theists, and people from many different cultures and moral traditions. They are grounded not in a particular religious doctrine but in principles of human dignity, responsibility, and the value of life that can be defended and discussed across those differences. In keeping with my love of Aristotle, virtue is not produced merely by prohibiting bad actions. It is cultivated by developing habits of responsibility, courage, generosity, fidelity, and practical wisdom. My position on abortion is shaped not only by Aristotelian philosophy, but by a deeply personal encounter during a college debate, when a young woman on the other side of the argument suddenly broke down and revealed circumstances that transformed an abstract classroom discussion into something painfully real. I responded not by telling her what she should do, but by sharing a story from my own family—one that began with a woman facing circumstances remarkably similar to hers: my sister. I never expected that conversation to follow me beyond that classroom, nor could I have imagined that, years later, I would hear from her again. What happened then profoundly changed the way I think about the abortion debate. I remain pro-life, but I have come to believe that the most meaningful measure of a pro-life society is not simply how many abortions it prevents by law, but how many women it helps choose life freely—because they know they are not alone.

The classroom debate I mentioned earlier took place at Columbia University in 2013, as part of an ethics class. Students were told that they should be prepared to make a defense on either side of the abortion issue, regardless of their personal beliefs. When I was randomly assigned the pro-life side, I was pleased because it would enable me to reveal my nuanced pro-life philosophy, which, instead of making an argument primarily about prohibiting abortion, asks what men, families, communities, and government can do to make choosing life more realistic, but ultimately leaves the difficult decision in the hands of the woman. My opponent was a young woman in her early 20s, and from what I remember, she came from a private school education at one of the best high schools in New York City. I admit I felt a bit intimidated by her, as I did with many of my Columbia classmates who were far more educated than I. Armed with only my public school education and a lifetime of real-world experience, I hoped to bring something often missing from the lofty ivory-tower debates I had grown accustomed to: humanity. The linchpin of her stance was initially the “no man has the right to tell a woman what to do with her body” quote, which is a logically weak argument considering 34% of women favored abortion being illegal in all or most cases. While progressives love to take refuge in this quote, the slogan is rhetorically powerful but philosophically incomplete. It converts the difficult question about the moral status and rights of the fetus into a question about who is entitled to speak. The existence of millions of women who believe abortion is unacceptable under any circumstances exposes the weakness of treating the debate as simply “men controlling women’s bodies.”

On the other hand, the pro-life position begins with a simple moral premise. If the fetus is a human being possessing an inherent right to life, then the right to bodily autonomy cannot be treated as absolute when exercising that autonomy directly results in the death of another human being. In other words, the question is not whether a woman has a right to control her own body—she does—but whether that right includes the right to intentionally end the life of another human being who is dependent upon her body. You can reject that premise, of course, but you have to address the premise rather than dismissing the person making the argument based on his sex. When my opponent, who was first to present, realized she needed to do better than depending on slogans, she used some of the Columbia education she was paying so much money for to offer a serious challenge to the pro -life faction in her view that even if the fetus has moral value or a right to life, that does not automatically establish that the government may force a woman to continue her pregnancy.

As she made her argument, I noticed she grew more agitated and troubled. I had barely said a word other than my introduction when she stopped speaking and started to cry. She ran out of the classroom, and I followed behind. I have always been very careful with the words I choose when getting into a philosophical debate with friends, family, professors, or classmates. I carefully reflected on my words and found nothing offensive.

Nevertheless, I offered my sincere apologies to her if anything I might have said led to her emotional breakdown. What she soon revealed was something I never imagined; the young woman who stood before me was three months pregnant, and the father of her child had abandoned her. My professor, who was young enough to be my son, asked if everything was under control. I said yes and asked if we could both be excused from class for the day, and he agreed. Once my classmate had regained her composure, I told her that labels like pro-life and pro-choice can be deceiving, and that she might be surprised to learn she and I had a lot in common. I laid out my comprehensive pro-life plan. I told her if we genuinely want a world with fewer abortions, we need to address the human circumstances that lead women to consider them. Men must take greater responsibility for the children they help create, recognizing that sex carries consequences and that fatherhood is a moral responsibility, not something that can be abandoned when an unexpected pregnancy occurs. Families and communities must also be willing to step forward when a woman finds herself pregnant and frightened. No young woman should feel that her only choices are abortion or raising a child completely alone. Churches, charities, community organizations, and individuals can provide financial assistance, childcare, housing, counseling, education, job training, and, perhaps most importantly, the simple assurance that someone will stand beside her. Conservatives who advocate restrictions on abortion should be especially willing to support policies that make choosing motherhood more realistic for women facing difficult circumstances. If we ask women to choose life, we should be prepared to help them build a life in which that choice is sustainable.

We should also make adoption less expensive, less bureaucratic, and more accessible while maintaining the safeguards necessary to protect children. Government has a legitimate role in creating a safety net for mothers and children, but government alone cannot solve what is fundamentally a problem of human responsibility and virtue. We need a culture that teaches young men responsibility, couples that sexual intimacy can create a human life, families that they have obligations beyond themselves, and communities that a woman in crisis should not be abandoned. The goal of a genuinely pro-life society, therefore, should not simply be to pass laws preventing abortions; it should be to create the conditions in which fewer women feel compelled to seek them. A successful pro-life movement should ultimately be measured not only by the abortions it prevents, but by the women and children it helps—and by how often we can make choosing life an act of hope rather than an act of desperation. Despite my well-conceived ideas, which my classmate agreed with, none of them helped this young woman in the position she found herself in. I realized that if this encounter were to be transformative for both of us, I had to make it personal. I told her that I wasn’t standing before her as a 51-year-old Columbia student by accident, but because I put my worldview into practice. I told her that my sister became pregnant in 1993 and was in the same position as she was. The father of her child abandoned her and was unsure what came next. The major difference between my classmate and my sister was that my sister was completely unable to raise a child, for reasons I would rather not discuss publicly. All options were on the table, but the path she chose aligned with everything I said earlier. My mother, father, and I agreed that if she brought her child into the world, we would dedicate our lives to raising her. While doing so, if my sister could exorcise her demons, she could resume her duties as a mom. Until then, we promised that we would fulfill our end of the bargain.

I told her that my niece Alexandra was, for all intents and purposes, my daughter. Being a parent, no matter how it happens, is intrinsically worthwhile, and she should consider it. The most important thing I said to her was that whatever she decided, I was rooting for her, and I would be there for her in any capacity. I gave her my cell phone number, and as we embraced, we cried; it was a poignant moment I will never forget. Seven years elapsed, and I wondered what became of her. One evening, my cellphone rang with a name that looked familiar, but I did not recognize it. I let it go to voicemail and decided to pull over when I saw the caller had left a voicemail. It turns out the caller was my old Columbia classmate. She left me a message saying she had decided to have her child, Robert, who was the center of her universe. Like my family, extended family, and network of friends, hers helped in various ways to make it all possible. After a short break from school, she decided to return, this time to study nursing rather than political science. When I heard the message, I was overwhelmed with emotion and felt great pride, knowing that my interaction with this young woman profoundly influenced the course of her life.

That experience changed more than the way I think about abortion. It changed the way I think about disagreement itself. We live in a time when it is increasingly easy to see one another not as individuals, but as representatives of a race, a gender, a political party, a religion, or an ideology. Once we reduce people to those categories, conversation becomes a contest between opposing tribes rather than an opportunity to understand another human being.

My encounter with my classmate reminded me that behind every position is a person with a story, fears, hopes, responsibilities, and experiences that we may know nothing about. She and I entered that classroom as opponents, but we left having discovered that we could listen to one another and find common ground. Neither of us had to surrender our convictions to do so. We had to recognize each other’s humanity.

Perhaps that is what we have lost in our public discourse: the willingness to disagree without dehumanizing, to challenge an argument without attacking the person making it, and to listen long enough to discover that someone who sees the world differently may still share many of our deepest values. If we want to heal some of the divisions that increasingly separate us, we need to look beyond race, gender, political affiliation, and ideological labels and rediscover the person standing in front of us.

The answer is not to stop disagreeing. A free society depends upon disagreement. The answer is that we must learn how to disagree again—with civility, humility, intellectual honesty, and even compassion. The most important conversations are often the ones in which we discover that the person on the other side of an argument is not our enemy. Still, another human being trying, just as we are, to make sense of a complicated world. My conversation with that young woman began as a debate about abortion. In the end, it became a lesson about something much larger: sometimes the most powerful argument we can make is to listen, to understand, and to remind one another that we are human beings before we are anything else.