I am saddened to see so many of my pro-life colleagues dismiss and vilify Marie Stopes. There is much good in that which she, and even the organisation that bears her name, is associated with. Some of the excellent pioneering work that she did in changing the lives of women and reducing the size of the poorer members of the community's families is a credit to her.
She took on the ruling classes and handed some control over the size of their families to women. This in turn reduced the number of women who died in childbirth and as a result of having had 'too many children' or being unable to sustain and feed such large families. It changed society for good and gave voice to women's issues and, despite opposition, continued to make a difference.
Controversially she also supported Hitler, wanted to sterilise those who were (in her opinion) unfit to be mothers and (if I recall correctly) disinherited her son for marrying a woman who had eyesight problems (after all, she didn't want her grandkids to wear glasses now, did she?). All in all, a flash of genius, a hint of courage and bucket full on flaws! We should celebrate her strengths, laugh at her weaknesses and flaws and prove the error of her logic and attitudes by factual and honest dialogue and example. There is surely no defence against this.
What is not so much a credit to her is the procurement of abortions for 'unwanted or unsafe' pregnancies and the actions that leave the organisation that bears her name up there with Brook and the BPAS.
We need to be active against the abortion industry and the cheapness that life now takes on because of their acts. After all, this is not, as I understand it, about care and concern but is (unless I have been misled) a big money earning industry.
We need to deal in facts and offer alternatives (and show people who have taken an alternative path and succeeded) offering support to single-parent families and young women who find themselves in the place where choices have to be made. After all, how can we claim to be pro-life and then vilify single-parents when they must surely be people who have chosen not to abort?
If we are pro-life then logically we must also be pro-single parent families.
Now, as for sex education, that's another issues . . . .
2 comments:
Vic,
I must admit when I read the statistics in an article yesterday of how many abortions were carried out in 2008, I felt physically sick.
I agree with your commentary about being pro-life, but also being proactive in providing alternatives to the choice of abortion.
Emotive language and abuse do not help the pro-life cause, what is needed is a vision of the alternatives, which work and in reality the message that abortion, no matter how easy it seems causes substantial damage to those who undergo the procedure.
The Christian message is vitally important, but it needs to be delivered in the context that makes sense to many who perhaps have never heard or wanted anything to do with Jesus Christ, the Church or any formal religion.
I pray that the tide will be reversed, but in an increasingly secular, selfish, individualist society, I am not optimistic that it will be in the short term.
But hope is the foundation to much of what I believe and hope is what I will continue to do.
Another point of agreement, Vic. Being pro-life and not pro-single parent to me smacks of Jesus' criticism of some of his Pharisee contemporaries who laid burdens on people and then refused to lift a finger to help. It is an attitude that wants to see the world made in "my" image rather than as the imperfect, fallen thing it is with imperfect, fallen people (like me). It has always seemed to me that Marie Stopes and others like her were reacting to an oppressive, judgemental moralism that was rampant in the society of her day, and sadly also infected much of the Church.
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