'Pro-life' means more than 'Pro-birth" - Shannyn Moore at the Anchorage Daily News

[Blue_In_AK]

http://www.adn.com/2012/02/04/2300800/pro-life-means-more-than-pro-birth.html

When I was 33, Mom and Pop Moore were staying with me. Mom was undergoing radiation and chemotherapy for breast cancer. For those of you who have been around a loved one with cancer, I don't have to explain. For those of you who haven't, nothing can prepare you for it.

It is remarkably painful.

It was Monday morning. I felt a lump. I was lying on my back in bed. I still remember the spot on the ceiling I was staring at. I had a 7-year-old daughter. The reality of my mother's pain down the hall filled my eyes with tears.

I called Planned Parenthood. They understood the urgency through my panic and tears. "We'll fit you in tomorrow morning."

On Tuesday. Jo, my new doctor, found two lumps.

She called the best breast cancer surgeon, Dr. Laurie Bleicher, who sent me over for a biopsy. I explained I didn't have insurance. A woman at Planned Parenthood said she'd write a grant.

By Friday, I was in surgery. Saved.

<snip>

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/02/04/2300800/pro-life-means-more-than-pro-birth.html#storylink=cpy

[intaglio]

1. Good find

I am starting to think that the another OP in General Discussion that said Pro-Life for "Pro-Life" campaigners means "Forced Pregnancy"

[baldguy]

2. "Pro-life" isn't pro-life in any way at all.

[cyberpj]

3. To me, it always seemed that "pro-life" should also have meant "anti-war".

But any pro-lifers I ever met were also pretty much gung ho on war.

I know it's been said, just thought it needed repeating here.

[caraher]

5. I remember writing a RW-financed Catholic newspaper

They had uncritically quoted then-candidate George W. Bush saying, "I'm a pro-life kind of guy" and I chided them for letting that pass after setting a modern record for governing over executions (since eclipsed by Rick Perry). They ran my letter, but not without including a rare editorial rebuttal, basically arguing that those aborted are "innocents" while those executed are not (which is quite beside the point if your basis for objecting to both practices is an intrinsic "sanctity of life&quot .

I was gratified to see a later letter from a nun setting them straight...

There really is a truly "pro-life" Catholic tradition, that extends to war/peace issues, social justice, etc. But that view is distinctly a minority view. I think it would be a lot more honest for 95% of "pro-life" people to at least call themselves "anti-abortion" when that's the only facet of the question they are doing anything about.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

7. I am proud to stand with that Catholic minority view, in favor of contraception as well.

[MiniMe]

4. They are "pro-life" until they are born

At that point, they should work as a janitor in the school they will be going to. And they don't bother to figure in the janitor jobs that they will be getting rid of in the process.

[evilhime]

6. Pro life to them

means save the fetuses so you can kill them later. Such hypocrisy . . .