Kristine Kruszelnicki+Posted by on Oct 31, 2013 in Featured posts, Poverty & Violence |

“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”

—Mahatma Gandhi

A death in my family early this month played a roll in the rather lengthy pause between blog posts. Death has a funny way of making one slow down and really take stock of one’s life and the life of others. Especially when that death involves violence of any kind.

Non-violence and pacifism don’t often seem to go hand-in-hand with pro-life ideology. As it happens, most pro-lifers identify with Republican and conservative values, and that, more often than not, means a support for war efforts as a means to peace. Add the the rare yet unfortunately loud stereotype of attacks on abortion clinics to the mix, and public image of pro-lifers is far from gracious. “Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.. Pro-life… These people aren’t pro-life, they’re killing doctors!” intoned the late comedian George Carlin in a comedy piece that seemed at times far more commentary than comedy.

Of course, pro-life conservatives aren’t alone in holding values that appear to clash. Leftist values that typically include non-violence and support for the weak, seem best suited to pro-life ideology. After all, what is more violent than tearing a young developing human entity limb from limb? How does one oppose war and the death penalty on the grounds of protecting the innocent, while bringing to death a developing being in the earliest stages of human development, for the simple crime of being an imposition, too small and too dependent to fend for himself/herself?

During the week of September 21st to October 2nd, I had the opportunity to take part in the 2013 Ottawa Peace Festival – a week long series of lectures and workshops on the theme of non-violence. Veterans, global justice workers, professors, and several members of both the parliament and senate, spoke on non-violent alternatives to war, the active campaign for a Canadian Department of Peace, and the politics of Gandhi, to name a few. A tribute ceremony to Martin Luther King Jr and Gandhi closed out the week on October 2nd – which I learned is both Gandhi’s birthday and the United Nation’s International Day of Non-violence.

“Poverty is the worst form of violence” said Gandhi. And when one considers just how many acts of violence – abortion included – are committed on the grounds of financial and social lack, it’s easy to see that the father of non-violence may have been right. It is my sincere belief that pro-lifers must become active in the ongoing discussions concerning social and welfare reform. While the fact that it’s wrong to kill a human being to ease financial burdens gives us the moral high ground, we can’t simply plant our flag and refuse to consider other life issues like war and poverty that play their role in abortion (see “consistent life ethic”.) Pro-lifers and conservatives can’t afford to take the position George Carlin simplified as: “Preborn, you’re fine. Preschool, you’re F***ed!“. We must all take greater interest in the efforts to implement such essentials as national daycare and national healthcare where they are lacking. So long as we’re not willing to at least engage in discussion on how to implement solutions, we’ll be shouting upwind to a people who can’t hear us.

By the same token, my leftist pro-choice friends also need to sit up and rethink their ideals. How can we esteem and elevate women, while leaving them with so violent a solution to the problems of social inequality? How can we claim as Feminists and Humanists to believe in a woman’s equality, while leaving her to choose between her career or her natural childbearing potential – a thing unique to her as a woman? It’s been a man’s world for too long, and forcing a woman to conform her body to look, act, and function like a man’s body (remaining non-pregnant) in order that she may retain the same value and potential as he, is a violence to the very nature of what it means to be a woman.

As another great leader for non-violence, Martin Luther King Jr., said: “Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” The violence of abortion, though it “appears to do good” in eliminating the unplanned child, has a permanent and deadly price-tag. Abortion is only a temporary solution to the problems of poverty and social inequity it seeks to address, and like the violences of war and poverty, it is not the epitome of any utopia. It is my sincerest hope that as humanity continues to evolve and to exchange our “isms” for inclusiveness and our discrimination for dignity, that we will learn to embrace the conflict of unplanned motherhood with love and non-violent solutions – to the betterment of all humanity.

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