Being human is being able to choose. Yes, I am pro-choice, but on one condition – I want to be free to make the ultimate right choice that makes me truly human. Which means: choosing between two options: ‘You die so I may live’ or ‘I die so you may live’.
Some choose self-preservation or self-promotion at the expense of others. Others choose promoting and preserving others at the expense of self-sacrifice. The first leads to destructive, self-centred choices. The second leads us to joyful, meaningful and creative choices. The first seems easier but dehumanises us. The second is costlier but reveals our humanity in its full beauty.
There is no good or bad, superior or inferior morality. There is only one, powerful, life-giving morality that makes life meaningful and therefore human. Give life and you will live. Destroy life and you will die. We have ample evidence of this truth in ecology, our social and political structures, market economy as well as health and human reproduction.
It is meaningless to say all choices are equal. To be fully human means choosing between the good and bad, or between the good and the better. The rest is an illusion. Choosing death for its own sake is always a bad choice. Choosing the death of others is even worse. “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.” (Deut. 30:15,19).
Our self-preservation instinct tells us it is better that others die so we may live. So we disqualify cumbersome others by redefining the terms. The most abused term is ‘human’. All you have to do is change the label and the unwanted creature becomes ‘non-human’ so that you can freely proceed to exploit or eliminate it for your own convenience.
It is what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, Stalinist Russia to millions of its citizens, Western slave traders to African negros, Hutus to Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide, what white racists do to blacks and what abortionists do to unborn children.
For pro-abortion campaigners, embryos, foetuses, pre-term or full-term babies are no longer ‘unborn infants’ but clumps of unwanted, inconvenient cells. Not human beings-in-the-making. As if only a born infant can be a human being-in-the-making.
When we dehumanise others, we dehumanise ourselves. From givers of life, mothers become eliminators of life. From being a gift and a joyful privilege, giving life becomes a tragedy, a burden or problem. Pregnancy is no longer begetting new life, but just a personal health issue. The mother becomes the victim and the embryo the aggressor. Just change the labels and human beings are disposed of at will!
Yes, I am pro-choice. My choice is to reject the gymnastics we resort to to avoid the crucifying pain of a love that makes us human. My choice is life, love, equality and dignity for all humans, born or unborn, whatever gender, sex, race, status or age. My choice is for a God who is fully human because He chose to give up His life so we may have life.
Fr Paul Chetcuti, member of the Society of Jesus