Lisa Miller's recent column in Newsweek highlights an unusual twist to the 35+ year long debate on Roe v Wade: atheists who are pro-life.
It's an interesting read for me, since my time-in-service on the pro-life issue has traditionally been couched within the faith-based argument.
So today I read this piece and it caused me to pause and more deeply reflect on the issue of life from a position completley removed from my theology.
In one section she writes:
"(E)mbedded in the (internet) comment boards was a surprising point of view: a tiny fraction of readers objected to the relentless framing of the pro-life arguments in religious terms. The case against abortion could be made without God, they said. Atheists could be pro-life."
All life has intrinsic value. Last week's Mumbai atrocities underscore how utterly terrible it must have been for those foreigners whose Passports were collected and then death sentences issued, solely on "whose" they were: American, Israeli, other. No other reason.
Yet evey one of their lives was valuable...despite whether they were unwanted or not desired by those who held their futures in check.
As a pro-life leader over these many years, that's how I personally experience (within myself) the deaths of almost 60 million valuable human beings in the US since 1973....like a pro-life atheist? No, like a stuggling person who knows in his "knower" that ending the life of even one person in the womb (or in a shooting rampage in a mall or in a drunk-drivers accident or through cold blooded murder in a Mumbai hotel room) is terribly sad, whether I am an atheist or otherwise. The loss of innocent young life has always caused me to speak up. I simply have experienced the deaths of so many people deeply to the core of who I am...and the weight of that pain is tremendous.
So do some vocal atheists, apparently....
What do you think? Why do you think that?
Den
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