This type of pro-abortion thinking is pretty typical so I’m choosing to highlight this letter to our site through a post.

“Joe Clark” (likely not the former PM) wrote in response to If Morgentaler isn’t sure, why are you?

I’d like to know what you’ve done to actually help women? Have you adopted unwanted babies? Have you worked with women to mentor them, help them get an education, look after their children? It seems like you folks only care about the unborn until it’s born and then you wash your hands. Once that child gets into crime because of being disadvantaged, you’ll want to abolish the laws dealing with youth and lock away the key! Aren’t there real issues to be devoting such time to, such as taking care of the children who are already here and are in such desperate need of help, or in developing countries.

There’s an intellectual dishonesty here. There’s a battle of ideas that goes on behind the act of abortion and our response to life or death. My question for the public, the great beyond, is this: Are you prepared to stand up against killing, or not?

For many, all they’ll be able to do is stand in favour of what is right, to try and create a climate where we don’t kill to solve our problems. Maybe this is all they can do because they have their own family to support and are struggling to do that. Maybe this is all they can do because they are lazy and choose not to take further action. Maybe this is all they can do because they are already involved in a different sort of charity–I know plenty of pro-lifers working to help the homeless, for example. That they make a statement and do nothing more does not make them into hypocrits. The statement itself, for many, will mean they lose quite a lot: social status or job openings, to name but two.

This kind of thinking is as if to say I couldn’t make a statement against genocide in Darfur unless I packed my bags and moved there. It’s not much of an argument, and yet one of the most frequent pro-abortion things to say.

Highlighting my supposed hypocrisy on whether or not I actually help women and children still leaves way too many questions, anyway. What if killing isn’t the best response, even if people around us are indeed suffering?

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Brigitte adds: I take the point that some women may need help after deciding not to abort their baby. But as they say where I come from: le mieux est l’ennemi du bien. The best is the enemy of the good; if we wait until we can fix every single aspect of a problem satisfactorily before we start trying to improve things, we’ll never get anything done. So while I, for one, wish there were more and better resources for young and inexperienced mothers (whether or not they had considered abortion), I won’t wait to denounce the evil that is abortion on demand until all those resources are in place. If some people want to call me names because of that, well, so be it.

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Tanya has to jump on this point: “Have you adopted unwanted babies?” 

May I point out the imperfect system we have in place in this country, whereby though there are never unwanted babies, there are a tremendous number of children in foster care. The waiting list to adopt a baby is years long. Friends of mine, however, once certified as a foster family, had a newborn baby in their care almost instantly. They’d adopt the child if they could, but she isn’t actually up for adoption. And, to stick a fork in it, they are pro-life.