Advocates of cryonics (freezing the dead in the hope of bringing them back to life when a cure has been found for the disease they died of) and anti-abortion advocates have a lot in common, namely the belief that human life can exist without a context. What would happen if a grown person, in some sort of Rip Van Winkle scenario, came back into a world in which they had no living family, no updated education, no relevant skills? How would they survive? How does an unwanted child survive? All too frequently the answer is: not well.
Is an embryo so precious that we can countenance the future of a child left without loving parents? Some states have introduced baby drop boxes, literally, where unwanted babies can be deposited as though they were ballots! If an inclination to love small, helpless things makes some of us cringe a little at the thought of abortion, the thought of baby drop boxes, Amy Coney Barrett’s blithe solution to unwanted pregnancy, should make us totally sick at heart.
“Life” is not an abstraction. “Life” cannot be separated from love. Ideally, “life” is conceived in love and met with love, but the state is helpless to compel that ideal. While neither late term abortion, except in dire circumstances, nor infanticide are acceptable alternatives to baby drop boxes, birth control and early abortion are.
One is, of course, compelled to wonder why right-wing conservatives, who show little concern for small helpless things, as evidenced by their opposition to both conservation and family friendly legislation, are so wedded to “life” in the abstract. An editorial in a May issue of New Jersey’s Star-Ledger suggests the reason: “children of the zygote variety don’t need education, health care, or food.” It goes on to quote a Methodist minister from Alabama, who says, “You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.”
Almost as appalling as baby drop boxes are pictures of young men with signs saying, “love them both.” Sorry, fellas, the love you can give is not the kind that “both” need. The best way you can “love them both” is to get out of the way and let the prospective mom decide whether the prospective child can be properly loved and cared for. If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one, and if you can’t get pregnant, don’t force your supposed regard for “life” on those who can. Every pregnancy brought to term must be a child who is wanted and loved, not a candidate for a drop box.
Kathe Geist lives in Charlemont.