Pro Life Rant

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Yesterday at dawn while I was riding my bike and listening to Meatloaf on my headphones, a song came on I hadn't heard before it was called 'Is Nothing Sacred?'. Another pretty cool song by Mr Loaf.

So as I'm riding and bopping along past the Hospital in the cool morning air, thinking 'Oh what a grand life it is', I see a couple of people standing still on the side of the track ahead of me. Just standing there looking straight ahead. As I got closer I saw a box sitting in front of them and thought for a moment it might be a vigil for a road death or something sad like that. They looked so sad I thought it must have been someone they loved. I slowed down and looked at the poster they had on the box as I rolled by... The sign had an image of a human foetus with some words plastered across the image it said something like 'The beginning of life is sacred' or something very similar.

I kept rolling slowly letting the scene sink in. While the image was still in sight Meatloaf gave the chorus another blast 'Is Nothing Sacred anymore?'. Holy shit these crazy coincidences just hammer me sometimes... So it was with the sweet voice of Meatloaf singing a beautiful melody in the background that I considered the scene I had just passed.

I wondered about the sanctity and the very precarious nature of life, all life. The very existence of life itself in this infinite universe of seeming lifelessness. Yes! Life is sacred! The very existence of life at all is a miracle, so I reckon it can be considered sacred. If all life is sacred, so too is the unborn embryo or early stage foetus of an unborn human. I agree. But, on this earth the struggle for life and death is a daily battle. Life is sacred but it is also in a constant state of stress competing for the rare chance of existence. 

Human life, which is generally what concerns us the most, is valued not simply by it's existence but by the quality of it's existence. We apply certain criteria to determine quality, one key factor is cognition and awareness, another is the ability to experience and there are many others. You can test the quality of each to determine which takes priority, because sometimes, the life of one organism may be determined by the imperative of another to survive.

If life is a sacred thing, does that automatically mean that abortion is absolutely morally wrong? What about the impact on the mother? Etc... etc... Its just too big a topic for me here now. And who am I, an man to say what is right or wrong for a woman to choose. 

If it is what is it wrong in comparison to? Surely there are circumstances in life that would deem the termination of an unaware foetus favourable to the certainty brutality, pain and suffering if the child were born?

I continued to mull it over as I rode on. In the bushes not far from the dour couple I saw a pile of old clothes and blankets with a sleeping body tangled in amongst them. The dishevelled pile was surrounded by bottles and cans. “Is that life sacred?” I wondered. Surely that person was an embryo, then a foetus and eventually a baby born into the world, a miracle... sacred. What trauma lead that person to be sleeping drunk in the bushes like that? Who cared for and nurtured that sacred life when it was small? Who cares for them now?

The children born into abusive homes are their lives sacred? I thought again about the couple standing vigil for the sacred foetuses, I wanted to ask them will you provide care and love and nurturing to the unwanted birthed? Will you take care of the mothers who have nowhere to go and no help raising their sacred children? Will you provide them with shelter and counselling for the trauma they have suffered? Will you help them to honour the miracle of their precious existence? Would you help the drunk out of the gutter or rescue the girl from sex slavery, or stand between the violent drunken husband and the mother of his sacred 7 month old foetus?

Or will you stand there in judgement and pile shame on the heads of frightened brave women who pray for the sanctity of life and fret that they and their children will never come to know of it? Instead make decisions that prevent the desecration of the sanctity of the human spirit.

Meatloaf wasn't singing about the sacredness of the first sparks of human life, he was singing about marriage. I suppose that could trigger a whole other debate about the sacred bond of marriage... which I am happy to also acknowledge as a spiritual and sacred thing, until it ceases to be that, at which time the spiritual thing must surely be to recognize the sacredness of the human spirit and to protect that precious gem from elements of life that would destroy it, including even marriage... Damn Life is just so complicated Innit?