Please welcome my first guest blogger, the lovely, talented and brilliant, @artist_angie! – PB
Most of you know me as @artist_angie on twitter. Make some jokes play some hashtags Angie, but we need to talk and it’s going to require more than my normal 140 characters and goofy approach on twitter. We need to have a serious conversation about Donald Trump and the damage he did to the Pro-Life Movement.
In an interview with Chris Matthews, Mr. Trump said there would have to be “some form of punishment” for women who sought abortions IF abortion was illegal. Ok I get it. You look at the sentence and you say well if it was illegal shouldn’t they pay consequences if they broke the law? Or maybe you say IT WAS CHRIS TINGLE UP MY LEG MATTHEWS!!! He was trying to hurt him, give him a break! My answer to you is no it is not the woman who should pay any consequence and Trump gets no break, because a true pro-lifer could navigate that question easily without damage to our brand and his response showed he had no idea what the heart of being pro-life is. Trump simply used a leftist caricature of what he thinks pro-lifers are and ran with it. The idea we would want to punish an already wounded person is ridiculous.
I’ve been involved in Pro-life causes, clinics, etc. since I was 18 years old (that is a long time, I am old). Our goal was and remains to protect and preserve life – that includes both baby AND mother. We want to help her, not punish her. We understand some of the long lasting and damaging consequences of abortion. Some women seek abortion because they have already been victimized and our goal is to show them some of the harsh consequences of abortion and aid them so they don’t get further victimized by the procedure itself. If you are wondering what the correct answer would be to the Matthews question, here you go:
“As a pro-life conservative my heart is to preserve ALL life. Both that of the child and to nurture the mother, not to punish her. If the procedure was deemed illegal we would seek punishment against the provider performing the act, not the mother.”
We need to be realistic, abortion is never going to be illegal and we should work from that point of view. We work to limit the number of abortions and sway public opinion. We have made great strides in the last 10 -15 years polling shows most people are against partial birth abortion and are ok with some restrictions on standard abortion. This is all good but it still does not mean we will not have to pay many dues and take a huge hit for the damage Mr. Trump did in one small sentence.
I am Pro-Life because I really do believe all life has purpose and meaning. You can’t volunteer in a life clinic and not understand that the mothers are the key to the movement, they are the people making the hard choices. The choice is hard, no matter what they choose. We do not need caricatures or stereotypes thrown on us or the mothers. Each person who walks in a life clinic or an abortion clinic is a scared human being, sometimes as young as 13 or 14 yr. old girls. They have a life and they are just as precious as the baby they carry.
If you understand nothing else from this post, please understand that both mothers and children are important and being pro-life for 99% of us is not just about the baby but truly is about nurturing and preserving LIFE, both mother and child. WE ARE PRO-LIFE not PRO-BABY and we will keep fighting even when the blows are thrown at us from a person who is supposed to be on our side.
Freedom Cocktail 