MEEKS: I am pro life
As I listen to the various voices speaking about the shooting last week in Colorado's Planned Parenthood Clinic, I remember my own journey of thinking through the abortion issue. When I was a young inarticulate college student, I debated the issue of abortion on the forensic team. This subject was hard for me because I had no idea where I really stood on the subject but that is not the case any longer.
My position is that I wish we had created a world where no person would ever see an abortion as a necessity. But since we have not done that and women are going to have abortions whether they are legal or not, I think they should not be done in back alleys and under some of the deplorable circumstances of the past.
But, my commitment to being pro-life happens to extend beyond the womb. I am concerned about the thousands of children in this country and across the world who are dying outside of the womb because of poor nutrition, poor health care and the general lack of interest on the part of folks who are supposed to be managing the social, political and economic affairs of this world.
Along with these children who are dying from malnutrition and disease are the horrifying numbers of folks being killed in wars all over the globe. Many of these wars are far more supported by America than I am comfortable with knowing about. Along with the wars, we are managing to kill and destroy in many other ways the disenfranchised youth of color in America and other parts of the globe by robbing them of hope. These are the young folks that are seen as the expendable ones and are basically forgotten about until they commit a crime or engage in an act of terrorism.
With all of these ways of killing, in America we kill the poor with our mass incarcerations, death penalty and in their everyday lives as they try to navigate a path through a world that does not see them as having any value and hope they will vanish from the neighborhoods that we hold sacrosanct.
We kill the elderly by placing them in isolated living arrangements and in relegating them to a non-useful life in much the same ways we do the poor and anyone else that is not useful to the political, economic and social agendas of our culture.
Yes, I am pro life and it causes me to be concerned about all of these groups that I have mentioned. I don't see one group as being anymore important than any other group. I believe that every life is important and I agree with Attorney Bryan Stevenson who so boldly declares that, "a person is more than the worst thing that he or she has ever done."
I don't believe in expendable people. Every person is important. Each person on this planet deserves to have a chance to live in a world of peace. Humans are rapidly making the world an impossible place to inhabit and when this planet no longer sustains us, we can take responsibility for our poor behavior which has contributed to its destruction. Behavior that has helped to construct the economic, social, political and spiritual challenges that we are facing as a planet at this present moment. It is impossible not to wonder when we will learn our lessons and begin to work to sustain all life on this planet regardless of where we find it.
Our preoccupation with abortion seems to create blindness about other forms of death, but the survival of any of us is connected to the survival of all of us. We need to pay more attention to all life everywhere. Wherever we find life we need to support it.
This column by Catherine Meeks, Ph.D., appears twice monthly. Meeks is also a contributing writer for the Huffington Post. Email her at kayma53@att.net.
This story was originally published December 1, 2015 at 9:47 PM with the headline "MEEKS: I am pro life ."