Normally I agree with Mother Teresa but.....

Back in the late 1970s I did an open-line radio programme in Sudbury, Ontario. It was aimed at high school- and university/college-aged people, although their parents all listened as well. One evening I asked callers to phone in to tell me the names of their heroes. By the end of the evening, much to my surprise, God had come first--beating out Starsky & Hutch by one vote (these were the original television characters, of course).

One of my own big heroes is Mother Teresa. Despite her vocation, the habit she wore and so on, I seldom thought of her as a Catholic nun. She was just this incredibly strong, compassionate, able woman who did more good in her life than a thousand people. I found her work and her words a continual inspiration and motivation.

But on a recent occasion, I disagreed with her--and lightening did not strike like I feared it might! Here's how it happened.

I am attending a pro-life conference in New Brunswick as I write this. As is common at events run by religious people, a gentleman was asked to begin the day with prayer. He invoked God's blessing on the proceedings, as would be expected, and further asked that God would put an end to abortions, adding that these evil surgeries were done strictly for the convenience of the women in question.

I sat up straight when he used the term 'convenience'. It's a commonly held belief in some pro-life circles that inconvenience represents the most common reason for abortions. I believe that even Mother Teresa held this view, on the basis of her quote:

It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you live as you may wish.

I don't disagree with the quote in the narrow sense that inconvenience represents one of the more revolting reasons to assert one's rights or wishes over another, particularly by putting the other to death. But in a broader sense, I don't think that it applies to a large number of women who either submit to an abortion with the greatest possible misgivings or have the procedure thrust upon them through heavy coercion. I simply know too many women who have had abortions to believe otherwise.

Why do women abort? Most often it is to please or placate, or to ward off the threats of, someone else. Have this baby and...

1. I'll leave you. Recently a 17-year old man in Winnipeg killed his pregnant girlfriend when she refused to have an abortion.
2. You won't be able to finish school.
3. You will humiliate the family.
4. You will have no future.

Couple this with widespread ignorance (it's just a bunch of cells; there's no one to help you), a pro-choice movement that suppresses relevant information (e.g., the abortion/breast cancer link), and a lack of support for women who do keep their babies, and the reasons multiply further.

Then throw in two other problems from unexpected sources:

1. Churches that to a large extent don't see it as their problem. I had evangelical ministers in my home town, one male and one female, tell me that the pro-life issue was simply not on the church agenda. It was a special interest, like "Love Abbotsford" or "Pray through Ramadan."
2. Pro-lifers who exude more hatred and judgmentalism than they do love and compassion. "Look at these pictures of aborted babies. See what you've done, you murderer!", or, "All you care about is your convenience!"

I think that we have to get past the "them versus us" mentality that those who identify themselves as pro-life are in a virtuous camp with "God on our side", and that women of any other persuasion are the enemy. I prefer to see them as sheep without a shepherd. The pro-choice movement, addicted to ideology, immersed in groupthink, and unwilling to let women come to a genuinely informed decision by suppressing relevant information--that's the enemy.

But the typical woman is their victim, not their comrade in arms. What women need is love, compassion, support, hope and dignity. We're seen as ladling out rejection. We need to start with their need, not our moral outrage.