When I’m not doing work to protect unborn babies and moms, I enjoy crafting. I like creativity, making things with my hands and connecting with others. Out of this interest I joined a travelling journal group. These are groups of people who share journals that move from person to person, with each participant adding spreads including writing, art, or reflections before mailing it to the next. The journal becomes a collaborative art piece that’s sent back to its owner at the end.

I started with an “about me” section. Being pro-life – believing every human being, born & unborn deserve basic human rights- is a huge part of who I am. I wanted to express this in my journal, while also respecting that a lot of people just want to do cutesy little crafts. So I made a mix of both in my journal!

Knowing pushback is part of this journey, I sent my journal across the country to strangers to see what they came up with. Some of the girls made really beautiful and creative spreads, others made it very clear that they were not pro-life.

One said that she’s an advocate for healthcare including abortion for any reason, she encouraged me to look to Planned Parenthood for a more accurate understanding of reproductive healthcare, she explained she’s disgusted and that she couldn’t respect me because my career is dedicated to “advocating against healthcare.” She suggested some feminist authors. And finally said I can rip out this page or cover it. 

I won’t be doing that, because I’m not scared of her arguments. I’d rather respond to them.

And she wasn’t the only one who felt like she needed to dedicate her spread to defending abortion.

Another chimed in, she seemed a lot more open-minded. She was honest that she hasn’t journaled about her moral standings before, but that I seemed open to conversation and seeing that another disclosed her position she would too. She expressed that her view is founded in a belief that people have a right to their bodies and that everyone’s definition of life and where it starts is different. She was passionate about helping people outside the womb and expressed a lot of concern for children who are hungry and impoverished. She brought up that abortion has been happening for hundreds of years and had serious concerns about women dying from dangerous illegal abortions. She encouraged me to listen to stories from women who have chosen abortion.

While this may at first appear discouraging, it did what I hoped: it opened a conversation. I realize these girls didn’t have the privilege of growing up in a pro-life state and seeing the wonderful work pro-life organizations are doing. There’s a good chance that their circles and community tell them abortion is just, and people like me want to take away the rights of women.  The abortion industry has a huge advertising budget they put toward promoting this belief. In engaging with me, they have to contend with pro-life people as real human beings, not just a stereotype they see of us in the news. The work of changing hearts and minds isn’t instantaneous, most of the time it involves many people and many conversations.

If our journals were making rounds again, here’s what I’d say to these girls:

First, thank you for being willing to share what you believe with me. I think we do have more in common than it may appear on surface level. I also think it’s really important to help all people, including those outside the womb. I care about children who are living in poverty and who don’t have enough to eat and I think we as a society need to do more to help these people. 

I also think bodily rights are really, really important. For a person to decide what happens to their body is so important for preventing horrific bodily violations like assault and abuse. 

So here’s why I’m still against abortion.

I believe the unborn child is the same type of entity and deserves the same rights as a child outside the womb. Though people may believe different things about when life begins, experts on prenatal development and the scientific community are unanimous on when biological life begins. It’s fertilization. 

“Every human embryologist in the world knows that the life of the new individual begins at fertilization. It’s not a belief. It is scientific fact.” – Ward Kischer, Ph.D., Human Embryologist, University of Arizona

From fertilization the unborn is a distinct organism from their parents with their own set of human DNA that, as undisputed fact, meet the scientific criteria for life.

Learn more about the scientific consensus on when life begins here and human development in the womb here.

I suspect you probably don’t mean the unborn scientifically isn’t a human being, but something more philosophical, like they don’t have the same type of value like you and I do. 

Saying some human beings have more value than others has always ended badly in the past. This logic has been used to enslave and exterminate groups of people. Every time we’ve seen this happen throughout human history, we rightfully view it as an atrocity. 

I think the only explanation that accounts for human equality, no matter age, race, gender, or level of ability, is our shared humanity. All other explanations I’ve been presented with either require us to exclude some people or include animals as having the same rights as humans.

If what I believe about the unborn being equal to you and I is true, then by definition it is opposed to healthcare. It kills a patient instead of healing them.

Planned Parenthood is this nation’s largest abortion provider. They profit millions from abortion and as such, they’re not a good source of unbiased information. Still it may interest you to know I have followed them on social media for over 10 years now, I’ve heard speeches from their CEO, I’ve listened to their team speak in congressional hearings, I’ve read their annual reports, and I’ve spoken with people who have worked there. What I’ve learned is that their non-abortion services are easily replaceable by Federally Qualified Health Centers, and if we gave these centers (who don’t take a position on abortion) like we do Planned Parenthood, our funding could make a much bigger impact on uncontroversial services like cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, pap smears, annual exams, etc… 

Planned Parenthood has consistently shown they are unethical and untrustworthy as an organization, those funds can be better used elsewhere. 

Bodily rights, while I do believe are really important, are not absolute. If women have an absolute right to what happens within their bodies, this would mean we should have no opposition to  pregnant women using substances that we know cause severe birth defects, like drugs, alcohol, accutane, and thalidomide. There can be absolutely no limits on abortion, that a healthy woman should be allowed to intentionally kill a healthy viable baby moments before birth, as long as the baby is still in her body, it means we can have no laws against abortion a child because of their gender. Are you really okay with permitting the consequences of an absolute right to bodily autonomy?

Most human rights violations like slavery, the derogation of women and even genocide have been happening for hundreds of years, just because something has happened for a long time doesn’t mean we should constitute to allow it.

I’m also concerned about women being harmed by illegal abortions, it’s incredibly reckless for pro-abortion groups to send illegal abortion pills through the mail, even encouraging women to lie to doctors about what they took. I think the drug dealers who are putting women at risk with these pills should absolutely be held legally accountable and that is something our organization works to do.

I hope we can continue this discussion and I enjoyed seeing your journals.

-Ashlen