The other day, I saw an excellent little video from one of my favorite pro-life content creators (“secularprolife” on IG: although I’m not “secular” myself, and don’t agree with every word she says, I love how she proves that abortion is wrong not just from a religious POV, but for everyone, even if you don’t believe in God at all). In this video, she pointed out something very helpful to consider, for anyone who wishes to engage in meaningful debate about this topic: namely, pro-life people believe that abortion ends a life, whereas pro-choice people tend to believe that abortion prevents a life from beginning at all.

I’m not here to delve into all of the reasons why it’s idiotic to believe that a baby in utero is not already alive (why would you need to abort it if it wasn’t alive?!). A quick biology lesson, or googling even the most rudimentary, basic info on the science of human reproduction, will fill you in on that, if you’re interested.

No, I am actually here to point out something else that I believe is a fundamental difference between the pro-life and pro-choice philosophies. Possibly an even more fundamental one than the one just named, because there are plenty of pro-choicers who are fully aware that abortion ends a life, but they simply don’t think it matters (or matters enough).

And that is because of this fundamental difference: pro-life folks believe that life is good, and pro-choice folks do not. To be more precise, the pro-life belief is that life is an objectively good and worthwhile thing, always, whereas pro-choice folks believe that life is only good under certain conditions.

A pro-choicer might say that, if a child is going to be born seriously ill or disabled, it is better off not living. Or if a child is going to be born to a very young mom, or a very old mom, or a mom who is poor, or a mom who is herself sick or disabled, then that child is better off not living. Or if the parents aren’t ready to be parents. Or if the child simply isn’t enthusiastically wanted by both parents. They claim that a child is better off being killed than being born into a life of any kind of sadness or hardship.

It is actually really very sad, when you think about it, to believe that life is only good in certain circumstances. Even if you don’t believe in God and His goodness, surely it’s evident merely from observing life, that life is an objective good. Why else would all living things strive to remain alive, to reproduce and create more life? I think it takes some real bizarre mental gymnastics to believe that life is not a good thing. It’s like finding some reason to believe that 1 + 1 does not equal 2.

But, I guess not too many people believe in any objective truth anymore. In a society where all belief systems are supposed to be seen as equally good (except, ironically, the one that teaches that objective good exists), nothing is really true anymore, is it.

I used to be an atheist, and I remember the moment when I began to finally see the flaw in this belief system. I was a junior in college, taking an upper-level philosophy course (because I guess I wanted to get as deeply and hopelessly into debt as I possibly could, lol) called Meta-Ethics. Early in the semester, our professor was asking us to think about what moral values actually are. Do they exist in the world, and if so what actually are they, and how can we identify them? I thought for a while, and took a look at my own idea of moral values: obviously they existed, because some things, like murder, were objectively wrong; but how did I know, really? Because it just felt wrong? I guess I had some vague concept of like an internal sensor that people must be equipped with; but to detect what? And if that were the case, why did people’s moralities differ so drastically? This philosophy, I began to realize, with a slight chill, did not hold water. (A couple years later I began converting to Catholicism.)

In our modern world, everyone has their own truth. Which, btw, brings me to one of my pet peeves: the phrase “my truth.” As in, “speak your truth” or “I’m telling you my truth.” There is no such thing as “your” truth! There is only the truth. What you’re referring to is your experience, your feelings, your side of the story – what you, an imperfect and non-omniscient creature, believe to be true. All of which are valid and important, sure, but they’re not necessarily any kind of truth. Let’s stop saying “my truth” and start saying “my side of the story.” Ugh, every time I hear the phrase “my truth” I throw up a little in my mouth. But anyway, that was a tangent.

People don’t believe in objective truth, nor do they believe in objective good. (Do we believe in objective beauty? I’m not sure if we do or not, that’s a different blog post.) Things are only “good” for a specific individual if that’s what that individual believes is good for them.

Which is a super dangerous way to think about goodness. An underweight anorexic person might believe it is “good” for them to not eat today, or that they need to lose more weight; are we going to honor their beliefs and respect their personal values, or are we going to do what’s actually good for them and encourage them to seek help, because they are simply wrong? An alcoholic really believes it’s for the best if they get drunk (even if they fully acknowledge that it’s damaging their health, to them, the apparent “good” that is pleasure and relief outweighs the health risk); should we tolerate diversity of opinion here? Or would the more loving response be to intervene, to let them know that they are wrong?

And if you admit that objective good exists in these situations, then you must follow that to its logical conclusion: so objective good does exist.

Health, for example, is good. But why?

Because, life is good.

So yeah, subjective morality is a very slippery slope. Pro-choicers do not believe that life is a good thing, and that is deeply sad.

I think you will generally find that people who are pro-choice tend to be less happy than people who are pro-life. And by “happy” I mean not “college educated, wealthy, healthy, successful” but rather “convinced that their life has an actual meaning and value regardless of their circumstances.”

Realizing that most pro-choicers are really sad, helps perhaps to see them in a more compassionate light. For example, some individuals I know who are pro-choice were never taught about the value of their own body or the tragedies of sexual immorality, and had to learn about sex in public school or from TV or their peers – either that, or they had morality violently shoved down their throats at a young age, and their “liberated” philosophy is a retaliation against that violence. Some of them are SA victims who are still healing from trauma. And a lot of it is just exposure to our depraved culture; we’ve “normalized” way too much, and to be “not normal” is a terrible social sin. So people will try to be normal so that they’ll be seen as valid and worthy. It’s all really very sad.

I wouldn’t call myself a “happy person.” I’ve always been gloomy, pessimistic, melancholic, negative, prone to bad moods and discontentment and periods of depression, and, as you know, I have diagnosed AvPD, which is chronic, and hardly a picnic in the park. But, in the grander sense of the word, I am deeply happy, because I know that there is hope of salvation.

At some point, subjective morality becomes impossible to live with, if you really look it in the face. If there is no objective meaning to anything, and life is not objectively good, then, sure, absolutely, abortion is as good as anything else! Why not get an abortion! Why not kill anyone! When you arrive at that point, in all seriousness, suicide is the only option. It’s pretty much necessary. I am not trying to be dramatic, this is a simple fact. What pleasure you can milk out of life is just that, just a blip, just a few moments of sensory pleasure in an expanse of suffering, with an eternity of blackness stretching out on either side of it, if you don’t believe that pleasure means anything more than just pleasure. We are not built to live with the knowledge that life is that meaningless. So, what’s more likely, that this universe is all some kind of random, material, evolutionary accident, or that we are built this way because there actually is a greater meaning we’re supposed to find?

But, ahem, that’s just my take, and I’m not here to try to prove the existence of God, lolol. I got way off track there! My point is, objective good exists, and life, more than anything else on earth, is absolutely objectively good. It’s kind of a no brainer, tbh. But I guess not for everyone, sadly.