I am Pro Life, though my questions continue..

I am 22, single, not married. Hence, this article is completely written out of the little I have seen, read and filled with the whole lack of inexperience and knowledge that you may have. I am not a feminist even if you think so because I dream of someday where my man will actually take care of me and be the head of my family. I am a Catholic Christian, ardently in love with my faith and trying to live up to what it is to be actually a Catholic. (The last part is tough for me – the living part.) As much as I love my church, I question many of its teaching, the basis of my beliefs taught to me. After all ‘Thomas’ is my surname.

 

Church is Pro life. I wasnot.

 

I am against abortion. Always was.

 

Church is against contraceptives. I was not.

 

I have such amazing friends and elders in life, together with whom we have had many never ending fruitful debates, discussions, read books together, and the whole lot reading on the internet on contraception.

 

When I marry, my man and I become one flesh. Not just when having sex but for the rest of our lives. Only natural marital relations (natural genital-to-genital intercourse) open to life has all three meanings: marital, unitive, and procreative. Only when these three qualities are retained when a couple makes love, does the couple actually attain true and selfless love, that they promised each other at the altar. Can’t wait to love.

 

Now, I am convinced. I am Pro life.

 

What frustrates me though is some pro life promotion which just doesn’t focus on the whole point but just on having kids. Natural Family Planning (NFP) and the abstaining period during the woman’s most fertile period is not a punishment phase but a time when the couple are to grow to love each other more, to find ways to show love to each other in ways other than sex. It’s a time to get intimate in the most creative ways.

And the posters, “What if Mr.X’s (who was the nth child in the family and who became a world leader) mom decided not to have him?” You know what? I think God would have made another child. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world. And just in case you forgot the successful first born, Oprah Winfrey, Amitabh Bhachchan and guess what even Pope Francis is a first born who are transforming the world.

The Pope warned that there are two dangers always present when speaking about this topic (‘Woman’), calling them “two extreme opposites that destroy woman and her vocation.”

“The first is to reduce maternity to a social role, to a task, although noble, but which in fact sets the woman aside with her potential and does not value her fully in the building of community. This is both in the civil sphere and in the ecclesiastical sphere,” explained the Holy Father, Pope Francis.

 

Maternity, although noble, takes toll on the woman’s life, her way of being, her relationships, and her priorities. It’s just not a biological matter. It sometimes seems to me among the pro life couples that it’s an unsaid rule that the wife has to henceforth stop her ministry outside (if she was involved), and the wife starts ministering to her kids (again a noble cause).

 

Should not in ministering to the kids both the parents involve? What happened to her dreams? What happened to her plans for her ministry? What happened to her career goals? Is it not unfair?

 

 

My point being, if pro life is what you are, then, for life you have to live it, in all the sacrifices and chores your better half usually takes it on them alone.