When most people hear the term “pro-life”, all that they think about is “anti-abortion”. This is understandable, given that out of all of the issues that the pro-life movement encompasses, abortion is the most heavily politicized. Abortion is popular to debate, because it encompasses three things that don’t make for conventionally polite conversation—sex, politics and religion. The little known truth is that pro-life extends to all issues of human dignity. This includes, but isn’t limited to, being anti-euthanasia, anti-capital punishment and pro-refugee.

At it’s core, I don’t think that pro-life means anti-woman, but I can definitely see how people get that idea, given all of the “pro-birthers” that are out there. These are people who are always preaching about loving the babies, but they put the mothers on the back burner. They believe that if a woman is pregnant, she absolutely must keep the baby, but they are less apt to believe that she should receive counseling, financial support, or other resources after the baby is born. Even worse, if the baby is aborted, the “pro-birthers” believe in shaming the woman. How can you call yourself pro-life if you value one life and not the other?

Along the same lines, I believe that pro-lifers need to examine the adoption process and the foster care system. Adoptions are expensive and long processes and the foster care system has been in need of reform for some time. Yes, protecting the unborn is great, but people that are pro-life need to spread their activism to other parts of the issue.

Another issue that I have with the pro-life movement is the gore posters that are used when talking about abortion. I encountered this situation on campus at UCF. Some group, I have no idea who, had huge, graphic images of aborted babies displayed by the Reflection Pond. I was running late for class, but I stopped for a minute to talk to the people there anyway. I told them “I appreciate you being on campus, but I don’t think that what you’re doing here is really effective.” The girl I was speaking with went on to say that there’ve been women that have decided not to get abortions after seeing these images. To her, it was effective because it meant that women were scared out of aborting their child. It’s very much a “save the child by whatever means necessary” mentality. Rather than scare someone into doing what we believe is right, shouldn’t we try to understand and empathize with their situation?

I consider myself pro-life, but it's not always something that I'm proud to admit given all of the issues I've discussed in this article. I don't want people to mistakenly view me as someone who scares women into giving birth to children that they can't support. The pro-life movement needs to update their rhetoric, and review the issues that matter to them.

The unborn need a voice, but so do expectant mothers, the ill, the imprisoned and refugees.