Mustard Tree

I've decided that choosing life has to become a first priority in my decision making from now on. Which of the many options that face me every day is the most life-orientated one? Many mundane decisions don't require any such loftiness, though I suppose with a certain mindset one can frame the small questions of life in this way too.

Shall I have another cup of coffee? Or a second helping of Mississippi mud pie? Or extend my daily run from 3 miles to 4? The answer isn't binary either, because the life-choosing option could be either yes or no, depending on who you are, your circumstances, your history, your health. Seconds of coffee and Mississippi mud pie might be the life-enhancing choice for someone recovering from anorexia, but the life-denying choice for a morbidly obese cardiac patient.

What about relationships?  The life-affirming choice might be to stay and work it out, or it might be to leave when there's no hope of salvaging things. What about extreme poverty? Should developing countries nationalize their oil industries to retain their profits to feed their own people, or let the profits go abroad to feed others?  Which is the life-choosing option?

What about abortion? More than 90% of all terminations are of healthy babies who would otherwise have been born to healthy women. On the face of it, the life-choosing option is surely to let the children be born, isn't it? I think so. But would we force this on the poorest and most exploited women, the least able to defend themselves and their families? Or is there another way, a way to make life truly sacred by backing up our moral judgements with our money, and making it possible for such people to live in dignity and comfort while they bring up their kids?

Is war ever a life-choosing option? It's hard to see how it could be, unless you move your debate to generalities, to the conceptual level and talk about "freedom" and "democracy," but one thing is for sure - it's not a life-enhancing option for civilians or soldiers who get caught up in it.

The irony of many conservative positions is that unborn life is given a much higher value than anything else, so while we are against abortion, we happily slaughter men, women and children in other countries in a truly Old Testament fashion, all the while believing we are doing the will of God. It seems a peculiar kind of madness, but only to those who care to think it through.

So when I say I'm pro-life, I mean to say that I'm pro all life, born and unborn, Christian, Muslim, Jewish pagan, atheist, Jedi, British, American, Palestinian, Iranian, Israeli, North Korean, Russian. And when I make a decision based on choosing life, each life is equal, divine, unique and valued.