In denouncing abortion, may we simultaneously deplore single motherhood?

The wording, images and jokes in this video may offend some. When I saw the title ‘The Hilarious World of Abortion’, I thought it was a pro-abortion comedian poking fun at pro-life arguments. But this video, furthers the debate by, instead, finding inconsistencies in the pro-abortion position, and making fun of discrepancies such as a woman having the right to kill anyone in her body… The video does have its own grave incongruity; it might show that abortion and ‘illegitimate births’ (that word ‘illegitimate’ insults many people whose mothers struggled to bring them into the world alone) have both ‘skyrocketed’. The video is from the pro-life position and states that children from single parents are at ‘enormous risk of ending up on welfare or in prison’. But, as pro-lifers, can we have it both ways? In denouncing abortion, may we simultaneously deplore single motherhood? And associate their children with high rates of unemployment and imprisonment? The visible single mothers chose life for their children. If fewer abortions were to be done; there would be an instant related rise in single mothers. There are factually speaking, millions of invisible single mothers, although their children’s lives were snuffed out in the womb. Being fully pro-life involves practising that which we preach; if we teach that pregnant women (often panicking at the thought of being a single mother) can avoid abortion, it’s our Christian duty to know how they may get enough practical support. If we don’t, then yes, it’s very easy to remark on the attendant woes of single motherhood.

In the US, videos like this contribute to the debate about the public funding of Planned Parenthood. But here in the UK, we have yet to see a proper debate, happening in society at large, where we question why our money should finance social abortion. I suggest that the lack of debate about (our) taxes funding abortions is due to apathy of how much money is spent on abortion, and perhaps a deeply entrenched acceptance in our British society that abortion is a necessary evil. Consider this; I have attended pro-life vigils, and both pro-life and pro-abortion members of the British public have stopped to speak to me. They would tell me of a friend, sister or girlfriend who had an abortion, and that they could not oppose the tax-funding of abortion, because someone close to them had got an abortion free on the NHS.   

Once a man said to me, ‘you’re Irish; you have no business being an anti-abortionist here in the UK!’ I asked him why and he said that ‘a lot of English money has gone to Ireland, and with your history you can’t come here and tell us how to spend our money.’ My nerves didn’t stand up to telling him that yes, I am Irish, but in London I am a tax-payer, so now it’s actually my money too…