So who is right? Do women have the right to chose what to do with their bodies? Is the fetus it's own body and therefore supercedes the rights of the mother? Is being anti-abortion the exclusive domain of those who believe that a person is fair game for war or capital punishment once they're born? Is being pro-choice the same as being pro-death, or is being anti-abortion the same as being pro-life?

So long as the battle over abortion is fought between two equally powerful and morally convicted sides, both of whom claim to enshrine the principles of life, there will be no satisfactory resolution. Someone will win and someone will lose, and in some capacity everyone will suffer. It is just another "us-vs.-them" power struggle. For any real progress to occur, these two sides must come together under a common ethic: a synthesis of their understandings of what it means to uphold the value and dignity of life. We must find a common understanding of the term "pro-life".

As it stands currently, there is a not entirely undeserved view that the pro-life side is the exclusive venue of socio-political conservatives. But this is detrimental to the pro-life cause because I would submit that many other values of conservativism in fact undermine the principle of life. To be anti-abortion does not necessarily make one pro-life.

Here I am reminded of the words of Pope John Paul II in The Gospel of Life: "Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, authanasia, or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisionment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than free and responsible persons; all these things and others like them are infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practice them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonour to the Creator."

To be truely pro-life requires that one recognize the value of all life and seek to work towards abundant life for all people. In my understanding, to be truely pro-life requires not merely to be anti-abortion, but to be also opposed to war, capital punishment, environmental degredation, sweatshops and corporate oligarchy, wage slavery... It is for principles like universal health care and education, for workers' and animal rights, for non-violence, equality of genders and races, and non-heirarchial human relationships. A true pro-life ethic will oppose abuses of life and dignity wherever it will arise, not merely in the womb. In this manner, pro-life doesn't look that much different from liberal notions of social justice, and couldn't be more different from the fruits of conservativism.

If opposition to abortion is not grounded in a dedication to social and environmental justice, then being anti-abortion is just an arbitrary political stance.

Once we move beyond anti-abortion as an arbitrary stance and into an understanding of it in the context of a fuller pro-life ethic, then we can move beyond a dogmatic rigidity that serves noone except those wishing to appear pious. Eliminating this rigidity helps us to understand that being pro-choice is itself an ethic of pro-life.

I've met few, if any, proponents of pro-choice who are pro-abortion. Most often, believing in choice means recognizing that there are exceptions... That there will be cases where the lives of both mother and child are threatened, for example. It also recognizes the sad reality that women who truely desire them will get abortions, and that it is preferable that they are done by a doctor in a clinic rather than by a coathanger in an alley. It does not serve life to threaten the life of a woman seeking an abortion, no matter how wrong we feel the abortion may be.

We should not fear exceptions. But in this case, we may pray that they remain exceptions. In the mean time, we will not end abortion by simply outlawing it. Doing so will still only accomplish death. Here we must again take a note from social justice.

What social justice ultimately seeks is not legislating a set of rules to impose a certain ideology upon others. The goal of social justice is to change a social situation so that it secures life and dignity for all. Applied to the topic of abortion, this means to bring about a reversed "spirit of the age" that moves from a culture of death to a culture of life.

This means hard work. Legislation is easy. Convincing others of the value of life is harder. Doing so through our own example is more difficult still. It means the conversion of hearts, the elimination of hardships that would favour economically-motivated abortion, and support for the medical sciences and the universal application thereof. It means finding a new way of understanding human sexuality away from both "free" hedonism and "dirty" utilitarianism.

It means nothing less than a total restructuring of society as we know it. A simple task that begins with the reassessment of our own beliefs and assumptions. We must ask ourselves if in every way we value life, abundant life, for all people and Creation.

The status quo in the pro-life/pro-choice debate is unacceptable. Opposition to abortion has been tied to a socio-political ideology that, with great contradiction, either explicitly or implicitly condones militarism, social injustice, ecological destruction, and corporate consumer capitalism. The message is that if you don't believe in these destructive human institutions, then you have no place considering yourself to be "pro-life".

The bridge, the synthesis, can only come when we reach a mutual understanding of the value and dignity of all life... A principle both sides share. Only then, when we stand together, will we begin to solve the problems that plague our society.