The Current Immigration Crisis and Abortion

Imagine someone telling an anti-trafficking organization that if they really cared for children, they would do more to address poverty in India that harms large numbers of children every year. Imagine someone telling a clinic engaging in cancer research that if they really cared about healing people of sickness, they would also focus on research for diabetes and Crohn’s disease. These are ridiculous accusations, yet pro-lifers get them very often.

I have seen recent news headlines aimed at pro-lifers for being silent on the issues surrounding immigrants at the border. It is being said that if one is truly pro-life and pro-family, one must also care and be involved in protecting children who are being brought into the country illegally by their parents. Make no mistake, I believe that the lives of immigrants and their children are valuable and important. They are made in the image of God just like you and me.  The issues of immigrant children and abortion are not the same, yet the two are being equated in such a way as to attack the motives and sincerity of pro-life individuals.

The fact that there are very important issues regarding immigrant children at the border is not comparable with intentionally dismembering, poisoning, crushing, and burning a little human to death.

If the tables were turned, we might equate their seeming disregard for unborn human beings with having no credibility when it comes to “caring” about immigrant children. If this is really about consistency, wouldn’t it make sense to want to protect human beings in all stages of development whether they are at the border or in the womb? Why do many people seem to only care about children when it suits a political agenda they have? There have been cases in the news where an illegal immigrant wished to receive an abortion while in detention at the border. Many people showed support for her “right” to have an abortion. If all the outrage over the border crisis was genuinely about caring for human beings, why was the concern only shown for the born immigrant? What about the unborn immigrant? It is wrong to mistreat an immigrant, legal or not legal. If this issue were really about human rights, then where is all the outrage over the 3,000 innocent human beings that get murdered in the womb every day by poisoning, crushing and dismembering?

Suppose pro-lifers are terrible human beings who care nothing about immigrant children. How does that justify ending the life of an innocent human being? It doesn’t. The immigration issue being raised against pro-lifers is a clever ad hominem that impugns the motives and sincerity of pro-lifers.

The issues of abortion and immigrant children are both important. Please don’t read this post and  think I don’t care about the immigration issue. I do care. We should be concerned about children and families coming into this country, and the problems we face at the border. But we should also be deeply concerned about living in a culture that dehumanizes a group of people simply because they are unwanted and inconvenient: the unborn. I have chosen to focus time and effort in fighting the particular evil of abortion. If a person tries to attack every social ill in society, that person’s effectiveness will be diminished. Do not impugn the motives or the operational objectives of pro-lifers as they seek to create a culture that values human life from conception to natural death. Our objection to the moral evil of abortion does not make us responsible for the issues with children at the border.