The importance of having a pro-life partner

She has a good head on her shoulders. Too bad she is taken 🙂

The Importance of Having a Pro-Life Partner

By: Samantha Ciarlandini

Hi, my name is Samantha and I am a fourth year student at the University of Toronto. I am recently engaged to the sweetest, most charitable and loving man on the planet. My fiancée also happens to be very pro-life; a quality I came to more fully appreciate last semester while taking the introductory Bioethics class, PHL281H1. It was in my tutorial that I fully appreciated how lucky I was to have a, then boyfriend now fiancée, who is pro-life.  The first tutorial we attended was supposed to discuss Pope John Paul II’s arguments in Evangelium Vitae concerning abortion and the Sanctity of Life.  However the first question that was asked by the T.A. did not reflect the readings at all, instead he asked, “Hypothetically, let’s pretend that your girlfriend is pregnant and was Catholic, like the Pope, and wanted to keep the fetus. What would you say to persuade her to have an abortion?”

At this my eyes widened and I braced myself as male student after student started throwing out answers. One particularly offensive classmate said, “If she was irrational enough to buy into the Catholic faith no rational argument I gave would persuade her to abort…[Dramatic Pause] so I would just threaten to leave her, she couldn’t do it by herself she knows that. She would eventually come to her senses.” I was appalled.

All the students seemed to think that the question asked was easily answered so I asked another question. “Hypothetically, let’s pretend your girlfriend is pregnant, and is intending to abort, but you don’t want her to, how do you persuade her to keep the baby?” At this there was silence until the same classmate who disgusted me with his earlier answer said, “Well it’s her choice, we can’t really say anything now can we?” At those words I thanked God that the man I loved would not only support me but supports all woman’s right to choose life, he would never pressure me into killing our child. He respects women by taking a stand against abortion and against a man’s get out of jail free card. He would gladly take responsibility for his part in creating the life, instead of doing everything in his power to be rid of the consequence of his CHOICES. 

The guys in my class did not find it difficult to come up with ways of “persuading,” or some would say pressuring their girlfriends into having an abortion. They had not regard for her choice of Life. They did not respect that choice because it was not their preference, which is why I find it so important to have a boyfriend or a fiancée that is Pro-Life.