What Being Pro-Life Means to Me

For me, being pro-life means celebrating not only my son Archie in Heaven, but also the two precious babies I carried for only a short time, Honey Bunny and Little Olive. It means living with an openness to life in every sense: not using contraception, and being receptive to however many children God chooses to bless us with. It means trying to have a VBA2C in a future pregnancy because too many repeat C-sections would eventually force us to close the door on more children, and that doesn’t sit easily with me for what it means to be truly pro-life. It also means trying to announce my pregnancies well before the “13-week mark” because it is already my baby, already a life, already someone worth celebrating. I’ve been thinking that in the same way the ‘gender reveal’ and the ‘baby shower’ have become cultural milestones of pregnancy, what if we had ‘new life parties’ to celebrate the new baby at the very beginning of the pregnancy?

For me, being pro-life cannot be reduced to a slogan or a political stance, although certainly we need to fight this fight fiercely in all arenas. But on a more personal level, pro-life must be a lived, consistent ethic of life, a daily way of loving, speaking, and choosing. And that means striving not to be hypocritical in how I witness to the dignity of life, especially the preborn. I’ve noticed that some Christians can adopt a kind of holier-than-thou attitude, but this is both unhelpful and self-serving. Of course, someone who is pro-life would never have an abortion, but the commitment goes deeper than that. It demands reflection on how we honour the gift of life in our own decisions, relationships, and choices.

I can admit freely (although not proudly) that before I was married, I used contraception for many years. I have since come to see the truth of the Church’s teaching. Is it convenient that this realisation came only after marriage? No, not really. If anything, I wish I had understood earlier. I sometimes wonder whether those years of taking hormonal contraceptives, nearly six in total, may have contributed to my body’s struggles with maintaining progesterone levels. It is possible that this, in turn, played a role in the premature birth and death of our dear baby Archie.

I want to live my pro-life convictions with integrity. That means choosing courage, even when it’s hard. I didn’t always announce my pregnancies early, out of fear, out of self-protection, out of worry that grief would be harder if others knew. When I was pregnant with our honeymoon baby, we told no one. Then I miscarried at 6.5 weeks, and all I could think was that she was never celebrated. When I was pregnant with Archie, we waited until 13 weeks, and yet even that didn’t shield us from the heartbreak that followed. With Little Olive, we told our families around 9 weeks, and her heart stopped not long after. And with our daughter Olivia, our beautiful rainbow baby, I was so gripped by fear that I didn’t tell anyone until halfway through the pregnancy.

Now, having walked through all of that, I see it differently. I want to celebrate every life I am given the grace to carry, even if that life is brief, even if that baby returns to Heaven far sooner than I’d hoped. Every child is a gift, and I hope one day we will all be reunited in Heaven.

So let this be your reminder. Being pro-life is so much more than saying no to abortion. It is a deep yes. It is a yes to life in all its fragility, beauty, and unpredictability. It means speaking kind words to a struggling mother. It means encouraging young women. It means showing up, as grandparents or friends or parishioners, to support the mothers in our midst. It means acknowledging the pain of baby loss, and not sweeping it under the rug.

Being pro-life is not just a position. It’s a posture of the heart, and this seems a fitting way to describe it given we have just entered August, the month of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Hers is the heart that said yes to life in all its mystery, and may we echo her yes in our own lives.