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A couple weeks ago, we asked our awesome subscribers to email us and tell us how they’re feeling about the current state of the pro-life movement, and we were blown away by your responses. 77 of you replied, and it was so encouraging for our team to hear from you and connect with you. A bunch of you shared that you felt:

• Excited that we have more access to great pro-life arguments 
• Frustrated because good dialogue—the courage to speak up at all, and the calm to stay kind when you do—is really hard
• Excited because Dobbs gave us the ability to pass state laws against abortion
• Frustrated because the pro-choice side has a much bigger microphone and budget
• Excited by the dedication, passion, and commitment they see in the pro-life movement, no matter the obstacles, no matter how laws change over time
• Frustrated because some pro-life leaders talk in a way that makes it easy for pro-choicers to paint the whole pro-life movement as the pro-everything-Trump-does movement
• …and many other excitements and frustrations

Sometimes the pro-life movement feels a little bit like an unhealthy family Christmas where everyone has to pretend like everything is fine and we have no problems—everything about the pro-choice movement is 100% evil; everything about the pro-life movement is 100% perfection.

So it was so encouraging to hear you all name both the beauty and the brokenness of the pro-life movement. Because this side of heaven, just about nothing is all one or all the other—we humans are all both broken and beautiful, and so are the systems and institutions we create. (Mild Christianese alert—if that doesn’t resonate for you, take what’s helpful and leave what’s not.)

Sometimes it’s hard to hold both. We feel disloyal if we name anything that’s not good on our side, or we feel like abortion is so horrific and the pro-choice side is so radical that anything bad the pro-life movement does isn’t even worth talking about. Or on the other end, we feel like there’s so much brokenness in the pro-life movement that it’s hard to see good in it anymore, or feel like it could ever be a healthy movement. 

To hold and take seriously both brokenness and beauty, grief and hope, sometimes feels like a kind of madness. But I also think it’s the only sane way to live in a world as beautiful and broken as ours.

All that to say—thanks for writing in and sharing your excitements, frustrations, thoughts, and feelings. We always love hearing from you, but it was particularly encouraging and grounding to hear from so many of you about how you hold the complexities of the pro-life movement.

The post Beauty and Brokenness in the Pro-Life Movement originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.” 

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The post Beauty and Brokenness in the Pro-Life Movement appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.