SmallGovTimes.com

By: Lance Thompson | Published on 07/18/07    

“Flip-flop” has become a severe political criticism, most memorably applied to John Kerry’s unfathomable “I voted for the war before I voted against it” explanation.

The flip-flop criticism is leveled against Republican candidates on the issue of abortion, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson among others. The underlying accusation is that candidates who once supported abortion rights have switched their positions to curry favor with pro-life voters and the conservative base.

I cannot say what is in the hearts of candidates who change their minds on abortion (a group that includes Ronald Reagan). But I do know that my own views have changed on the matter, and I have never run for anything but a bus.

When I was young, pro-choice sounded like a good position. It coincided with the views of most of the women one was likely to meet on a college campus, the Supreme Court was behind it, and it was the ace in a hole for a guy suddenly confronted with the responsibility for an unwanted pregnancy. Being pro-abortion simplified life considerably.

Later, I met and fell in love with the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. We were married, and decided to have a baby. It was just as impersonal as that sounds–we knew very little about parenthood, kids, or any of the other surprises that come with families. We were unexpectedly excited when we found out a baby was on the way, and even more surprisingly devastated when my wife suffered a miscarriage. This unborn child we’d never met, had no relationship with, was taken from us, and we felt that loss deeply.

The following year, we learned again that a baby was on the way. We were once again very exited, and went through all the classes, preparations, and baby-equipment shopping sprees. Because we had been through it all before, we were aware that anything could happen during the pregnancy. Our emotional investment in this unborn child increased every day, along with our concern that something would go wrong.

The suspense built as we passed the mid-December due date, and ended up in the delivery room the day after Christmas. I was there as my wife endured the hours of labor, marveling at her ability to maintain a positive attitude through what, to a male, seems like a nearly impossible ordeal. I was there for the countdown, for the flurry of activity that comes prior to delivery, for the agony and ecstasy of childbirth. And I was there the moment our daughter took her first breath.

After months of waiting, hoping and praying that everything would be all right, we were blessed with a healthy baby girl. Having witnessed the birth of my child, I was left with the firm conviction that you’d have to have a heart of stone and a soul of Teflon not to believe that a newborn baby is the most precious gift God can bestow upon two parents.

It’s hard to say when the flip-flop process began for me, but I know where it was completed–right there in the delivery room when I held by newborn daughter in my arms. It seems impossible that a parent would have any other instinct than to protect and cherish that helpless new life. To consider destroying that life in the womb seems as wrong as any act one could imagine.

I don’t know if any of the candidates’ positions on abortion changed in this way, or if they share any of my feelings. But to have switched from some one who is comfortable with abortion to some one who is unshakeably opposed is not evidence of political expediency. It simply shows me some one who has taken the same journey as I have.

Those that have come recently to the conviction that abortion is wrong may not have reached that conclusion for the same reasons I did. But I have much more in common with them than with those who haven’t made the journey at all.

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