I watched an episode of Family Guy today, just one of those surprisingly serious ones where the message hits a little harder than expected. In that episode, Lois decided to get an abortion after the couple she was acting as a surrogate for passed away. Peter, her husband, got swayed by a group of protestors who told him abortion is murder. The familiar argument. The same one society recycles over and over.
Abortion, is a topic that refuses to stop burning.
Everyone has an opinion, a moral angle, scripture, slogan, or a societal line ready to fling at women’s choices. But watching that episode made my mind wander beyond the usual debates. It made me think of real life, of the streets I see every day.
On Tuesday, I was on my way somewhere when I saw a group of tiny fragile children running along the dusty road. They obviously should have been in school, wearing clean uniforms with backpacks, laughing with friends and eating lunch instead, they looked tattered, hungry and desperate to make sales of whatever they were hawking. These are children trying to survive in a world that had thrown them into battle before they even learned how to spell their own names and it broke my heart a little.
And then the man sitting beside me on the bus said something that lodged itself deep in my mind. In his words,
“If you know your pocket isn’t heavy, why bring children into the world to suffer like this? Isn’t this violence?”
I stared out the window, but his words vibrated in my chest.
There’s something we rarely admit, and it’s that bringing a child into the world isn’t automatically noble. Giving birth does not equal giving life.
We talk so much about the morality of abortion, yet we rarely talk about the morality of birth without responsibility. Society shames women for considering abortion, but barely blinks when children roam the streets neglected, starving, and unprotected. Society chants “Every child deserves to live!” but never follows up with “Every child deserves a chance.”
What is the point of forcing life into a world that refuses to nurture it? I know abortion is a sensitive topic. I know people have deep beliefs. But I also know that there is nothing holy about bringing a child into poverty, trauma, abuse, or a home where they are unwanted. A heartbeat is not the same as a future and a body is not the same as a life.
If a woman carries a pregnancy she cannot afford, emotionally, financially, mentally, then the child becomes a victim of a battle they never asked to participate in. Most of the kids we see on the streets today, the ones fending for themselves at ages where they should be cared for, are not there because they are supposedly strong or because life happens. Many of them are there because someone gave birth when they weren’t ready, weren’t capable, or weren’t supported. And one thing we forget is that we all pay the price, society, parents, and especially the children.
Some of these kids grow up angry and some grow up wounded. Some grow up hardened because softness was never an option. These are the kids who become statistics, headlines, or cautionary tales. They are the ones who remind us that bringing a child into the world is more than biology, it is a huge responsibility.
So when people say abortion is murder, I don’t argue. I simply ask, is it not also a kind of murder to knowingly bring a child into a life where they will suffer? Where hunger will raise them and where the streets will teach them or turn them to criminals and society punish them?
The real sin is forcing women to give birth in a world that refuses to catch the children they drop. At the end of the day, this isn’t just about morality. It’s about reality and empathy. Children deserve more than existence. They deserve care, safety, love, guidance and a stable world to grow in and if we cannot guarantee that, then the conversation about abortion needs less condemnation and a lot more understanding.