the right to life

pro-life
the belief in the sanctity of human life
a child should not be brought into the world if it will have no life fit for a human being: a future of abuse, a painful disability that will result in its death anyway, the prospect of being bounced around an abusive system if put up for adoption.
if in giving birth, the mother's own life is endangered, both lives are at stake since the mother may not survive to bring up her child.
honor killings happen even in supposedly "civilized" countries. if an abortion can prevent a family from killing a daughter or a niece, where is the debate? surely it's better to save one life than neither.

pro-choice
the belief in a woman's right to choose what is best for her own life
many women are not ready to have children.
in some cases, they're university or graduate students on their way to a successful career, maybe even a professorship. a pregnancy can ruin those plans in an instant and she may never fulfill her dreams, choosing instead to have a shotgun wedding and become a stay-at-home mom, or to be a single mother who may not be able to continue and finish her education until it's too late. granted, there are some women who would not resent their children for causing this state of affairs, but there are all too many who would. harboring any sort of resentment in the first place can destroy a family: how much more, then, if it's specifically directed at your child?
and on the other side, we have the underprivileged teenage mother, who doesn't necessarily know how to take care of a baby, and her baby daddy, who assuredly does not. maybe one or both of them come from a broken home and have never lived in a functional family. or maybe he leaves her and she has no job, no way of supporting herself or the baby. what then? is that any sort of way for a child to grow up?

the right to life is not the right to a chance at being alive outside the womb. the right to life is the right to grow up healthy and functional; the right to a life that is as good as, if not better than, the way your parents grew up; the right to actually live.