The term “pro-life” has been inextricably linked to “anti-abortion.” That’s part of the definition, but one that is sadly limiting.
A great example is in the consistent work that Chattanooga’s Orange Grove Center has done since 1953 for people who, in many cultures, would be viewed as “shameful” or resented for reducing a family’s status.
America has been blessed to remain steadfast in the Judeo-Christian views reflected in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights …” With this perspective, the lives of those with disabilities, the elderly who are completely dependent on the care of others and the unborn are valued, not because of their contributions to society, but because of their intrinsic worth from the Creator.
In his chapter on “Disability and Culture” for the World Health Organization’s guidelines on community-based rehabilitation, University of British Columbia adjunct professor Peter Coleridge writes, “many traditional societies do not have an exact equivalent in their own language for the word ‘disabled,’ and they can seldom match the three-tier concepts in English of ‘impairment,’ ‘handicap’ and ‘disability’ espoused by the [health organization] and disability theorists; they usually do, however, have words for specific impairments such as ‘deaf,’ ‘blind,’ ‘lame,’ and so on.”
Dr. Coleridge observes that in many cultures “the disabled person is intrinsically of less value because of their disability.” Whether it’s the Afghan family shunned for its lack of cultural status because a disabled man cannot contribute to his family financially or, uniquely, a man in Mali deemed disabled for his “freckles and small buttocks” that are “counted as a serious impediment to marriage,” how a disability is regarded reveals the structures, institutions and people seen as having value and celebrated in a particular society.