Are You Willing to Bleed?

This post is going to come really close to guilting our readership on a variety of fronts, but it is also going to put a big target on my back.   Not everyone reading this need come to the same convictions I have, but I guess I hope you have to wrestle with some of the thoughts I went through.

I do not like giving blood.  Everything people say about it is completely true; it really doesn't hurt, when nurses call the needle entering the skin a "slight pinch," that's pretty accurate.  Regardless, I can't look at the bag of blood or the needle in my arm or I'm going to get dizzy.  Nurses must chuckle to themselves about this big guy felled by the simplest of procedures.

It has been years since I've given blood for that reason.  The reason I'm writing about it now is because of a thought I had during a walk: I claim to be pro-life, but I don't donate blood.  There is an excellent chance that 1 hour of my time could save another human life, but I can't be bothered.  Conversely, I expect women in all sorts of life situations to carry a small human around inside of them for 9 months and then endure the hardship of said human exiting their body, all because I hold that all life is sacred.  How calloused and wicked am I, to behave so hypocritically?

The thoughts hit me like a punch to the gut.  I immediately signed up for the next blood drive the Red Cross had for the area, which it turns out won't be for another two weeks, but the thought of all the human suffering I could have had a part in preventing over the past decade or so of my life haunts me.

Abortion is about the perfect issue to unite a group of people.  Believe life is sacred, and you have an absolute right and an absolute wrong.  Anyone who doesn't believe as you do is a monster, and monsters don't deserve respect or compromise.  There are good guys and bad guys; we're with the good guys, and that makes us morally superior to the other side.  Best part of all, it costs us absolutely nothing to do so, just vote a certain way and can rest assured that you are better than half the people in this country.

I am starting to doubt how much sanctity of life is motivating our priorities, however.  There are a variety of legitimate reasons people choose not to give blood, but what a perfect analogy for being willing to bleed for your beliefs.  If not donating blood, what about enlisting on the national bone marrow registry and be willing to provide a bone marrow transplant should you ever be a match to someone desperately clinging to life?  Are you at willing to be an organ donor, which literally costs you nothing, so that another might live?

How does belief in the sanctity of life influence our support on other political questions?  How do we feel about refugees fleeing war and religious persecution seeking safety in our midst?  Do concerns about safety (most of concerns I hear expressed, by the way, are exaggerated or unfounded) keep us from caring for the widow and the orphan?  How does our belief in the sanctity of life influence how we think about welfare, gun rights, or foreign policy?

People who care about life are going to disagree on these issues; they are multifaceted.  But in talking to people about these issues, I am shocked at how quickly they try to steer the argument away from holding life sacred and towards personal responsibility or the importance of guarding against a perceived onset of tyranny; important issues, sure, but they have to be weighed against others.  The way most people approach politics is to allow only one principle to direct their position and not recognize other principles might pull them another direction, and it is shocking when one of those ignored principles is sanctity of life. 

So are you willing to bleed?  What are some ways you can live out what you believe?  Ultimately, it comes down to showing your fellow man love.  Omnia Vincit Amore.