Watch your words.

That line is a staple of the lactivist movement. Watch your words. Don't say that breast is best, because it is not--it's the biological standard.

I've been thinking of the phrase "watch your words" in a different context lately. I read LaShawn Barber's blog--it's the only explicitly pro-life blog I still bother reading (I read The Anchoress for a while, but she got boring)--and she's talked some about the ad slated for the SuperBowl with Tim Tebow and his mother.

For those of you who are clueless about it--as I was--the story is that Tebow's parents were serving as missionaries in the Phillipines, and while she was pregnant with him, she contracted amoebic dysentery. At least one doctor (I'm reading "doctors", but who knows how many?) apparently urged her to have an abortion, saying that the medications she needed to be treated with would likely have severely harmed her baby. I also read somewhere that she suffered a placental abruption (where the placenta tears away from the uterine wall prematurely; this can lead to stillbirth), but I don't know how accurate that is.

Anyway, of course I applaud her for not killing her unborn child, but at the same time something has nagged me about the pro-life coverage of this upcoming advertisement. I had been trying to figure out what it is that bugged me, and this morning it hit me: the unspoken (by the ad, at least, from what I've heard) message is "Don't abort your kid, because he might just grow up to be someone famous and accomplished."

Here's my problem with that. Most people aren't going to grow up to be someone famous and accomplished. Simple fact. Choosing to not have that abortion may slow a girl/woman down in life. May stick her in the lower rungs of society for at least a few years. And her child may grow up to be no one special.

But just because someone's "no one special" doesn't mean they don't deserve to live as well.

This is another issue that kinda hits home for me. My best friend was born to an unwed preteen mother, and most likely is the product of sexual abuse. In short, the circumstances of his conception were pretty much textbook "should abort." I can't say whether his mother considered it--I somehow doubt the concept was one she was really aware of, though--but I am very glad that he is here. He will most likely not be the next Augusten Burroughs, or even a local mover-and-shaker (nor will I, so I'm not knocking him here). But to me he is an incredibly important person, a friend for over twenty years now, someone who has been there during the worst and the best times I've ever had. The world at large might not have been worse off if he was never born, but I certainly would have been.

And this is the truth of most of the people who were thankfully not aborted (and would have been the truth of those who sadly were). They are no one special to the world, but they are hugely worthwhile people anyway, simply by virtue of being PEOPLE. There is always at least one person whose life would be worse off for someone not having been born, and my fellow pro-lifers need to be mindful of this. We must be careful to always watch our words, and avoid even implying that some people are more equal than others.