What Are the Requirements of Love?

I have to admit I got a bit triggered this morning when I encountered a pro-life feminist friend’s Facebook post:

If you are pro-life, you should want to make school lunches free for those who can’t afford food. It is a basic necessity for sustaining life. This is bottom rung shit.

It is not pro-life to save a child in the womb, and then let them starve in the streets. It’s also not good for our communities or society as a whole to not care for those lives beyond birth.

We don’t save babies to watch them suffer the rest of their existence.

After a decade in the trenches warring against progressive manipulation of language and emotion, I have an admittedly lower threshold for “If you’re a good person, you will (insert whatever political agenda line item I choose)” types of arguments. Based on the overwhelming response to my recent related blog, I have to assume that a lot of the people reading this blog are tired of it, too.

If I were to take my cues about my character from the loudest voices on the worldwide web, I would conclude that I’m a bad Christian if I voted for Donald Trump and a worse Christian if I didn’t. I have blood on my hands if I refuse to use neopronouns, and if I don’t want men and their penises in my locker rooms, I’m a bigoted transphobe who wants people to die. I’m racist if I question DEI practices. I’m homophobic if I say sex clowns aren’t appropriate for children. I’m a white supremacist if I support the legal enforcement of America’s borders. I’m suffering from internalized misogyny if I say I think vacuuming our offspring out of our wombs is actually pretty bad for women. And I clearly hate all men if I call for accountability of the bad ones.

And as of this morning, I’m basically the worst pro-life person alive if I don’t think that government funded free lunches are all they’re cracked up to be. I’m not exaggerating about this either. Here are actual comments I received when I pushed back on my friend’s assertion:

• “So you don’t want to feed hungry children. Good to know.”

• “It’s a morally bankrupt person who disagrees with me.”

• “Everyone is laughing at you.”

• “Free lunches are a Gospel mandate.” (I paraphrased this one)

It’s about the level of discourse you can expect on social media, I suppose, but call me a cockeyed optimist; I think we can do better. And shouldn’t we? I mean, do people truly and sincerely think that conservatives don’t care about starving children? Really??? Or is that just a convenient thing they say to stop a conversation before it can even start, a form of emotional blackmail to coerce people into subscribing to progressive policy positions out of fear of being called a hateful person?

I’ll preface my rebuttal to this line of thinking by clarifying what I’m NOT saying. I’m not saying I think we need to axe all government safety nets that support people in need. I was a single mom for almost 10 years. I’ve been on food stamps. I weaned myself off as quick as physically possible, but there was a time when I relied on supplemental support. I’m not naive enough or callous enough to believe we should just completely eliminate government assistance. Like most complicated topics, a degree of nuance is pretty stinking important here.

But I see no nuance whatsoever in arguments like, “If you oppose government funded free lunches, you aren’t really pro-life.”

Ideally, community groups and local churches would step up to fill the hunger gap. There are faithful churches in my neighborhood that offer weekly hot meals and food banks. They do amazing work of their own volition and out of their own abundance. I’m a major fan of this model. It fosters a sense of community and belonging, and it comes alongside people in need to make them feel loved and seen and embraced rather than just handing them a blank check and leaving them to figure everything out on their own. Our society needs more of this.

During my own crisis pregnancy, a godly Christian couple took me into their home and lovingly nursed me back to stability. They helped me for a season and flooded me with support and resources I could not provide for myself. They coached me through difficult choices, and I remember my mentor always pointing the tough discussions back to the foundational question, “What are the requirements of love in this situation?”

I hated that question for a while. It often meant I had to choose something painful and difficult and extremely unpleasant in the present moment—like ending a toxic relationship or choosing to go back to work at a job I thought was beneath me or forgoing extravagant expenditures I could not justify on my shoestring budget. But love for myself and for my unborn child meant doing hard things that led to stability, and they paid off in the end. And then, when the time was right, my mentors helped me find an apartment I could afford, and they kicked me out of the nest. It was an act of love, not an absence of compassion. The time had come for me to be an adult who stood on her own two feet.

I’m not opposed to children eating. I’m opposed to top-heavy “solutions” that create blind loyalty to governments who incentivize dependency and entitlement while turning a blind eye to potential neglect. And I’ll be the bad guy and say it: if children aren’t eating, that’s neglect. Feeding your children is a basic baseline requirement of parenting. It’s one thing to do your best and still struggle to get by, but that should not be a permanent state of being within a system that’s actually functioning properly. We’re likely living in a degree of denial if we don’t all admit that we’ve personally known more than one set of parents who outsourced the majority of their parenting obligations to the government. How is blindly enabling this good for children?

This whole argument is just an extension of the oh-so-tired “You’re not really pro-life; you’re just pro-birth” deflection. It’s usually accompanied by questions like, “How many children have you personally adopted?” as though I’m only allowed to protest the slaughter of the babies I am able and willing to raise myself. It’s an asinine argument, similar to saying you’re only allowed to oppose slavery if you yourself are willing to cover the costs of plantation owners. Um no? You don’t have to be able to solve problems in order to rightly name them.

How far are we really willing to push this reasoning anyway? Am I not sufficiently pro-life if I don't think the government should pay for other peoples' rent? If I don't think tax dollars should be spent to buy their clothing? If I don't personally cover the costs of their school supplies and medications? How far are you willing to outsource parenting obligations to the federal government? What are the accidental big picture consequences of letting Uncle Sam function as Mom or Dad?

It’s true that the Bible commands Christians to care for the hungry, but nowhere does it say that this care needs to look like faceless government handouts devoid of relationship or accountability. Nine times out of ten, when I write about abortion, I’m writing from the right TO the right to encourage them to maintain a consistently pro-life ethic by contributing to a culture that’s less hostile to single moms. I’ve repeatedly agreed that if we care about saving babies, we need to collectively communicate with our feet that we think their moms’ lives are sacred, too. I have no problem agreeing with the notion that we have an obligation to use our blessings to support people in need. I put my money where my mouth is here. I’ve worked in pregnancy centers and volunteered in women’s shelters. I donate money each and every month to feed children in need.

But I actually happen to believe that socialism leads to hunger in the long term, so when I ask myself what the requirements of love are in the context of hungry kids, socialism-adjacent proposals are not going to rank high on my list of potential solutions. Telling me I’m bad at being pro-life or that I’m a heartless monster probably isn’t going to change my mind about that. I’ll likely just conclude that critical thinking isn’t your forte. I’m not sure that helps advance the conversation anywhere it needs to go.