I am an atheist, and pro-choice, but unlike Hitchens, Mother Theresa is a personal heroine of mine and her views on abortion had integrity.
Despite being a non-Christian, I voyeuristically attended a church service in the Tenderloin this Sunday where the sermon was on the subject of making actions out of your convictions. This church spends $25,000 feeding poor people each week. I don’t think I need to believe in god for this to make sense. The singing was also a whole lot better than other places of worship I’ve been to.
Because I don’t believe that there is a spiritual moment of conception I think you have to choose at what point a life is a life and until birth the interests of the person carrying a child are paramount. The necessity to let women choose seems sensible to me.
Two weeks ago the House approved a partial anti-abortion bill again, something I personally don’t think is a good thing. But the difference between conservative politics and Mother Theresa is that she said that she would personally look after any unwanted child that was brought to her – and the evidence is that she would have acted on her conviction.
Right or wrong, Mother Theresa had integrity. A political stance that is anti-abortion and does not provide a welfare state to support unwanted children, has no integrity, right or wrong.