What should I say to a young woman who enters my classroom wearing a t-shirt that reads: “I am a Proud Member of the Pro-choice Generation”? Perhaps my response should be relegated to the realm of the imagination, which neither offends nor upsets. Furthermore, I owe it to my other students to avoid a distracting scene. Also, there might not be time after class since I must hurry to another building to begin a lecture of logic.

The word that catches my attention is “generation.” It is a most intriguing fact that she owes her existence to a long line of generations that stretches back to her primal parents. From one generation to another parents said “yes” to a subsequent generation. It was an unbroken series of “yeses” that made it possible for her to be here. It is a phenomenon so extraordinary that, in the words of the immortal poet John Keats, “doth tease us out of thought.” This is something that one can be proud of and something for which the only proper response is gratitude.

Barbara Eden, star of I Dream of Jeannie, traces her ancestry back to Benjamin Franklin. Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks is a descendent of Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abraham Lincoln. And crooner Pat Boone is a descendent of the famous wilderness explorer Daniel Boone. Here is something about which this trio of celebrities can be justly proud. One generation salutes previous generations for maintaining a lifeline that brings them into being. It is a pride that honors a succession of generations that consistently honors the value of life. When God said, “Let there be light,” He was offering a preliminary to “Let there be life.”

So many generations were required to inaugurate the life of my student. How much she owed to the past! Nonetheless, seemingly unaware of the contributions of her ancestors, my student is expressing pride for the option of not continuing life. What is greater than life? Could it possibly be “choice?” “Choose choice,” abortion zealots cry. But mere, disembodied choice is an abstraction. It has no solidity. It is a chimera!

Now, if we choose something real, such as life, we get choice “thrown in.” C. S. Lewis has told us to “Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth ‘thrown in’: aim at Earth and you will get neither.” And he is right! If our life is circumscribed by the physical world in which we are placed, nothing, neither love, nor joy, nor beauty, nor goodness, will make any sense. Everything would be washed away with death. But when we include the light of Heaven, everything begins to make sense. Similarly, G. K. Chesterton stated that when we separate the supernatural from the natural, we get the “unnatural.” It is the supernatural that radiates the natural to give it its value. We do not fully understand the son unless we know something about the father.

When we choose life, we get arms and legs, heart and lungs, and choice “thrown in.” It’s a good bargain. Choice does not exist by itself. It is certainly nothing that conveys pride. It is fatuous to be “pro-choice.”

There is no need for a “pro-choice” movement since we already have choice. It is our birthright. It is ours to use, morally or immorally, properly or improperly. On the other hand, we do need a “pro-life” movement because life is under attack. By the same token we need a movement that promotes justice, fairness, decency, and other worthy causes. We do not need a “pro-leg” movement because we already have legs. We already have the capacity to choose and that is a permanent part of our being.

Has my student pondered the consequences of her mother being as enthusiastic about abortion as she is? Can a person be pro-choice retroactively? Can one be indifferent to the choices of his ancestors? Can I not express my thanks to all the members of my long line of ancestors who made by own life a possibility? To what extent are pro-choice advocates banishing gratitude from the world? There was no pro-choice movement in her mother’s time. Does that suggest she was unenlightened? A being that does not exist cannot express gratitude.

Pride is a double-edged sword. We can have pride in our children, our country, and our church. In this case pride honors something that is good. But we can have a different kind of pride when we encourage mothers to destroy their offspring. This is the kind of pride that is a Deadly Sin, the kind about which the scripture says its possessor is doomed to suffer a fall. Pride in this sense must fall because there is nothing to hold it up. We must be careful where we place our pride.

“Lord, what fools these mortals be,” wrote Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Act III, scene 2). The phrase has broad application. Erasmus made use of it in his satire In Praise of Folly. Being proud of promoting death is, to assert the least, rather foolish, if not malevolent. Let us stay with the word “foolish.” It is a bit kinder. I hope my student learns something in my class that is not foolish. I am respectful of Alexander Pope’s famous warning: “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” This is a problem for everyone who wears the mantle of the teacher. Was I being angelic by not rushing in? No doubt there are times when discretion is the better part of valor.