"Prayer Before Birth" is written from the perspective of an unborn entity. It therefore inevitably invites, especially from contemporary readers, questions about reproductive rights and the extent to which the poem may be expressing pro-life or pro-choice arguments within its lines. From the perspective alone, one might assume that the poem upholds the innocence and purity of the unborn and implicitly argues for a pro-life stance. However, not only does the speaker dispel with this innocent and childlike voice, but the speaker asserts at the end of the poem that death before birth is preferable to joining society at the present moment in time. In this way, the poem can be interpreted as a pro-choice argument, favoring quality of life after birth rather than simply birth itself.
However, both of these interpretations run the risk of becoming too reductive, especially when considering the context within which the poem was written. In the 1940s, few European countries were even considering the legalization of abortion, least of all Ireland, whose politics is to this day heavily influenced by the Catholic church. Thus, the conversation about reproductive rights, while seemingly obvious in this poem for contemporary readers, was more likely a peripheral or even inconsequential concern of the poet.
Instead, the poem is much more clearly focused on reflecting the state of Europe during World War II. Through the unborn speaker, the poem explores the question of how the destruction brought to the continent by the war will affect future generations. It addresses concepts like political corruption (through allusions to fascism) and the automatization of death through new lethal military technologies (most notably, the atomic bomb). It is the despair experienced by civilians during the Second World War that the poem most thoroughly communicates through the figure of the unborn speaker, dramatizing the famous quotation by Patrick Henry from the eighteenth century: "give me liberty, or give me death."
