Situation: a 19-year-old unmarried young woman has an unplanned pregnancy. She doesn’t want to be a mother. The father is 23. They decide to marry & have the baby. But after a few months, it gets to be too much for her, so she abandons her new husband & baby to move far away. The child never meets or speaks with the mother. Seems like it would have been a classic case for aborting instead of the sad situation that resulted.
Except that, the baby was me. And I’m very glad she didn’t take my life though it meant bringing trouble to hers. I’m also grateful for my dad because it would have been easy for him to abandon his pregnant girlfriend. But he married her, & then took on the responsibility of being a divorced father. It’s been said that if you’re going to commend a woman who aborts her child because “she did what was best for herself,” then you also should commend men for abandoning their children because they’re doing what’s best for themselves.
A better example might be this: How would you advise a mother who was pregnant with her 5th child based on the following facts? Her husband had syphilis. She had tuberculosis. Their 1st child was born blind. Their 2nd died. Their 3rd was born deaf. Their 4th had tuberculosis. Would you advise abortion? If so, then you would have just killed the great composer Ludwig Von Beethoven.
If someone says that unborn children don’t have the right to life, then isn’t that discrimination against a whole class of people based on where they’re residing & on their state of dependency? We don’t discriminate against any other group of people based on those characteristics. A child “belongs” to a parent, but that doesn’t make the child “property.” Only by labeling a whole class of human beings as less than human can someone justify the right to end their lives. To say that a fetus is a person only if the mother wants it is not science. It’s rationalization.
Please tell me how it’s really any different than Nazis exterminating Jews because they didn’t consider them actual people. It wasn’t murder because they were less valuable, less than fully human, & therefore less worthy of life. Can you see any parallels between slavery of the 1800s and abortion today? Slavery proponents said that although biologically human, a slave is not a person, & therefore has no rights; they’re the owner’s property, so no one should interfere with his private concerns; if you think slavery is wrong, then don’t own one—but don’t force your morality on others.
Every abortion is something to be grieved. Not only has the world been robbed a person who could have made a positive impact, it almost always leaves a trail of tears, depression, & guilt. It ruins many relationships & severs marriages. I’ve talked with women who have had abortions, & with young women considering abortion…& I tell them that abortion isn’t a good choice for anyone involved. It’s not good for the baby, the mother, or the father. Don’t compound a previous mistake with another one that’s worse. I also point out that God is merciful & forgiving when we turn to Him. We don’t have to carry the load of shame & guilt when we receive His cleansing through Christ!
This Sunday, churches & people are celebrating the Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, marking the 50th anniversary of Roe V. Wade when abortion was legalized on Jan. 22, 1973. Of course, that “right” was fabricated by 7 men on the Supreme Court because there’s absolutely nothing about it in the Constitution, & it was never voted on by the citizens or their representatives. So we rejoiced last year when the current Supreme Court overturned Roe! That meant each state was free to decide for itself. Some states have made great progress, like Texas where abortions are estimated to have plummeted nearly 99%—meaning about 50,000 lives have been saved since September. But other states, like Michigan, have gone the other way. In the last election, Michigan went from the frying pan into the fire by expanding abortion rights.
No matter what happens politically, this issue isn’t going away because this is about killing babies. All the other extenuating circumstances about pregnancy pale in comparison to the main issue. Last week, the new US House of Representatives passed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. Hundreds of babies have survived abortion, but only 10 states even require reporting it. But it just barely passed, & it unbelievably & outrageously is not expected to pass the US Senate. How is this even a debate? How can elected legislators ok killing babies outside the womb? In the same way they ok killing babies in the womb. Why not?! At least its consistent. There’s no biological or logical distinction 1 second before birth & 1 second after. One Michigan representative who voted against it, offered a defense for abortion by quoting Jeremiah 1:5, where God says, “I knew you before I formed you and I placed you in your mother’s womb.” She said it’s ok to abort because it’s the “mother’s” womb, not the government’s. How twisted. That verse means that God gives personhood to unborn children, so they belong to Him.