It’s a topic no one wants to think about. It’s so incredibly sad and tragic, and if you are openly against abortion, you will be met with much opposition and confrontation. So what happens? We retreat because we don’t want to be uncomfortable. Meanwhile, abortions are happening all over America every day, looming over us like a gigantic bloody elephant in the room.
I remember being in sixth grade when I learned what an abortion was. It was during our “Family Planning” class also known as “Sex Ed”. The teacher and videos we watched taught us about the human reproductive system and how babies are made. I remember my freckled cheeks burned bright red as I awkwardly giggled with my friends. The lesson also involved a discussion about abstinence. We were taught that if the path of abstinence was “not possible” that we needed to make sure to use contraceptives to avoid both diseases and “unwanted pregnancies.” If you found yourself in a situation where you had become pregnant, well there were solutions to that as well: Keeping the child, adoption, or abortion. Abortion was described as a “safe medical procedure that would terminate pregnancy.” Seemed to me at that young age like a quick and easy fix to a mistake that someone might make. After all, everyone should have the “right to decide when to start a family” right? I think I was 12 when I decided I was “Pro Choice”…it seemed like the “American” thing to do to me.
Fast forward 16 years when I was pregnant with my son. I went in for my first ultrasound, and to my shock, I saw a little tiny baby on the screen wonderfully bouncing around! It even looked like he could be sucking his thumb. My heart began to burst with a love and joy I had never experienced before! I couldn’t believe how “alive” he already was. Everything I had been previously taught told me that a baby wasn’t really a baby until much further on in the pregnancy. This however was a baby! My Baby! It was at that point I began to understand the value, preciousness, and miraculous nature of each life.
As I began to learn more and more about my own pregnancy, and of my developing child, my heart became more and more uneasy in regards to the topic of abortion. I started doing research to find out what it entailed. I was horrified and sickened when I learned of the grim details surrounding the dark world of abortion. I was also surprised to hear about the extremely dangerous health risks pregnant women are potentially subjected to during an abortion procedure. These include: infection, infertility, death, and suicide rates for post abortive women are six to seven times higher than woman who have never had an abortion. That is terrifying! Even with all of this new information, like many, I was still on the fence. I just couldn’t get over the widespread notion that, “it’s a woman’s right to choose what she does with her own body”.
Then I had a “light bulb” moment: the baby inside of the womb of a pregnant mother is a completely different and unique person. The developing baby in the womb IS NOT an extension of the mother’s body. She has no right to hurt or kill the precious life God is choosing to develop inside of her body. Then I watched the movie “180” produced by Evangelist Ray Comfort and that’s when everything changed in my heart and mind. There was no turning back. I could never call myself “pro-choice” again. I could find no reason to justify the killing of an innocent baby. If you have 33 minutes I highly recommend watching it. It’s an extremely well made and informative production.
After I had this pivotal moment, I began to be a little vocal here and there about abortion. I had a friend who has been passionate about pre born since high school, and the Lord had put the burden for saving our pre born neighbors on my Pastor’s heart as well. I began to ask more and more questions and learn more about laws surrounding abortion. I also learned about the famous Roe vs. Wade trial, how the bill legalizing abortion was passed, and what exactly that landmark moment in our nation’s history entailed. I also, more importantly, began to learn what scripture said about God’s creation of people and child sacrifice/murder.
Psalm 139:13-16
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
1 Corinthians 3:16-17
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
Deuteronomy 27:25
“‘Cursed be anyone who takes a bribe to shed innocent blood.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.
Proverbs 31:8
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed.
It is estimated Planned Parenthood performs nearly 350,000 abortions per year. Since Roe vs Wade, there has been an estimated 57 MILLION abortions performed at Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics in the United states.
That’s 57,000,0000 Babies MURDERED in the last 42 years .
Let that set in for a second.
Yet this subject has been pushed to the side again and again because no one wants to think about little babies getting murdered. Christians have been crying out against the murder of the unborn for 42 years since the legalization of abortion in America. However, the majority of our national society brush groups off as extremists claiming women have the “right” to murder their own babies. They cold heartedly justify these actions by dehumanizing developing babies by calling them: fetuses, clumps of tissue, or cells. But they know. We all know. It’s a baby.
So what will we say when our grandchildren ask us where we were during the infant holocaust? What did we do to help? Did we fight? Or did we just continue on with our lives and look the other way?
I pray you will fight.
I pray you get on your knees and pray every day for these babies and for the mothers and fathers considering abortion.
I pray that we will be the salt and light to this world and be a voice to those who cannot speak for themselves.
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”