I recently had a “conversation” on facebook with a friend, whom I care for greatly. Our conversation was on abortion. It was brief and very apolitical. She said in the courser of our conversation that there are some “good (justifiable) reasons for abortion” and “very negative reasons”. I explained to her that I consider abortion wrong in every instance and would get back to her shortly with “my story” to explain why I felt so.
Abortion is messy. It’s wrong, but like most things in life, it’s messy. We know in our heart that killing a human in the womb is against all things that are right. I can also acknowledge that making a choice like keeping a baby to grow to term, like most right decisions, is often extremely difficult.
So how does my story apply to this topic. Well, here you are….
B., our first daughter, is born. Belinda, my wife, wanted to have her baptized. I had no idea what that meant or entailed, but I played along. I even professed my faith in front of the Methodist church in Highland Springs, without really meaning a word. However, that was the first place that I began to see the love of Christ in people through our pastor.
Two years later, we had K., our second daughter….life was good.
Two years later, we got pregnant again with C., my son. We had extra testing done on C.’s pregnancy. Things were fine.
One day the doctors asked Belinda to take an amniocentesis. She was dead set against it. I tell you the rest of this story to illustrate three points. One, how wretched and self centered of a sinner I was, and we all can be at times. Two, to show how big God’s grace is. Three, to let you see how much poor Belinda puts up with. I essentially forced Belinda to take the test. I looked at her lying on the cold, steel table and said, “Belinda, you need to take this test. If we have a special needs child, our marriage won’t take it.” In essence I was saying that if C. has “issues” it’s best to kill him than to accept the awesome gift God has blessed us with in our third child, my only son!
God knew what was going on. The test came back fine. Think of that for a minute. God was completely in control. He knew the strife that a funky amnio test would cause. It came back clean.
Fast forward to present day. C. is here, no thanks to me, but to God alone. C. does have special needs, but my life would be so much less without him. He is my dude, and I love him. His special needs have also helped illuminate the passage in 2 Corinthians where Paul is talking about the thorn he has and God telling him that His grace is sufficient.
Now many may say, “Well that’s fine for you Chris, but you don’t know how hard it is for me.” Or, “I’m only pregnant because of some terrible thing that happened.” I hear you, and I understand how hard your difficulties must be, BUT life is life is life.
If I decided that having a son like C. was too difficult after he was born because he couldn’t talk until he was about 2, can’t walk now without assistive technology, or couldn’t go to the bathroom until a few months ago, would it be ok to kill him? NO, of course not!
If my dying grandmother, who lived for about a year with severe dementia, placed a burden on our family more that what we could handle, would it be ok to kill her? Nope!
Please hear me. I will not invoke politics here. I will only invoke our consciences and the one and only God that gave us that conscience. Killing a baby because it is inconvenient, no matter how difficult the circumstances, is wrong. As the Lord says in Jeremiah 1:5, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.”
Let me insert some pictures I came across recently to illustrate my point. Life with C., HAS been more difficult than with most kids. But I count him a blessing that I almost missed because I was open to the idea of killing him before he even was born. You’ll see in the pictures below that C. is awesome!
Now, I know that people will still say, “You just don’t understand.” Or, “C. is relatively healthy.” You might be right! If you’ve stayed with me this long, please watch the below video of a family that knew long before their first child was born that he would probably die shortly after he was born. Listen to how the couple praises the God of life throughout one of the toughest storms a family can have.
Do we as Americans have the ”right” to kill our babies in their mothers’ wombs? Yes. Is it ever right? Simply put, no.
