My Pro-Life Story: Conclusion

The background for this post is in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Although God never causes suffering, sadness, or evil, He does allow them in the world, and He brings forth beauty and glory and good from them. He’s outside of time, and He sees the big picture—the whole of history, all in one exquisite tapestry—all at once. This is why we can think of Him having a perfect and divine plan, of which any one of us is a tiny, vital, part.

When it comes to discerning God’s plan for my life, I tend to be quite obtuse. It is often necessary for Him to hit me over the head (or shove me to my knees, as the ever wise and insightful Rebecca says) before I get my head out of the sand. My three miscarriages, at progressively later gestation dates, surrounded by many smaller encounters and exposures with thoughts and issues related to life, got me on board the pro-life ship in a big way. (He showed me His thoughts on birth control, too, in a similar manner, but that’s a topic for another post.)

Science clearly shows us that life begins at conception. It’s not a matter of opinion at all; it’s the truth. In 1973, when Roe v. Wade passed, they didn’t have the ultrasound technology that we have now to see the little hands and feet, the tiny thumb-sucking, the tiny—but strong—heart beating. As another ever-wise-and-insightful dear friend put it, following her first baby’s birth, “Go ahead, have your ‘choice,’ but just recognize what it is you’re choosing to do.”

It’s tempting to view abortion as a way to simply turn back the clock on an unwanted pregnancy. But empirical evidence shows us that it almost never works out that way. It’s always tragic and life-altering for everyone involved. The only exception—and one could certainly argue that it’s a tragedy for them too—may be those with an ugly, profit-driven agenda behind abortion. Abortion is a billion-dollar industry, after all, which enjoys the support of very influential people in very high places. Of course those whose livelihood depends on abortion are hard-selling the myth that abortion is a simple commodity with no moral fallout.

If you don’t agree, and you’ve bought their spin that “reproductive freedom” is a good thing for women, then you may not be aware of the statistics on the percentage of cases that involve women being coerced or threatened into terminating their baby’s life. Or perhaps you haven’t considered that having the easy option to just “take care of it” tends to make the pregnancy the woman’s responsibility alone, when it actually isn’t.

If you think, as I used to, that a baby in his mother’s womb isn’t fully a human baby, because he’s connected to his mom and dependent upon her, then perhaps you haven’t considered the fact that this same argument applies to a three-day-old, three-month-old, or three-month-old nursing newborn.

As Jen Fulwiler points out here, in one of my favorite abortion-related articles of all time, identifying a specific group of people (African-Americans in the 18th century, Jews in the 20th century, baby girls in ancient Greece) as something other than human has led to atrocities throughout the course of history. Abortion is the atrocity-related issue of our time, which is exactly why it is so divisive.

Nobody wants to offend their friends by talking about a tragic, horrifying topic that we can hardly even bear to think about. But that’s just what the abortion industry wants us to do: Keep it hush-hush. Don’t think too much about what is really going on.

Nobody wants unsafe, back-alley abortions. Nobody wants babies to come into the world unloved or uncared for. Nobody wants the government—God forbid—telling us what to do with our bodies. No one is against freedom. But laws, after all, exist to protect the weakest members of society; do they not? Certainly in a country founded upon the principles of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," the right to life includes everyone?

People need to understand what science is telling us about the miracle of human life. It’s far more amazing and beautiful than our society acknowledges. Society would have us settle for a demeaned self-concept that enshrines transient physical pleasure and short-term convenience as the highest accomplishments we can hope for. We deserve better.

The story continues, here.