Abortion

The Unthinkable Epidemic

From a youth, the thought of abortion has been unthinkable and unacceptable. When I was a young teen, my mother told me her friend’s housemaid had recently had an abortion. The more I thought about it, the more unacceptable it became to the point that it nearly made me physically sick. Even at the young and inexperienced-in-life age, I was very sensitive to all that is wrong with abortion; I couldn’t understand how a mother could kill her unborn child. Perhaps having been an infant in a foster home without a forever family made me more sensitive to the plight of unwanted or unplanned pregnancies. Perhaps it was my sensitive heart that refused to believe it was an acceptable answer to a difficult situation.

I’ve grown to be so disturbed by things I’ve learned about the abortion industry since that time. I could very well have been a statistic. I will often share my story when I speak at conferences to show that God has a purpose for every life regardless how that life began. For me, life began with a father married to another woman, a mother in her teens, and a grandmother who demanded my mother’s parental rights be severed. I’ll never know the details of why or how it all happened, but my pregnant-again mother was forced to sign the papers and I was suddenly a ward of the State. The baby she was carrying at the time was taken at birth and placed in the same home where we both waited for our forever families.

For the mother and father in a difficult situation, adoption is the best alternative to abortion (other than raising the child themselves). Abortion not only violently kills a living child, but it sends a very dangerous message to society: violence is an acceptable way to get whatever you want. Nothing could be farther from the truth! It’s no wonder we have groups advocating violence when they don’t get their way or don’t get the recognition they believe they deserve. This MUST be stopped by ending the unwarranted and unthinkable assault on the tiniest of human life within the mother’s womb.

In 1994 Mother Teresa delivered a no-holds-barred pro-life speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in front of President and Mrs. Clinton and Al and Tipper Gore. Mother Teresa is quoted  at the Hilton Hotel as saying:

But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself.

And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.

By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems.

And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion.

Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.

Point by point, Sister Teresa laid it out very plainly. There is so much respect for this woman’s ministry worldwide yet her words regarding the sanctity of life and the abortion issue are, for the most part, disregarded or brushed off as old-fashioned and out-of-touch with today’s realities. I beg to differ!

We, the Body of Christ as a whole, have a responsibility toward these precious little ones, those who, by no fault of their own, are living amid an unthinkable violent battleground. I recently learned that 21% of all American pregnancies (not ending in miscarriage) end in abortion. Unthinkable! And, we sit by idly wishing someone would do something but fail to exert much, if any, effort to get involved.

Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work? (Proverbs 24:11-12)

Pray with me … pray for moms and dads who see no other alternative; pray that those who know someone making a decision will reach out and embrace them with the love of Jesus Christ and offer help to make a decision for life. Pray for the Body of Christ to stop standing in judgment and begin reaching out to those hurting because of the choices they made. Pray for ‪#‎Life‬. Pray that somehow we can ‪#‎StopAbortion‬. Pray for compassion toward those who have had abortions and be the loving arms of Jesus embracing the hurting and guilt-laden.

It’s time we stopped complaining about this unthinkable epidemic or pointing fingers at those who support abortion rights, and begin to be the image of the Father to the lost, the hurting and the helpless.,