No Choice but to be Pro-Life

I am trying to figure out what’s going on with our country around the abortion issue.  Seeing New York and Virginia in the news lately legislating and promoting late term abortions and even in some cases infanticide has been downright shocking.

I am pro-life.  I am pro-life unapologetically so.  And by pro-life I mean that I am against abortions.  I see abortion as the taking of a human life so that should not surprise you.  What scares me is the thought that some people might see abortion as the taking of a human life and are still pro-choice.  I tend to give people who are pro-choice the benefit of the doubt that they must see what’s in the womb as not a human life (even though it’s not long before what’s in the womb happens to have a heart beat and is able to feel pain). 

And if it’s okay with you I can do without the argument that people who are pro-life are not so pro-life when it comes to issues after a baby has been born.  All that does is confuse the issue.  Everyone should know by now that the term pro-life refers to being against abortions only.  I am happy to have a good rigorous discussion with pro-choicers about all those other issues, but they have nothing to do with the pro-life stance. 

To me in an ideal world everyone would be pro-life.  It wouldn’t even be an issue. Then all the politicians could have their ongoing discussions about what to do with health-care, gun control, welfare, and all sorts of other issues affecting the quality of our life, but everyone would agree that babies deserve the chance to be born into this world and not killed.

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.  Psalm 139:13-16

Here’s another reason I am pro-life.  I’m an adoptive parent.  I am eternally grateful to a woman in Vietnam and a woman in Russia who I will never meet, because those two women gave birth to my son and my daughter.  Giving up a child for adoption when you don’t feel like you will be ready to take care of that child is one of the most courageous, selfless, and beautiful acts imaginable.  I’m quite sure it was inconvenient and hard for the birth-mothers of my children, but I sure am glad they did the right thing.  Adoption is a choice everyone should be able to get behind.  Actually, I long for the day when pro-choice would mean something entirely different.  I long for the day when pro-choice would mean either the child is kept or the child is put up for adoption.  That’s a pro-choice stance I could get behind.

So why am I writing this blog?  As a pastor I felt like I had to.  I felt like not somehow speaking up in an environment that is growing more and more toxic towards the unborn would go against my role as a Christian leader.  God put it on my heart to speak up for those who can’t speak for themselves, and I’m glad I did.