Today I sat down with my four year old daughter and we began a new book – “First Big Book of Why?” The first section deals with our bodies and the first lesson was that we – you – are special and unique. Nobody else on earth today, yesterday, or tomorrow will have your fingerprints, footprints, or tongue prints! As I closed the book I was reminded of her 20 week ultrasound – my favorite memory of it being the way her tiny upper lip hung slightly over her lower, something I still notice to this day. A miracle is what it is, God creating a living, breathing, thinking soul.
Yet, tonight I am grieved because a generation of people with their own fingerprints, personalities, and idiosyncrasies are not with us. They have been eliminated. I watched a video which records one of these individual’s arms being held up by tweezers – hands containing fingerprints of a one-of-a-kind person who was destroyed. This person was aborted by their mother. I recall Isaiah 49:15, “Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you.” A mother doesn’t have final authority to determine the value of their child, God does. Life matters because the souls our bodies house are everlasting. Whether that body is in the first trimester of life or in its last weeks of life does not matter. Whether that body is healthy or not does not matter. Whether that body is wanted or not does not matter.
Although grieved, I am not surprised. Abortion didn’t begin in 1973 and it won’t end if we defund or outlaw it. Abortifacients and procedures to abort aren’t novel, sacrificing children for the sake of our own will isn’t new. The Lord doesn’t call us to sacrifice others; He has sacrificed His one and only Son for us. As our response, we present our bodies as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1). When a child is conceived and it would prove to be a burden upon the parents, something will need to be sacrificed, and it isn’t the child.
I can hear the protests that I am judgmental and anti-choice. Women, we have been propagandized to and deceived. Our bodies were created for a child to abide in, not be aborted in. Yes, I am making a judgment call – abortion is unequivocally wrong because it is the taking of a life. We do have a choice: follow our own will or obey God. It isn’t going to be easy and it will require sacrifice. God knows each child in the womb and the scared mother who is carrying them. He loves and cares for you even in the midst of your seemingly hopeless situation. Allow Him to work in your life through the child you may be carrying. If that time has left and the choice to abort has already been made, please do not hear my words as an added burden. Seek forgiveness from Him and use your experience for His glory.
To the church, we have been silent for too long in fear that the world will hate us. We have offered empty platitudes. We have not shown the world that we value life at every stage and in that the world has called us out on our own hypocrisy. We have loved in word and not in deed.
Every person conceived bears the image of God – imago dei. The heavens and the Sierras we see pale in comparison to who God creates in the womb. Praise Him for you are fearfully and wonderfully made.
“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 were none of them.” Psalm 139:16