I have been thinking a lot about abortion
lately. I know it is because I have a
daughter who is not yet born. Let me
tell you what this is like, many of you already know, but let me tell you
anyway. I can feel her sometimes feel
her head against my wife’s stomach, feel her kick my hand. Kayla feels her with far greater intensity
and intimacy. I came home yesterday and
Kayla was all smiles, “She had the hiccups!” she said. My child has a head,
hands, a brain, lungs, and hiccups . . . but no right to live.
Do not mistake what I am saying, our
daughter is not threatened by abortion.
Zoey, God willing, will experience life.
But how many will die? The answer: millions. Millions of babies have died and will go on
dying unless something changes, babies with hearts and hands and hiccups. They have eyes, but will never see the beauty
of day, they have lungs but will never know what it is like to take a
breath. Their lives will be taken, not
by a foreign tyrant or serial killer, but by the woman who would have raised
them.
Let me take a moment to clarify
something: Kayla being pregnant has made me aware of how pregnancy is a
women’s rights issue. I may often speak
of pregnancy as something we are going through, but I have become
poignantly aware that the curse (and I use this term literally, not as a joke)
of pregnancy is not something men—no matter how sensitive—can truly share in. I
have made midnight McDonald’s runs and washed more than my fair share of
dishes, but that is nothing to having your bladder squashed, your kidneys
kicked, your back hurting, your body changing, oh yeah, there is the whole
labor issue as well.
Added to this is the fact that if I
decide I don’t want to raise this child, I would have a way out. I would be a coward and would betray every
notion of my faith to do so, but society would accept me if I left. This child
can come without me. I am
expendable. If Zoey is to be born, Kayla
must be there, she must suffer. All this
to say that I recognize that pregnancy, and by default abortion, is an issue of
women’s rights.
But abortion, more importantly, is
about human rights. I have acknowledged
above that I understand that women face difficulties men cannot know in regards
to pregnancy, I have seen this as an expectant father, but I have also felt my
daughter kick and move and have seen her picture on a sonogram. She is also a human. Should she die because, by no fault of her
own, her birth is an inconvenience?
No! But millions of innocent
children just like her have, and unless things change, millions more will.
So how do we fix this problem? It is certainly not by bombing abortion
clinics, or oppressing mothers who have chosen to abort children in the past. Even though I pray for legislation that would
defend the rights of the unborn, I know this would not fix the problem. The problem is that sin has broken us to the
point that there are mothers who would kill their own children, and a society
that will hold their hand and say to them, “It looks like a person, it has a
mind like a person, it feels pain like a person, but really it’s just a fetus,
kill it if it makes your life easier.
This can only be fixed by a healing of our hearts.
This is my prayer this morning as I dwell on
abortion and on being an expectant father, “God, please change the hearts of
mother’s who would abort their children.
Father, I know they are not monsters, but a monstrous lie has gripped
their hearts. Please place in their
hearts a love for their child. Guide
people into their lives who will offer support, whether that support is help
with raising their child, medical help, adoption, or any other help you see fit
to provide. LORD God, please change the
hearts of society. Oh Father, that our
society would value life! May this be
more than political jargon Father, may it become a reality. I pray for those of
us in the Kingdom, convict every one of us that You, our King, demand that we
stand against injustice. Show us how to stand against the injustice of abortion
with prophetic voices, loving hearts, and busy hands. Call us to adopt, call us to care, let us
reach out to hurting mothers and expectant mothers with love. Deliver innocent
life God! Amen.”
