To Life

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live…

Deuteronomy 30:19

My “one word” for 2020 is life.

Here’s why. About a year ago I heard a speaker say, “If you died today and the Lord asked, ‘What did you do with the days you were given?’ what would you feel you had not done?”

I immediately knew my response. From childhood I have been been distraught by abortion. Yet, I have only given money to pro-life causes; I’ve never put feet to my faith. And so, I just participated in my second March for Life last week.

While abortion is highly politicized, it really isn’t a political issue, but a human rights one. If you are about ready to stop reading, I encourage you to lean in and consider 11 simple truths that have challenged me:

1. For most women in crisis pregnancies, their heart’s desire is to have their babies, but financial, relational and other pressures make that desire seem overwhelming and out of reach. Abortion feels like a quick solution to their problems.
2. If a woman has an abortion the chances of her having a second are very high–because abortion doesn’t solve any problems, it compounds them and creates new ones.
3. It’s one thing to support life in principle, but as believers in Christ we are called to act. This means coming alongside women in crisis and supporting their journey to give their babies life and to find housing, work, child care, a supportive church and other resources that will allow their children to thrive. (That’s the work of the Human Coalition.)
4. Abortion has taken 60 million lives since 1973. This is based on the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks statistics for Planned Parenthood. Because there is no legal reporting requirement these estimates are low. This death toll exceeds those killed in the Chinese Revolution, the Russian Revolution under Stalin and the Holocaust.
5. More than 3,000 babies are aborted every day in the U.S. That’s more than one million babies a year, making abortion the leading cause of death in the U.S., far outpacing heart disease (647,000) and cancer (602,000).
6. Planned Parenthood, the leading abortion provider, was founded by eugenicist Margaret Sanger. You can read about her worldview here. She promoted “peace” by eliminating “undesirables” from society, predominantly those with disabilities and African-Americans.
7. Sanger’s fingerprint is still evident today; the number of Black babies aborted in NYC outpaced the number born last year, and the rate of abortion among Black women far outpaces that of white women. (See this The Wall Street Journal piece to learn more.)
8. Abortion is a barbaric procedure that either uses toxic chemicals to poison the baby or physicians to literally dismember the child and remove it piece by piece. It is gruesome and cruel. I’ve seen videos of the babies withdrawing from the forceps and fighting for their lives. I don’t think it is intellectually honest to be pro-choice without facing yourself the reality of what you’re supporting. Abby Johnson, the Planned Parenthood center director profiled in the movie “Unplanned” became pro-life 19 years into her role after witnessing her first abortion.
9. Planned Parenthood maintains quotas for its centers and sells the tissues and organs of these babies, tailoring their procedures to preserve their value. David Daleiden of The Center for Medical Progress faces prison time for exposing this, but the harsh reality of this black market is undeniable. (Again I refer you to The Wall Street Journal.)
10. A baby’s DNA is completely unique from its mother’s from day one. That means that from the moment of conception a baby is a completely unique human being, residing in and relying on its mother’s womb for a safe place until it can sustain itself outside the womb. It is never not human and it is never part of the mother’s body. Therefore an unborn human should have all the rights of a born human.
11. Those who promote choice claim to be pro-woman. Yet half of these aborted babies are female. And most women seeking abortions are in desperate situations, making tragic, permanent decisions in response to temporary problems. Wouldn’t the more loving and supportive position be to help them address these pressures instead and realize their heart’s desire?

Will you commit to become more knowledgeable about abortion?

Will you support one of the many organizations, like the Human Coalition, doing the hard work to support women in crisis and help them remove the pressures they face, rather than the children they carry?

Or will you choose not to see what is too uncomfortable and messy to acknowledge, that our civilization is allowing the annihilation of millions of children? Ask yourself the Human Coalition’s proverbial question, “If we were talking about toddlers outside the womb, would you have the same ambivalence?”

The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer