In recent weeks the abortion debate has reached a fever pitch. Especially since the Supreme Court draft leak.
I don’t pretend to comprehend the enormous weight a single mother-to-be feels when she finds herself pregnant and without a husband or network to support her. But I have gasped out loud several times lately at the things people claim are more reasonable alternatives than carrying the child to term.
Consider these news stories and statistical findings:
- Restricting abortion access harms the children abortion-seeking women already have 1
- Low wages, poverty: The financial toll of cutting abortion rights 2
- …beyond the mental and physical health outcomes, economic wellbeing also plummets when people can’t access abortion care.3
- The unwanted pregnancy, and the inability to end it, nearly ensured that those women, their partners and their children lived in poverty. 3
I don’t disagree with the cold reality these news articles state—that there is a tremendous emotional, financial, and physical strain on the mother who carries an unplanned pregnancy to term. Neither do I doubt that there will be significant hardship upon the child to be born, as well as upon other children she may already have.
However, is the solution to kill the unborn baby? What about the strain on that child’s life? Is death better for the child than poverty or lack of education? Should we thrust them uninvited into eternity because if they were to be born and we had to care for them they might hamper our lifestyle?
Would we permit such a course of action for an infant already born? for a toddler? or preschooler? Of course not! So how is it okay to destroy a child while still in the womb?
Of course, the abortion argument is that the fetus in the womb is not yet a child so it’s ok to terminate the pregnancy. But God makes no such distinction between fetus and child. God says we were known individuals to Him before He even formed us in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5). And that He superintended our prenatal development as He formed us (Isaiah 44:2) and knit us together in the womb (Psalm 139:13-14).
And since it is God who enables a woman to conceive a life within (Ruth 4:13), shall we presume to end what God began? And shall we snuff out these who bear His image, however small they may be? (Genesis 1:27)
I urge you to pray that the Supreme Court will hand down a ruling that will not further anger the Giver of Life. A ruling that will give at least some protection to the most defenseless—those “who are being led away to death” in the name of healthcare (Psalm 82:3-4; Proverbs 24:11).
1 https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/11/1/1809032/-Study-When-a-Woman-is-Denied-an-Abortion-Her-Children-Suffer
2 https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/press-play-with-madeleine-brand/rode-wade-cops-film-reviews-food/financial-burden-women-abortion
3 https://19thnews.org/2021/09/abortion-economy-poverty-texas-law/