A five year old generally doesn't listen too closely to the news, so I was unaware when the Roe v Wade decision made the headlines. As a middle schooler, my conscience was jolted awake when I sat in a sea of hands as the teacher took a poll of who in my class supported abortion. That was a lonely day for my 12 year-old heart. Back then, my classmates didn't have the advantage of pictures of babies, in the womb, sucking their thumbs or recoiling from pain. And what could I do but recite Psalm 139:13-14?
Who was I to say?
What could I do but pray?
Years later, while volunteering at a crisis pregnancy center, I discovered I, myself, was pregnant. We laughed about the baby's bed being a dresser drawer...our apartment was so, so tiny. I was over whelmed and quit my volunteering.
As my baby grew and I felt those first kicks,
I had to wonder how we would care for her.
What I believed by faith became sight during the first ultra-sound.
I had to ask "How can they not see and say: that's life?"
Again, what could I do but pray that things would change...that technology would prove...that "doctors" performing abortions and politicians and scientists and desperate mothers would concede: "that's life"?!
Well it's been 26 years since my first ultra-sound pictures revealed to me our beautiful daughter in utero.
I have known as well, pictures revealing babies I would not get to meet in this life.
Babies still and lifeless, that broke my heart.
Technology has developed at mind-blowing speed. Today most scientists and ethicists concede that indeed, human life DOES begin at conception. A fetus IS a human being after all...according to science.
So, how can it still be that these lives are not protected? Why is it that these unborn human beings are not part of the human rights frenzy that is our culture?
It is because they are still not considered people.
If you thought being human and possessing personhood were one and the same thing, welcome to the new millennia.
Ever hear the phrase : "I think- therefore I am"?
It may be the saying of a 17th century philosopher, but it is alive and well.
We have severed the mind and the emotions from the body. Christians do this as well, when we act as if all that matters is our soul. But a body, mind and soul fully integrated, is exactly what it means to be human.
We have whittled personhood down to simply a state of the mind, (brainwaves excluded).
When proabortionists elevate self-awareness and self-reflective abilities to define personhood, who is safe from their radical pro-death agenda?
Who's next?
I know plenty of full grown adults lacking self-awareness. And what power-driven politician is actually taking time to "self-reflect"?!
The ever fluid definitions of "viability" and personhood reveal that the issue of the rights of the unborn are ignored and commodified because "every man and woman is a law unto themselves". Who gets to say "This is a life worth living, worth giving?" Anyone. There is NO line, no sticking definition because we have removed the One who has defined life- from our minds, our hearts AND most definitely from our bodies.
Think about this if you believe compassion means ending a life because of lack of clear "viability":
Lord Byron had a club foot. He would be of questionable viability today, but he lived and wrote some of the most beautiful words the world has known.
Some of our most inspirational athletes were born without limbs.
We celebrate the music of blind musicians and deaf dancers and actors.
Who among us has NOT been most inspired in our lives by those who have overcome tremendous adversity. And how many precious and loved premature babies, having survived with the development made possible by modern medicine, filled the lives of their families with immeasurable joy? How many adopted babies have filled the waiting and longing arms of moms and dads who cannot have their own?
Which one of us would be so bold as to claim their lives have not been worth living?
And just for thought, Adolf Hitler, Al Capone and Osama Bin Laden were all born perfectly "viable".
