It’s not a political issue for me – really.It’s a source of unspeakable sadness.
To appreciate my perspective, understand I came up through the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties.
I was there for the dawning of the age of Aquarius when all the long- haired, tie-dyed promises of the future came walking over Capitol Hill carrying folk guitars and peace signs.
People believed in people. Our heroes were Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Bobby Kennedy and we honestly thought we could hear the answers blowin’ in the wind.
Bang!
Hope bled out on so many platforms, balconies, hotel kitchens, and jungle floors.
But the bleeding didn’t end there.
My generation knew about holocausts so we weren’t going to tolerate them in our times.
But then, we stumbled headlong into the killing fields of Cambodia, the tribal feuds of Rwanda, China under Mao and the conflict in Darfur.
The piles of human skulls buried in mass graves testify to our lack of power.
So, it is incomprehensibly sad to me that we can know of our own domestic killing fields and not stop to mourn the dead.
I can’t bear to look at the statistics today. The numbers for 2012.
I do know that in 2009, 87,000 abortions were performed in New York City alone. 41% of NYC pregnancies end in abortion. Only a headline because a bishop made some people uncomfortable by calling attention to it.
Uncomfortable is the least of what we should feel.
Even before we consider abortions we’ve promoted and enabled beyond our borders, the loss of human life is staggering.
Today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The number of children who have been aborted in the U.S. is in the double digit millions.
Devaluing their own lives as well as the lives created accidentally, incidentally by their actions and by all the choices that they made along the way to the final choice.
It’s complicated. I know.
There are cultural, personal, societal, economical, physical factors. I know.
But tell that to the millions of unborn American human beings who have no voice, no choice, no hope of ever writing their own stories this side of glory.
They deserve to be remembered.
They deserve to be respected.
They deserve to be the lives that were not lost in vain. They deserve to be the lives that slapped us in the face and woke us up to the value of every human life so that we found a way forward that didn’t involve killing the most vulnerable in our midst.
God made this promise in Genesis 9:5: “And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.”
Even if we forget them, God will not.
This I believe.
There is forgiveness, purchased with the spilling of more blood, the pure blood of Jesus Christ. For all of us who have remained silent as these lives were taken, for all of us who participated on any level in their demise, for all of us who changed the channel of our souls when the topic arose – there is forgiveness.
But it must be preceded by repentance.
We have become a sensitive people. We put people out of work to protect wildlife. We change our daily diets so nothing with a face will suffer. We cut off aid to needy countries until they promise to value the lives trying to survive within their borders.
What about the lives trying to survive our wombs? Will we not be moved by these faces?
Human life – every human life – deserves to be defended, valued, sheltered, remembered, and given a chance to know its own possibility. I know that many people who have survived the womb still don’t have the basics of life but they had the chance to breathe, to cry out, to debut their stories.
In Isaiah 31:15 is this prophecy: “This is what the LORD says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
Where is Rachel? Where has she gone? When did she stop weeping and join those who sought her own flesh and blood?
I don’t know all the answers but I do know this: there should be more weeping.
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This is a very heavy topic. People hush hush over it, it is something that we don’t want to hear and we don’t want to see. There is very little we can do as long as we have the power to decide who shall live and who shall be discarded before birth. We should cry.
We can do all God gives us to do. Pray. Speak. Write. Love. Weep with intent.
Thank you for this painful and poignant blog. I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t mourn for the lost babies, and there are days, when I’m more intimately connected with one who’s life has been taken, I do weep. I will NEVER be able to wrap my head around the thick, dark veil that has blinded so many. Christian and non-Christian alike. God says He has known each of us from before we were in our mother’s wombs. Yet, we have the audacity to play God and pretend we understand what ‘life’ means and when it begins. I cannot fathom the loss as well as the cultural impact the murder of so many children has had on us. I often wonder how long God will tolerate our willingness to be ignorant. Here are some more stats from Planned Parenthood alone. It makes it clear that the murder of our children is making some very wealthy. (I recently read that the CEO’s and upper admin of PP make between 2-3OO,OOO$/yr!) But those riches will someday fade in the light of His glory when He asks those unrepentant and accountable about their role in this modern day holocaust. http://hispuregarden.blogspot.com/2012/02/my-silent-scream.html
Thank you, Kathy.
Weeping indeed.
Wow, beautiful!
I’m glad I clicked through (Steven Sawyer) to read this post. Thank you for placing this issue before us in such a God-honoring way. Blessings to you…
Welcome, Mary! I’m glad you came.
I was once director of a Crisis Pregnancy Center. One girl came in for the free pregnancy testing we offered. She said if she were pregnant, she would have an abortion. I asked if she had considered adoption. She said, “What, do all that work and let someone else have the baby? I’d rather abort it.”
Another said, she believed she should have one abortion “because everyone is entitled to one mistake and this pregnancy would be a mistake.” I said, “That kind of reasoning could be taken a little further. If you marry the wrong man, you should be able to kill him. Afterall, the marriage was a mistake, right?” She said, “That’s different. The man would already be alive.” So we had a conversation about life in the womb. Her pregnancy test was positive but I never knew what her decision was. Perhaps thats why I never forgot the conversation–or the baby! MOMMA
Lots to think about there. Thanks for the testimony!
Powerful message, Lori. Thank you…
Thank you Lori.
Why is it that, apparently, the method of killing determines our level of outrage? Why is it that when an abortionist (that’s a doctor who performs death by scalpel) who kills 1000’s gets paid for this effort, and we say, “Keep on…’; yet,when 20+ people are killed at the hand of an individual with a gun, the whole nation screams,the president weeps, congress says, “No more guns…”???
Two thoughts:
I praise God that we know those millions who have been aborted celebrate with Him in His presence…
And from Job 5.10-12 (net), a sense of God’s sense of justice: “He gives rain on the earth, and sends water on the fields;
He sets the lowly on high, that those who mourn are raised to safety.
He frustrates the plans of the crafty so that their hands cannot accomplish what they had planned!
Abortion is killing, just as any other type of murder. It comes as a result of sin and the Fall. However, we know that God is sovereign over everything. I know those children are in heaven with Him. Sometimes I wonder if He allows this to happen because He knew they may not have chosen Him in this life, or maybe the mother’s grief and repentance from this would cause her to look to God and be saved as a result. Who am I to know? Margo http://www.ministryinwords.worpress.com