Here is a link to a very disturbing video about abortion.
I warn you – it is very disturbing. If you can watch it and not be moved please go and see someone immediately!
But please watch it, and please think of ways we can do something about this.
http://theologica.blogspot.com/2008/01/this-is-abortion.html
What will people think if years from now they watch that video, and then find out we did nothing about it?
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January 22, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Goblin
Hi Michael
There really aren’t words to express what is going on in abortion clinics every day in the UK and almost every other country.
I had a brief involvement with the Life organisation when we lived in Guildford. My sad experience is that it was generally the Catholics who felt strongly enough to try to do something about abortion. Evangelicals were fine about adding their names to a petition, but less visible when it came down to actually DOING something.
For those who view abortion as merely another method of contraception there is probably little we could say that would sway their opinion otherwise. Really the only way of us doing something meaningful is to offer young women who find themselves pregnant and facing an abortion a credible alternative. This would often mean providing suitable accommodation, financial support, social support, education about childbirth and childcare and, above all, giving love and acceptance. This also has to continue long term, not just until the baby is born. It may mean effectively adopting the baby and possibly adopting the mother as well at least for a significant period.
Are any of us really up for doing something like this?
January 27, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Steve
I’ve seen enough women contemplating abortion to come to the conclusion that the death of an innocent child is often just one more terrible event in a life filled with them. In some (and certainly not all) cases, the life of the child would be almost irredeemably painful and likely short as well.
I agree with Goblin – the only thing that can be done is to step alongside the mother and support her, quite possible “adopt” her. And I believe that needs to be our response whether she choses to abort or not. Because her life, and the lives of her future children, are also worth saving.
Judgement, apart from being completely un-Biblical, drives people away. Better that we truly communicate “neither do I condemn you,” along with “sin no more.”
Abortions have been procured throughout human history. They will be always with us, like the poor (and often for the same reasons). We need to think not in terms of “doing something about” abortion, but doing something for broken, hurting people. IMHO.
January 28, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Michael
Thanks Steve
There’s always a danger of swinging from one extreme to another.
We identify one side of the issue as ‘the’ problem and focus our efforts on that, only to the detriment of other issues.
I’d like to refer you to an earlier post ‘to catch a fire’… in that I argued for ‘doing something about it’ by helping the women in very practical ways.
I do wonder though whether there is a danger that we so avoid ‘judgement’ that we no longer call sin ’sin’. These women don’t need us to tell them that having an abortion was ok. In fact alot of them realise it wasn’t.
What they need is to be lovingly pointed to the way of forgiveness.
There we can stand with them as fellow sinners at the foot of the cross.
There is healing and life.
Hmmm… I feel another entry coming on…
January 29, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Laura
I haven’t watched the video, but I can imagine the sort of content… I think I’d find it too hard to see. And I wrote this (rather long!) comment a few days ago before Steve’s entry, so apologies for not engaging with it very much.
You’re right Paul that we need to be doing something, and I think that supporting women to continue with the pregnancy is a big part of it (and I think as you said that is probably going to mean adopting mother and child more often than taking the baby from the mother and working it out that way, for what it’s worth…)
But I think this problem starts way back, and we need to be tackling it a bit further down the tree… I heard a programme on miscarriage the other day, in which most of the women felt really hard done by, and like they hadn’t been dealt with well. On the whole it was fairly unhelpful, but there was a common thread particularly amongst those who had lost pregancies early: “no one seemed to realise I felt as though I had lost an actual child!” Because of course it’s impossible for these women (some of whom would have had abortions themselves in the past, one must assume) to act as though they’ve lost an “actual child” when society has redefined that life as a bundle of tissue… Here is where things have gone totally haywire.
Let me try writing a caracature of our society’s picture of pregnancy, maybe you’ll think it’s too far but I assure you everything in it is based on explicit statements made by intelligent friends of mine in the last couple of years: “I will get pregnant when I want to get pregnant, when I’m ready to get pregnant. If I want to get pregnant, and I’m ready to get pregnant then I’ll be able to, if it means IVF or similar that’s fine. But I’ll define when my “pregnancy” is a “baby” and when it isn’t: if I want to be pregnant and I’m ready for it, then it’s a baby. If I don’t want to be, or I don’t feel ready for it, if I’ve got other priorities I feel I can’t let go of, then this pregnancy is a bunch of cells, some tissue that I need to get rid of”
I think there are 2 problems in this thinking: one very obvious and well explored one that the definition of “life” in light of modern ethics has become totally subjective, according to the preferences of the individual woman.
Secondly though, and more pervasively, that pregnancy and family has become commodified as we have become more and more comfortable with the flexibility and convenience of “family planning” that contraception (and also infertility treatment) offers. We need to be careful how far we go down this path in my (contentious) opinion. We (including Christians!) are in danger of thinking that we can have it all, that family is something we can have alongside our chosen lifestyle, whatever shape that may take… and we need to be wary of these tendencies in our own hearts, surely? I’d love to see our churches searching our hearts over whether we can welcome the orphaned and fatherless into our church families through fostering and adoption, and I don’t want to belittle that, but I’d also love to see us doing some soul searching as to the roots our ethic of “family planning” springs from. Is it our own priorities, careers, finances and convenience? Or are we truly submitting this area of our lives to the gospel, letting that drive our practice in an area as private as the bedroom?
So where does this leave room for action? When I was working as a doctor I used to do one little thing, which I discovered by accident, which was always to congratulate a woman coming in to tell me she was pregnant, and be clear (without being too forceful) that this was a life, a baby. I didn’t force it on her, didn’t start with explicit statements, just talked in the terms I would have used for my own wanted pregnancy or that of a friend. (“so, do you know when the baby’s due?” etc) It was amazing the results that this small thing sometimes got. And when I tell people that I’m pregnant (usually as soon as I find out) often they are shocked that we’re not keeping it a secret, but again, it’s given me many opportunities to explain that I tell people about the new life inside me because I believe it is a life and I want to behave in accordance with that belief.
There’s a lot of talk about showing women asking for abortions images of 12 week foetuses etc, the sorts of things I presume are in the video. This is a discussion worth having, but by then we may well have missed the boat. Shouldn’t we use the information we have about foetuses at different ages to educate our children as to the amazing process of the origins of life, and the amazing process that goes on as God knits together a body in it’s mothers womb? It doesn’t have to be massacred foetuses and horror stories, lets see some CGI images of foetuses sucking their fingers in utero. Lets see a 12 week old summersault in its mother’s womb. Because of the prevalence of abortion, these images have become nearly taboo to present in the public domain. But these images represent the reality, and we need to work them into the fabric of our education of adults as well as children.
Lastly, and I apologise if this sounds harsh, we on the pro life side of this issue need to be careful about using language that is inflammatory and unhelpful. There is a lot said about “women who use abortion as a contraceptive”. Now whilst there are girls and women out there, as I know from personal experience, who get into careless and unhelpful habits of sexual behaviour and deal with the consequences hastily, I think Steve is right to say that for most of them they see it as a terrible event, but in a life lived in a world of terrible events: the pregnancy itself is a “terrible event” to most of them. And if they go through with an abortion many of them (and I have seen this too often) are faced with a life filled with “terrible events” as they go through cycles of reality and regret over the choice they made. To really engage with this issue we need to appreciate that no-one on the grassroots sensible level of this debate is arguing that abortion is “just another method of contraception”, but the lesser of many evils in a world wracked with them. The world feels it can offer no better solution, in its fallenness, to this conundrum. Michael has put very eloquently what our response should be to this: to take people to the foot of the cross. And to see there the utter depravity of our world as it’s saviour and king hangs on a tree, but also the glorious promise of the new creation, where these things are no more. What a gospel we have!
January 29, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Mike
Could someone (possibly Steve) tell me what happens to the souls of the children murdered before birth.