A Young Son Asks His Mom About Abortion

Have you ever had a conversation with a child about abortion? Many have not. In fact, many would not. But apparently my mother has. My mother told me the story once. I didn't remember it ever happening. But apparently as a young child (we're talking under 5, if I remember her story correctly) I asked her what it was. Apparently the conversation went something like this:

Me (likely overhearing something): Abortion? What's that?

Mama (looking for the diplomatic/gentle wording): ...um...well, honey, abortion is when a mommy has baby in her tummy, and decides she doesn't want it anymore. So, she goes to the doctor, so she doesn't have to have her baby. 

Me: WHAT?!! SHE KILLS HER BABY?!! WHY WOULD SHE KILL HER BABY?!!

I don't know what my mom said after that, but apparently my younger self was not fooled, or soothed by the more diplomatic or gentle wording. I guess even at such a young age I knew what it meant. I knew what was really happening. And I was as aghast then as I am today. Brokenhearted over the murder of a cute sacred treasure. Although I take it as evidence of the gracious work of the Holy Spirit in my life at a young age, I also take it as indicating the obviousness of what abortion really is. Not even a small child such as myself was fooled into filing abortion in some clinical or euphemistic or anesthetized category. Such a small child saw through the rouse and the veil that we comfort ourselves with at night, alone in the dark, surrounded by the bloodcurdling echo of silence. Abortion, unfortunately, is no amoral medical procedure, no amoral choice, it is killing, plain and simply. Even a child can see it. Wrapping it in the shroud of medicine or the more highly esteemed Western Cultural ideal of Personal Autonomy will not change what its true nature is. A true nature so clear, so hideous, so morally repugnant that small children are left in horror, in confusion, and in grief--it's murder. 

Indeed, someone who reads this may say that I was inculturated into that kind of response as a child. And perhaps I was. But, my question in response is whether when you started reading this post, you thought or felt like discussing abortion with such a small child was inappropriate, or even cruel. And I question why you reacted that way. Why did your emotional response run to younger me's defense? Is it perhaps because at the end of the day you too see abortion for the murder it is. You wanted to protect me from the evil in the world that is knowing what abortion is and in fact accomplishes, so perhaps in that case your own conscience exposes the true nature of things. And on a similar note, why was it that you rose to my younger self's defense at merely hearing about abortion, when just a few years earlier, you would have celebrated not just my experience abortion via my hearing but via my whole flesh, as my body was torn asunder? Don't the platitudes offered in abortion's defense seem a bit hollow in the face of such a comparison? Likely, you are not convinced by this post, if you came to it reading with the ferocity of cemented conviction in murder's favor. I aim to have come at the issue from a different angle, and do it from a gentle tone. I mean you you no harm. I do actually care about you. And it is because I care about you, and because I care about those who are tempted to commit this particular brand of murder, and above all because I care about the lives of precious children that I long to have see the light of day, that I write this. 

Christian sisters, I know many of you have murdered your children (and playing around with euphemisms will not help you and bring you to find grace and mercy and healing in Christ, but is in its own way a denial of the true evil of the act). And Christian brothers, I also know that many of you have been complicit in many of them, or even the one pushing your significant other to the death chamber. And I want to assure you, one egregious sinner to another, that Jesus does indeed save, forgive, cleanse, and redeem! But that comes after true repentance of the sin. Confess your sin to God the Father and be forgiven and cleansed from all your unrighteousness. If Jesus can forgive, cleanse, and use Paul, the former murderer of Christians, Jesus can forgive, cleanse, and use you the former murderer of children. 

As for those who would claim the Name of Christ, integral to the title Christian, and yet who are still somehow unsure of the evilness of murdering a child in the womb, I say this: Jesus Christ has died for us so that we the guilty may have life and have it more abundantly as if innocent, how is it that we can now advocate for the death of the innocent as though guilty? 

My love to all, brothers and sisters, Christians and others, born and unborn