Trying to stay as informed as possible during this election year, I was watching a town meeting. The first person stood up to speak. “If the Democrats can maintain control of the senate,” the woman began her question, “and Roe v. Wade is upheld--- God willing…”
I couldn’t even hear the rest of her question since the resounding noise of what she had said was echoing in my head: The phrase “God willing…” was being used in connection with abortion! As if anyone could possibly think that abortion was willed by our heavenly Father.
Pro-life.
Pro-Choice.
The debate is heating up again.
But has this debate ever not been in the forefront?
Once where I was teaching, one of my fifteen-year-old students announced to another, who announced to another, until it finally got back to me, that she was having an abortion the next week. I felt sick. I mourned for two lives lost –the unborn baby’s life and the innocence of the child who was pregnant and making this life-ending “choice” that would haunt her forever.
As a public school teacher, my hands were tied. I couldn’t offer any faith-based discussion to this child. All I could do was pray for her –for her baby. And I did.
The next week came as did the end of the school year.
Then the start of the next school year began.
That’s when I saw the girl in the hallway and noticed the ever-telling baby-bump.
I certainly can’t celebrate a young child making a choice to engage in activities a few months earlier that put her at that life changing moment of teenage pregnancy. But I can celebrate a choice to not kill a baby.
I don’t know what her plans were. And I make no pretense of the fact that statistics point to challenges for that unborn baby if this teenage mother decided against adoption. But that baby had already beaten the odds and was living.
I will continue to pray for that young girl and her baby –as well as all women who daily are told by our society that it’s their choice whether or not the baby they are carrying lives or dies.
And I will continue to pray that fewer women will be in the position of having to make this choice. And that some day it will not be a choice at all. One day, the right of killing an unborn child will be universally understood to be wrong.
God willing.
I couldn’t even hear the rest of her question since the resounding noise of what she had said was echoing in my head: The phrase “God willing…” was being used in connection with abortion! As if anyone could possibly think that abortion was willed by our heavenly Father.
Pro-life.
Pro-Choice.
The debate is heating up again.
But has this debate ever not been in the forefront?
Once where I was teaching, one of my fifteen-year-old students announced to another, who announced to another, until it finally got back to me, that she was having an abortion the next week. I felt sick. I mourned for two lives lost –the unborn baby’s life and the innocence of the child who was pregnant and making this life-ending “choice” that would haunt her forever.
As a public school teacher, my hands were tied. I couldn’t offer any faith-based discussion to this child. All I could do was pray for her –for her baby. And I did.
The next week came as did the end of the school year.
Then the start of the next school year began.
That’s when I saw the girl in the hallway and noticed the ever-telling baby-bump.
I certainly can’t celebrate a young child making a choice to engage in activities a few months earlier that put her at that life changing moment of teenage pregnancy. But I can celebrate a choice to not kill a baby.
I don’t know what her plans were. And I make no pretense of the fact that statistics point to challenges for that unborn baby if this teenage mother decided against adoption. But that baby had already beaten the odds and was living.
I will continue to pray for that young girl and her baby –as well as all women who daily are told by our society that it’s their choice whether or not the baby they are carrying lives or dies.
And I will continue to pray that fewer women will be in the position of having to make this choice. And that some day it will not be a choice at all. One day, the right of killing an unborn child will be universally understood to be wrong.
God willing.
No comments:
Post a Comment