Almost everyone knows what it means to be pro-life. And now I'm proudly proclaiming it to all within earshot.
Why? Well, it's a complicated plethora of answers to anyone who asks me that question.
A few weeks ago, my youth group watched the movie Come What May. If you haven't seen it, the main gist is that a couple of college students must argue the matter of abortion in a Moot Court. They choose to argue the pro-life side. Caleb, the main character, knows that they will inevitably lose, but Rachel, his legal partner, presses on that they must stand up for what they believe in.
The main theme of the movie is this: Fiat justicia et pereat mundus. "Do the right thing, come what may."
Phylicia Delta (see here.) put it this way: "...They say they're for women's rights. They want little girls to grow up independent and unafraid to be themselves. Let me ask you: how could my daughter have the chance to be herself if I had denied her the right to exsist?"
"You'd say I don't believe in a woman's right to choose. I guess you're right: I don't believe in my right to make another person's choice for them. In this case, that person is my daughter. I chose not to kill her so she could have the right to live."
I'll never forget that day when I was in middle school. My brother, twenty-four at the time, was going to be a dad again. I was eleven, happily -- and impatiently -- awaiting the arrival of my second nephew. I was chattering about it in the car one day when my mom interjected --
"They could lose it, you know."
But of course they wouldn't, right? That's just not the way things work to an eleven-year-old.
"We lost that one before you were born, you know."
No, I hadn't known that. I instantly thought of a conversation my mom and her cousin and had over a year before...Mom had used the words "the One" and "miscarriage"....but my ten-year-old self hadn't let the dots connect. So I had had a brother, just a year older than me, and he had died. Not because anyone had wanted him too -- they all had loved him so much -- but because God had seen fit to take him away. And this...the brother I never met...is the reason I am pro-life.
Because one day, a conversation happened. I will never forget that day. I was fourteen, and we had two close friends in our dining room. One of them and my mother were talking, and somehow they moved to the subject of the son that we lost. My mom -- who never let a tear slip down her cheek, unless something incredibly horrible (such as a death or major loss) or something incredible funny (such as that video that circulated last winter of a guy falling down about eight times while trying to shovel snow) happened -- my mom began to burst into tears. Then, wiping away the tears from underneath her glasses, she announced, "The worst part was going to Planned Parenthood to get it taken care of. There were all those girls there...and they didn't even want their babies. And there I had just lost mine."
Maybe it's not scientifically or psychologically or however-you-want-to-say-it-correct, but it hit home to me.
I will always be pro-life, because you can't tell me that miscarriage is death and abortion isn't.
That being said: If you've had an abortion in the past...do I condemn you?
No. Because if you repent of your sins, Jesus Christ does not condemn you. He still loves you more than you can ever imagine.
And if Jesus Christ does it, then so do I. Yes, I am a struggling Christian, still trying to follow His commandments in every area...but loving people is something I feel like I have almost mastered. And so, as Jesus Christ loves you still, so do I.
~ Grace
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