Monday, January 23, 2012

The Anniverary of Roe vs Wade: Why I Am Now Pro-Life

My son asked me a question last night. If he would have asked me the same question 2 months ago he would have gotten a different answer. He asked me to name the 5 people I love most. Two months ago the answer would have been God, Julie (my wife), him, my sister Michal and her daughter/my son's cousin/my niece Kelly. Last night, though, I told him God, Julie, him, his unborn brother/sister and my sister Michal.

Two months ago I found out that my wife was pregnant, and we were both overjoyed. At this time she was 4 weeks pregnant. She had a life inside of her. The heart of her fetus had already begun to beat. Blood was already beginning to flow through the vessels and arms and legs are already becoming visible. This is at the 4th and 5th weeks of gestation when the fetus is only 1 and 2 weeks old.

When I talked to my wife about my conversation with my son last night, she told me that yesterday was the anniversary of Roe versus Wade. It made me remember how I once felt. At one time, I fully thought that I had no right to say anything, since I was a man. Now that I am a father, however, I feel completely different. I would not even want to imagine my life without my son in it. Neither would I want to rob the world of my son, who is amazing and kind and intelligent.

I am pro-life now because I could not possibly imagine my son not living. I do not want to visualize a world without him in it. In the case of my unborn child, I could not imagine terminating a fetus with a heartbeat. To me that is murder. There is a heartbeat, and that is an innocent life. There will be some disagreements, and I will address the most recent one that I had here.

I have a friend that is an atheist, but is very involved in public service. She volunteers time with various non-profits, most of which goes to the American Cancer Society since her mother died from cancer several years ago. She and I had the discussion, because she has had an abortion.

"It did not hurt anybody. I chose to have an abortion because my mother had just died and I could not deal with raising a baby with everything else going on."

I asked her one question that stopped her cold in the conversation. "Your choice could have hurt everyone! What if the baby you terminated was going to cure cancer? What if she would have been the diplomat that forged world peace, or raised the child that accomplished it? We might aleady have a cure for AIDS and cancer if we did not abort babies."

"I never thought about it like that," was her reply.

I know that this is a very difficult issue to discuss. I am not one to cast stones at anyone. I just wanted to share my most recent thoughts on the issue. I feel that there are many things we do that are wrong ethically, morally and spiritually. Abortion is one of those things. I have heard the claim abortion doesn't hurt anyone, As a substance abuse counselor I deal with a lot of women who have carried the guilt of abortion with them for years. Simply thinking about it a decade later instantly brings them to tears, and I would not wish that kind of traumatic pain on anyone.

The truth is, there are far reaching consequences for both the person getting the abortion and the child that never got to grow. What if Martin Luther King, Jr.s mother would have aborted him? What if Marie Curie and Alexander Fleming had been aborted? What if your mother had aborted you, or the mother of your spouse had aborted them? The truth is, abortion is the killing of potential. We truly never know what could have been when abortion occurs. And "what if" is one of the hardest questions to live life without an answer for.

1 comment:

  1. Wow David you really know how to get the point across. I find myself in the same situation as you. It is difficult to imagine taking the life of an innocent child whom was unable to defend itself. No matter the situation of how the child came about it is still a life. Some do say "well what if the mother is a drug addict, what if the child is born mentally unstable or disabled?" All very good questions but the answer to any and all is God. The lord molds us all from start to finish and no matter what the situation or how the child came to be it was intended from above and that cannot be argued with.

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