Psalm 139:13-18 reads, "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you."
I have been told that there has been 56 million abortions since Roe V. Wade in 1973. That is nearly an entire generation of people eliminated mainly because they did not fit into the busy and complicated circumstances of our lives. It is incredible to me that our nation, claiming to be "One Nation, Under God" considers the extermination of millions of its own citizens to be a choice that any woman can make, regardless of her circumstances. I am equally amazed that it has been forty years and we are still comfortable cutting short the lives of our children.
Once director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas, Abby Johnson writes in her book, Unplanned, how she became staunchly pro-life. Abby thought that in helping women have abortions at her clinic, she was protecting them from those unsafe back-alley clinics…that is, until she saw an abortion with her own eyes. Abby was called in one day by a doctor to help perform an abortion using ultrasound, a procedure never done in her office. She describes how seeing that little baby within the womb fight back against the vacuum that sucked away its life forever changed her opinion about life in the womb.
In Psalm 139, David records how the embryo in the womb is nothing less than a life intricately created and designed by none other than the eternal God and Father of Jesus Christ. Listen to the words David uses to describe the growth process that God began in the womb: "you formed", "you knitted", "intricately woven". Some people may be very skilled at knitting or weaving yarn and can do it quickly, but it nevertheless is a very intimate and detailed work. When we see a beautiful piece of cross-stitch work or something large that has been crocheted, we express awe that the creator of it took spent such long hours on it. If perhaps such a wonderful masterpiece of knitting was given you as a gift, would it not express the most despicable evil to throw it away, or worse, eliminate any evidence it ever existed? However, this is what we as an American nation do everyday as we abort our unborn children before they have a chance to breathe our air. One of my favorite preachers has said that those who support abortion have not themselves been aborted, so they have no leg to stand on.
As sinful and twisted the practice of abortion is, we must not approach the subject with the wrong attitude. Condemning speech and harsh attitudes have no place in the abortion debate and especially in the kingdom of God. Those who have aborted children have not committed the unpardonable sin, but can experience the same mercy and love of God toward them as anyone else. In fact, no matter what sin someone has committed, we must always be encouraging and loving towards them if we truly understand God's grace given to us.
As I write this, my little 15 month old daughter, who herself nearly didn't make it out of the womb alive due to complications at birth, came walking up to her daddy with the biggest grin and gave me a big hug on the leg. For those on the other side of this debate, do not let your personal opinions fog the very life that is within the womb of every pregnant woman. Call it an embryo or a fetus, but do not forget that a beating heart is a living being. No choices or circumstances of our own should permit us to ignore our God-given conscience and take away such beautiful works of art as our children. For the sake of my daughter Annie Ruth, give children a chance.
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