Prior to my spiritual conversion, I had very little understanding of what an abortion was, let alone what it did to the pre-born. What I did know growing up, I learned from my peers, family, and Christians at church.
In sum, I saw abortion negatively—that it caused controversy but was justified if a woman chose to end the life of her pre-born child because her circumstances were difficult. In particular, I saw abortion as justified if the pre-born child would have a disability.
It was not until I walked into a First-Response training at a pregnancy resource centre that the scales, like the scales from the Apostle Paul’s eyes, fell off my very own eyes.
Although John 9:1-3 had set the ball rolling in my head 4 years ago, I was convinced that abortion was wrong in all circumstances by the time I walked out that door. I began volunteering with the PCC through my church and began meeting with vulnerable women and men who were seeking help and support from pregnancy crises.
Intellectually and theologically, my mind was pretty made up on the issue of abortion. But emotionally, I found myself profoundly struggling when I came face to face with a woman who would be abandoned by her spouse or family if she did not abort her child, or witnessing a client, who had been raped, storm out of the office.
Is there ever a situation where abortion is OK? What kind of monster would I be if I even suggested that a victim of rape be forced to carry her unwanted pre-born child for 9 months, and to potentially be reminded of her rapist every day for the rest of her life? Have I ever been unexpectedly pregnant? Do I even have a right to speak on this issue?
No doubt, all of these questions are real questions, and should not be simply dismissed or made light of. I believe it was only when I was confronted with the horrors of abortion that I truly became convinced that abortion is never a solution to difficult circumstances.
I remember watching a video of an actual surgical abortion (specifically a dilation and evacuation procedure) during an abortion apologetics workshop, and recalled recoiling and mentally pleading through tears to God to make it stop. I could not complete the video.
The truth is what I had seen did not un-rape a rape victim; it certainly did not make a poor woman rich. It did not prevent two people from becoming parents. But it did make them parents of a dead child. And if abortion meant the decapitation, dismemberment, and disembowelment of a human being, then I was and still am bound to stand against abortion.
