ABORTION

Across the world, more than forty-two million abortions occur every year. That’s 115,000 abortions every single day. I find it hard to fathom that number when I look at the faces of my four children each night as I put them to bed. I find it hard to imagine 115,000 other children who that day were introduced to the world with a tool or pill aimed at taking their lives. And I find it hardest to comprehend how I, for so long, could show no concern for this gruesome global reality.

Abortion is without question an assault on God’s grand creation of a human life. There is no way around it. Our lives and language testify to this. I remember the pure joy when we found out that my wife, Heather, was pregnant. From the very beginning, we talked about our son like he was a person. He was never a clump of tissue that could become our son if we chose to have him. He was our child from the start, and we loved him as such.

My wife and I are not alone in this. Even abortion advocates join with us, albeit unintentionally, in talking about unborn babies as exactly that: babies. I remember when reports announced that Prince William and his wife, Kate, were expecting their first child. Even the most secular news outlets immediately began talking about the child in the womb as an heir to the throne. They made much of the significance of this baby, and no one spoke in terms of a “blastocyst” or “blob of cells.” We would loathe the journalist who dared to use such language. But doesn’t the dignity we conferred on a “royal” baby apply also to countless other “ordinary” babies whose lives are no less significant?

PRAY

Ask God to:

• End the injustice of abortion in our country and around the world.
• Forgive you for whatever part you have played in abortion —even silence.
• Convict those in positions of power to use their influence to end abortion.

PARTICIPATE

Prayerfully consider taking these steps:

• Write to your representatives in Congress and clearly and respectfully lay out why abortion in this country must stop.
• Work with ministries or participate in events (e.g., Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, 40 Days for Life, prayer walks) that seek to uphold the value of unborn human life.
• Volunteer with a crisis pregnancy center in your city to aid in their work of showing women in desperate situations that there are options other than abortion.

PROCLAIM

Consider the following truths from Scripture:

• Psalm 139:15-16: “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.”
• Proverbs 24:10-12: “If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small. Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, ‘Behold, we did not know this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work?”
• Matthew 19:14: “Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.’”

For more (and more specific) suggestions, visit CounterCultureBook.com/Abortion.