photo from Lutherans for Life Website for Life Sunday 2012
The following thoughts are not from Lutherans for Life. Their theme mentioned on this image simply sent my mind thinking in this direction.
“I just am not ready to have a child.â€
“A baby right now would ruin my career.â€
“We are not financially stable enough to have a baby.â€
“He said he is not ready to be a dad.â€
“I am not psychologically ready to raise a child.â€
“I have all the children I want.â€
Who made these statements?
A woman at an abortion clinic when asked why she want an abortion? Yes.
A married couple when asked why they are choosing to use birth control? Yes.
Choosing abortion and using birth control are different in nature. Abortion takes a life already created and therefore unquestionably from a scriptural standpoint trespasses these words, “You shall not kill.†Birth control seeks to make sure that a life is not created. Life is not ended but prevented. And therefore, judging any trespass in this decision is a little more complex.
And yet, choosing abortion and using birth control are often born out of similar attitudes and convictions. They often both rest upon the ideas that a child is not wanted, that the child will cause inconvenience, or that resources will not be present to raise the child.
I say uniformly, “Trust God. Choose life.†I say to be holistically pro-life is to neither end nor prevent life. I do not say this as one who has not and does not still continue to struggle with the concerns at the heart of the above statements. But I do say it as one who ends up always convinced that such struggles simply reveal my lack of faith in God.
I pray that on this day set apart as Life Sunday realize that the use of birth control is a life issue which deserves our reflection and attention as God’s people. If we think the number of children killed through abortion is staggering, surely if we could know the number of children prevented through contraception, we would be dumbfounded.
Amen! I pray that someday very soon our church will again return to teaching this position as it did before the infamous Lambeth-1930.
Phil, what do you think about birth control’s abortive mechanism? That is, an overdose of progesterone which serves as a mechanism to starve, and therefore kill, an embryo in the case fertilization happens. The statistics are all over the place on how many are killed this way, but it is a fact that (embryonic) people are killed this way by birth control. The drug companies who make birth control (and the doctors who push it), if asked, will say there is no abortive function or risk from birth control. The reason, they say, is because the mothers body naturally produces progesterone, and fetuses are sometimes naturally aborted because of naturally high levels of progesterone. Do you see the non- sequitur here? The mothers body sometimes produces enough progesterone to kill an embryo, therefore it is not abortive to create artificially high levels of progesterone to ensure death (if fertilization happens). It doesn’t get talked about a lot, and I find that most people have swallowed this lie for so long the reaction to this fact is very visceral- either of denial or guilt. I prefer the latter, that’s a step closer to repentance… And forgiveness.