Choose Life

"Now choose life so that you and your children may live." - Moses

"I have come that they may have life and have it to the full." - Jesus

Since we've been married, my husband and I have debated the issue of abortion a number of times. He can't understand why anyone would be in favor of abortion. I've tried to explain that people who are pro-choice don't just favor killing babies willy-nilly and that it's more complicated. His questions have helped me think more about my own views. This blog is more or less a summary of what I've been thinking.

Focus on the Family
When I was fresh out of college, I went to visit a friend who was attending the Focus on the Family Institute for the summer. The day I was visiting, students were able to choose a department to learn more about. My friend had chosen the political arm of the organization. I remember sitting around a table in a conference room with a few other students and the head of the organization. He talked about important issues facing our country, one of which was abortion. When our chance to ask questions came, I asked him what they were doing to support families who may be statistically more likely to have an abortion. He said that was not their concern. I remember thinking, "But you work for Focus on the Family. Shouldn't you be focusing on families?"

I don't need to bash Focus on the Family. They have published lots of good material over the years. (Shout out to Adventures in Odyssey!) But the man's response highlights what I see as one of the biggest problems in the debate about abortion. We separate the "issue" from actual people.

As my husband and I began comparing stories of women we actually knew who had abortions, the stories were heartbreaking. A fifteen-year-old high school freshman who didn't want to give up her future and a Christian teenager pressured by her pastor whose son was the father of the baby. Neither of these girls should have been pregnant (or having sex) in the first place, but they did and they were and found themselves facing the prospect of abortion in very difficult circumstances.

But what could pro-life organizations offer them? Neither girl could ever retrieve the life she had lost. I'm sure that for both of them, abortion seemed the closest thing to erasing the past and starting over.

Pikuach Nefesh
In Judaism, the concept of Pikuach Nefesh is the idea that most of Jewish law can be set aside if a life is at stake. In other words, if saving a life requires breaking a commandment, Jews are required to choose the life over the commandment.

As I think about the stance the church has taken on abortion, I can't help but think about the lives of the ones who live. I think about families whose sons have few job prospects and little hope for the future. The successful ones might join the army or find a low-paying blue collar job. The others end up in jail or dead.

I think about their daughters who don't have adequate health care now and if they get pregnant, no hope of adequate childcare after the baby is born. If the mother and the baby survive the pregnancy in good health, what's next for them? I recently read an article entitled "The Hell of American Day Care" about the inadequacies of daycare in our country. Under-regulated and overpriced, fewer and fewer parents can afford the kinds of day cares that you see on tv, where kids play in brightly-painted rooms with lots of foamy educational things.

Furthermore, as I lay in bed at night in our house just down the street from one of the busiest emergency rooms in the city, I listen to sirens all night long. Where are they going? To victims of domestic violence, to victims of shootings and stabbings in drug and gang-related violence, to children suffering from inadequate nutrition and preventable diseases, to elderly people in run-down housing for whom extreme heat or cold are life-threatening conditions.

Is this the life that so many people are "pro"? Girls who are way too young and way too scared to be pregnant; children whose hopes for the future go no further than surviving to adulthood; parents who are working long hours to make a better life for the children and to avoid the fate of their own parents, who are languishing in cheap apartments and poorly-run adult-care facilities. 

Choose Life
I think it is time for Christians to follow the example of Judaism and to choose life without exception. We are called to care for widows and orphans, not just unborn children. We are called to love our enemies, and it might be that the way we talk about our enemies indicates our thoughts about "sinners," whether they are terrorists or unwed mothers.

If a woman who found herself with an unplanned pregnancy knew that the church was a place where she could expect to find people who choose life, she might expect to find help with medical bills (choosing life for her), low-cost daycare options (choosing life for her child), job-training and education assistance (choosing life for her family), and community (not just life, but life to the full).

An obvious solution for people who don't want a child is to stop having sex. In a culture lacking in closeness and community, sexual intimacy is often a cheap substitute for the lifelong intimacy we are created for. Again, if the church was full of people living life to the full, people might find the intimacy they crave in the church without turning to sexual relationships.

Maybe my thoughts are too idealistic, simplistic, or overly-optimistic, but I am tired of listening to people decry the murder of unborn children and yet turn a blind eye to the mass murder of born children through abuse and domestic violence, human trafficking, malnutrition, preventable diseases, hopelessness, depression, and all the other things faced by so many children who do manage to make it into the world.

It's a lot easier to be against abortion than it is to be pro-life.

Choose life. Pikuach nefesh.