My husband all fired up...

Just last week, my brother in law was at a class in Atlanta. They began to talk about their families, and Deron shared that he and his wife were expecting their fourth child. To his (and our whole family's) utter dismay, someone asked him casually if they were planning to keep the baby. (To hear this story first hand, go to Laura's blog here.)

My husband, in response to her post about this horrible question, posted a lengthy, and pretty amazing, reply. Here it is, some food for thought:

"Wow. It got me fired up reading that. To treat life like that...as if we should have the power to end it without a backward glance...disturbs me. That's always been the most disturbing thing to me. The act seems bad enough, but it's the attitude that it's justifiable to abort for convenience sake is reprehensible.

When I was a staff writer for the student newspaper at Berry, I covered a "History of Abortion" video about how abortion was essentially legal, then illegal, and now legal again. It was followed by a mixed panel discussion about it. The stories of what women were doing to themselves to self-abort during times that abortion was illegal were deeply saddening...not just because I think abortion is wrong but because those women were that scared and that there was hardly anywhere for them to turn. The numbers of women who died because they self-aborted were staggering. Still, I couldn't justify the act of ending a child's life for all the sob stories or poor circumstances surrounding the conception (rape, incest, health complications, etc). I'm sorry, but I cannot accept reasoning that exalts anyone else's life over a child's... However, I know things could be improved. For women who do not want or are not ready for the child they are carrying, they should have somewhere to turn to without that intense level of scorn and shame that some sinners in this world seem to think they have the sole right to inflict on those women. We should reach out to them and not scorn them, regardless of the circumstances surrounding the conception. I'd imagine women (or, more often, young girls) in those situations do not know that they have options (adoption, etc). For women whose health will be severely endangered by the carrying of child, I still don't think I could defend an abortion in that case because I believe in the preciousness of new life that much. It is a blessing, and I don't believe choosing the child is choosing one life over another, even if the mother is in poor health for a pregnancy. The only choice that seems to be made in that circumstance is to end a life...ending a life for a precautionary reason is simply not okay to me. If it seems like there are no options, there are. Prayer is always there. Granted, it shouldn't be treated like an option, but I think it's forgotten in all the rational arguments people have with one another that some circumstances justify an abortion because there are "no options."

Also, I didn't say that any decisions were easy, but one truth has always stayed constant with me. We are not God, and walking around acting as though we have the right to end life is wrong. Life is precious.

I don't often get caught up in argument with people because I believe that if we don't agree that newly-created life (from God) is indefinably precious, I will always have different conclusions from those people.
And I'm not one to waste my time. If anything, people should try to encourage one another that life is precious. It seems like it would be a lot easier to get someone onboard with that than it would be to get them to believe abortion is wrong. Maybe if people saw life as the ultimate gift, everything else would fall into place. I'd hope so anyway.

The only other thing I'd say about that "are you gonna keep it?" attitude is that it is indicative of wickedness. Somewhere along the way people were numbed by the thought that abortion wasn't really destroying life. Yep, the devil might just have something to do with that one.

Thank goodness I wasn't sitting there when that woman asked Deron that question!!! Uh oh...I'm getting fired up again..."


I was impressed with his thoughts, and I wanted to share them.

Hope everyone had an awesome weekend! :)