Why Are We Striving To Make Abortion Unthinkable?

This is a guest post from John Ensor.

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Today I join hundreds of thousands in Washington, D.C., in the annual March for Life to publicly lament the death of 50 million preborn children and to pray for the day when abortion becomes unthinkable.

In doing so, I acknowledge the resistance, even offense, taken by many by asserting that abortion is the moral issue of our day. I am familiar with the claim that asserts equal concern for poverty, global warming, aids prevention, war, and more. All of these appear to me worth researching and debating, as iron sharpens iron, as to the various causes and possible solutions.

But abortion is not on par. I remember how and when I came to this conclusion. It was the week of February 12, 1990, as marked on the Newsweek magazine I was reading. Kim Flodin, in an article on why she did not counter-march for abortion rights, wrote, “I was pregnant, I carried two unborn children and I chose, for completely selfish reasons, to deny them life so that I could better my own” (My Turn).

There it was: a momentary lapse into honest concrete language about abortion from an advocate. No ancient Baal worshiper could have described the reasons for their child sacrifice better. I was stunned that it had to be stated so plainly for me to grasp the preeminent evil of it. It is not one issue among equal concerns. Abortion is our postmodern version of child sacrifice for the Me Generation. As such, it is an incomprehensible and unthinkable evil.

Unthinkable is the best word to describe it because that is the way God describes it. “The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah saying, … “They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination” (Jeremiah 32:35; cf. 7:31, 19:5).

Among the many ways we offend God, the greatest offense are the shedding of innocent blood and idolatry. These two come together in child sacrifice. At the outset, God taught Israel to be shocked and repulsed by its practice among other cultures. “You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods” (Deuteronomy 12:31). The word even here rings remarkably close in meaning to unthinkable or something that “did not enter into my mind.”

Some years ago, a woman named Suzanne came to me while I was setting up a pregnancy-help clinic in Boston. She said, “If I have the abortion, I will have more money to spend on my other two children.” I asked, “What do you think your children would say if they knew you were doing this so that they could have cable TV and other stuff?” She said, “Well, I’ll ask them.” Then and there I knew the baby would live. Abortion is unthinkable to children—incomprehensible, horrific, something that would never enter their minds to do. Sure enough, the children were aghast at the thought. “We want the baby,” they reassured her. Some months later, after the baby arrived, I heard her share her story. She said she was embarrassed to think back on her earlier state of mind. She had joined the circle of those who think abortion unthinkable.

Sanctity of Human Life Week is like Good Friday—a sobering time to stare unflinchingly past the ho-hum of abortion as a common practice; to grieve, lament, and morn; then to take up our cross and humbly obey God’s call to “prosper” the cause of the fatherless and “defend the rights of the needy” (Jeremiah 5:28). In this context, that means becoming cross-bearers for child-bearers.

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John Ensor is the Vice President of Heartbeat International and author of Answering the Call: Saving Innocent Lives, One Woman At a Time .