I couldn’t believe it was happening again. Not now. Not at 20 weeks gestation.
Losing a baby at eight weeks had been hard enough, let alone losing another one halfway through my pregnancy.
Yet the ultrasound confirmed what my body was already telling me. Fetal demise, the midwife called it.
In the following days, I felt numb and disoriented. I waded clumsily through life at half the speed of the people around me, who zipped through their days seemingly without effort.
One morning, I went outside and noticed that the sunshine was strangely dim and cool. It was present, but oddly weak. I found out later there had been a solar eclipse.
Eclipsed—that’s how my soul felt.
Present, but feeble.
The earlier miscarriage had been difficult in its own way. I remember waking in the morning and wondering, in a semi-conscious haze, why I felt so very sad.
As my mind cleared, the loss hit me all over again—the very real loss of a unique, precious child.
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Side note: the two miscarriages I experienced were both unplanned pregnancies.
One pregnancy occurred when my firstborn had just turned a year old.
The other happened after we had decided not to have more children after our three boys. It took months to adjust to the idea of a fourth child, and then the pregnancy suddenly ended.
Did the fact that these pregnancies were not part of my agenda make these children worth less than if I had planned them?
Did it make their deaths any less grievous?
Not at all.
Recently, I read some similar thoughts from a woman on social media describing the two babies she had lost to miscarriage.
One pregnancy was the result of rape. The other was the result of consensual sex.
There was no difference, she said, in the level of her grief between the two losses.
The circumstances of her babies’ conceptions made no difference in terms of their intrinsic value or her attachment to them.
She was devastated by both losses.
Someone chimed in on the thread making the assumption that religion had shaped this woman’s values—but she explained she was not religious.
There’s plenty of assumption like this on the part of abortion advocates.
They’ve tried to make abortion acceptable by claiming it is “merely like a miscarriage”—as if miscarriage is no big deal.
Those who have suffered pregnancy loss have pushed back, and rightly so.
Now abortion advocates are making a renewed attempt to conflate miscarriage and abortion by twisting their ethics into pretzels.
They want to recognize what they call “subjective, relational fetal value” in order to rationalize abortion and still (allegedly) be sensitive to those who have lost a child through miscarriage.
Sorry, that doesn’t work. Miscarriage and abortion are a universe apart.
Miscarriage is something that happens to a pregnant woman. It takes her baby’s life. Abortion is something a pregnant woman does deliberately. She takes her baby’s life.
As the old Sesame Street song says, “One of these things is not like the other; one of these things just doesn’t belong.”
(It’s ironic how the pro-choice crowd has suddenly, conveniently forgotten that the big difference between miscarriage and abortion is that only one involves choice.)
Abortion advocates’ convoluted reasoning deeply insults those of us who have lost children to miscarriage—but there’s an even bigger problem.
Such clever ethical spins are an insult against humanity’s Creator.
As human beings, we do not have the right to decide that some of God’s preborn image-bearers have value while others are worthless and dispensable.
To assume that we do have this “right” is a matter of playing God.
When the ancient Israelites emulated their pagan neighbors by sacrificing their infants to false gods, the prophet Ezekiel thundered God’s words,
“…you took your sons and daughters whom you bore to me and sacrificed them as food to the idols. Was your prostitution not enough? You slaughtered my children and sacrificed them to the idols.” – Ez. 16:20-21
Notice to whom these children belong. They’re not the property of the pregnant woman, as abortion advocates claim—rather, they belong to God.
Listen to another prophet:
“They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire—something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind.” – Jeremiah 7:31
The willful destruction of God’s innocent, vulnerable children is unthinkable to Him.
The same moral law regarding infanticide applies to abortion as well. I put it this way in Unleashing Your Courageous Compassion:
“There’s no easy way to state this painful truth: abortion is child sacrifice. Just as in ancient times, an innocent life is offered for the perceived benefit of another person.”
As untenable as they are, the arguments of abortion advocates will no doubt continue. In light of these attempts to validate abortion, what can we do?
First, we must minister to women who have suffered miscarriage. We must take their grief seriously and do what we can to offer empathy and comfort and to facilitate closure and healing.
Your pregnancy help center can offer peer counseling for pregnancy loss. You can create sympathy gifts and even offer a simple memorial service to honor a lost child.
As a powerful statement about the value of every preborn child, let your community know about these services.
The second thing we must do is never waver from the bottom line “why” of the life-affirming mission.
We do this work because every abortion purposefully destroys a precious, unique image-bearer of God—and therefore, every abortion grieves Him.
We put our hands to this labor of love for the sake of the One who created and loves us all.
May your passion for life never stray from its foundation of love, and may God give you creative and beautiful ways to help those who have suffered the devastation of miscarriage.
