I’m still reeling from the news that the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, a bill which would have protected children born alive after botched abortions, was defeated.
Essentially, what this means is that our nation is accepting infanticide as the normal response to an inconvenient situation. In other words, a baby who isn’t planned or wanted by his or her parents doesn’t deserve to live—even after he or she is born.
How has it come to this?
How can we look at a helpless newborn child with such ruthless apathy and contempt?
To answer this question, we must compare how God measures human worth as opposed to how unredeemed humanity measures human worth.
Secular humanism is puffed up with pride about the achievements of mankind, claiming that God is either non-existent or at best, unnecessary.
Yet in a secular humanist worldview, mankind is merely an accident of evolution. We’re simply a higher form of animal, no more special than a chimpanzee or even a pig.
So if we’re just an accident and just an animal, how can man be the measure of all things, as humanism claims?
Like Stuart Smalley in the old Saturday Night Live skits, we can get up in the morning, look in the mirror, and say “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it—people like me!”—but who says we have the authority to proclaim our own worthiness?
It’s ironic and illogical. But wait, there’s more to our faulty cultural beliefs.
We think our identity is sexual, not spiritual. We think our biology is irrelevant and that gender is a fluid continuum based on emotions.
We view children as a burden, to be prevented by birth control as much as possible. (Of course, if that fails, there’s the option of abortion.)
We fail to value our elderly because of their frailty. With physician-assisted suicide, we’re starting down the slippery slope of eliminating those who are sickly or disabled or mentally challenged.
There’s even a real thing called “anti-natalism,” which is the belief that the earth and animals would be better off without humans!
Our view of humankind as a whole is grossly distorted.
Is it any wonder that we’re heartless toward newborns who survive abortion?
The contrast between culture’s twisted rendition of the value of humanity and God’s view of us couldn’t be starker.
God says He created humankind in his image, uniquely above the rest of all His creatures (Genesis 1:26-31). We are the crown of His creation. He has given us dominion over the earth and animals (Psalm 8:3-5).
The earth was made for us, and one day, God will renew it.
Our identity and worth is grounded in being God’s image-bearers. He created each of us on purpose as male or female as part of His good plan.
He intricately fashions each image-bearer in the womb before we are born, and begins writing our stories long before we see the light of day (Psalm 139:13-16). In fact, He knows us by name and loves us even before we are conceived (Jer. 1:5).
Without exception, children are referred to as a blessing and a reward in Scripture.
The elderly are worthy of honor and care. The sick or disabled have no less value than any other image-bearer.
Our worth is not contingent upon what we do, earn, achieve, or produce. It is given to us by God. We bear His likeness, and therefore shine with a glory no other creature shares.
What does all this have to do with pro-life ministry?
By continuing to reach out to mothers and fathers who are considering abortion, we demonstrate our agreement with God’s value of human beings. We walk in alignment with His assessment of who we are.
We value the mother. We value the father. We value their baby. And it makes no difference to us whether that baby is newly conceived, partly formed, or already born.
We understand the truth about personhood.
We know there is an Author writing all of our stories from the beginning—an Author who has plans and purposes and unspeakably deep love for every human being ever conceived.
Allow me to shift you to right-brain mode for a moment.
As a poet, I’ve rarely had the experience of envisioning an entire poem on paper before writing it. Actually, it’s only happened once.
This is that poem, from Unleashing Your Courageous Compassion: 40 Reflections on Rescuing the Unborn:
End of a Story
Psalm 139:13-16
For you formed my inward parts;
You knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
A speculum is inserted into the vagina.
Painkillers are injected. A tenaculum
is locked onto the cervix to pull the uterus forward.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
The cervical opening is enlarged with dilators.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
A cannula, attached to a suction machine,
is inserted into the uterus.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
The contents of the uterus are sucked out.
Forceps are used to remove any remaining fetal parts.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
A curette is scraped along the uterine wall
to dislodge any remaining tissue.
In your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
The tenaculum is released
and the speculum removed.
when as yet there was none of them.
The procedure is complete.
From this contrast between Scripture and the narrative script of an abortion procedure, it’s clear that it’s not just infanticide that’s evil.
It’s any willful interruption of God’s creative process as He forms an image-bearer.
As those who stand for life, we are the keepers of the stories God is writing. We are the guardians of His workmanship.
We love and value people, born or preborn, because He does.
Never has your work been more important than right now.
