It’s almost Valentine’s Day, and pink and red hearts dominate the landscape everywhere. Couples prepare for romantic dinner dates, children write notes to their classmates, and Nanas like me put together little gift bags for their grandchildren.
Whether romance is in the air or not, this holiday serves as a good excuse to express affection and endearment to those we love.
So, what does love have to do with the pro-life mission? Much indeed.
The dilemma of an unplanned pregnancy is often the result of a young woman seeking love and ending up with the unintended consequence of an unplanned pregnancy.
The 1980 hit song, “Lookin’ for Love,” puts it this way:
“I was looking for love in all the wrong places, looking for love in too many faces, searching their eyes, looking for traces of what I'm dreaming of …”
Some young women, dreaming of love, enter sexual relationships in hopes of extracting some kind of commitment from the men to whom they are emotionally attached.
Yet today, sex has become commonly expected very early in a relationship—even on a first date, without any kind of romantic attachment.
The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s has resulted in unforeseen fallout.
Who could have predicted the hookup culture of today, where sex is seen as something that offers mere pleasure, or a brief sense of connection to another person, without any basis of knowing one another, let alone a lifetime commitment?
Who could have foreseen that sex would become so astoundingly cheap?
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I put it this way in Unleashing Your Courageous Compassion:
“In our society, sex has been devalued from its rightful place as an expression of intimate love between a husband and wife. It’s treated more like loose change than a treasure. If I refuse to have sex with him, he can get it somewhere else, thinks a young woman. She fears being alone, so she gives sex just to be held in a man’s arms for a few minutes.”
God designed sex to mean so much more than this.
He created it as a beautiful bonding mechanism to continually strengthen the lifelong love in the covenant of marriage.
Using it to merely try to keep a boyfriend sticking around involves a tremendous undervaluing of this gift. It’s like paying for a chocolate bar with $10,000—and not keeping the change.
There’s another way clients look for love in the wrong place and end up inside our doors.
Some girls who have not received the love they need and deserve during their childhood may think to themselves, If I have a baby, I’ll have someone in my life who will love me back unconditionally.
That’s true about a baby for a while, yes, and children are always referred to as a blessing in Scripture. But children outgrow infanthood, and at some point, their automatic, need-based love for their mother grows into something more complex and demanding.
I once saw a meme which illustrates how poorly an emotionally wounded teen girl might understand this reality. In the meme, the pregnant teen excitedly tells her friend, “I think it’s a puppy!”
Whether in the case of a teen looking for love from her own baby, or a twenty-something woman looking for love from an uncommitted boyfriend, or a thirty-something woman stuck in an endless cycle of loveless sex, pregnancy help centers offer the vital support needed in these difficult situations.
We offer this help based on the biggest love of all—the love of God for humanity.
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At the end of the day, this is ultimately the love we are all looking for.
It is a love which meets our deepest needs, a love which can be utterly trusted, a love which keeps the promises it makes.
It is a love that tells us who we are and why we are here, a love that has proven itself through covenant and sacrifice and pain.
It is a love that has stood the test of time and will be proven out for eternity.
There is nothing shallow, flippant or short-lived about the love of God. It is a love that delivers and does not disappoint.
God’s love motivated Him to create humans in the first place. His fiery compassion is the reason He forbids the destruction of His innocent image-bearers in the womb (Ez. 16:20-21; Jer. 7:31).
His love caused Him to make the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf:
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
This love goes much deeper than pink hearts and fluffy sentiments. It’s the real deal. It is the reason we do what we do for the preborn and their parents.
This Valentine’s Day, remember: whatever circumstances may bring a client through your doors, you have the great privilege of demonstrating the greatest love she could ever know.
