A Disposable Life

As yesterday was the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, we're once again reminded that civilization is a paper-thin covering for the horrors that we can and do still perpetrate on others and our own people. As President Obama moves to open up stem cell research on human embryos and reduce restrictions on abortion, thousands have prayed for this country to not be hypocritical on its stance toward life -- that all human life, whether inside the womb or outside, is precious and sacred, to be protected and cherished.

It is only in the fiction that a human being doesn't actually start "being" until near the end of a pregnancy or the first second outside of its mother that enables people to live with the decision of legalizing and endorsing abortion under the banner of "choice". Just because we can't physically see something does not mean it doesn't exist or have the right to exist. Because, of course, the second you acknowledge that a baby is a person and not a fetus without feelings, a soul or a mind, that's the point where it becomes murder. And we don't murder -- we just relabel the term to make it more palpable.

In 2005, the number of abortions since Roe vs. Wade was passed exceeded a heartbreaking 46 million children. 46 millions lives ended before they had the chance to grow, to experience, to fulfill their potential in our world. 46 million that we as a civilization looked at and declared "non-human" and disposable.

Abortion in our country is one of the sorest points in the framework that links us all together -- one side seeing it as murder, the other as the denial of a woman's choice and control over her body. "Greater love has no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends," Jesus said. He did not ask us to demand other's lives to ease our own, however. He wept over death because life was precious.

If Mary happened to live today instead of back then and became pregnant as a teenager, how many would urge her to abort? Having that child, making the decision to bear it to term, had to be terrifically difficult on her -- either back then or in the hypothetical now. If she had the choice to be rid of it, would she?

Look at her response in Luke 1: she is fearful but trusts in God, that He has a plan for all things, including this child. She is excited over this blessing that she would be the mother of the Messiah. She praises God and affirms her role as His servant. The baby Jesus, still in her womb, had tremendous worth to her, an indisposable life.

Now, receiving the news that your baby is going to be the Son of God isn't the same as finding out you're pregnant and not ready to have a child today -- but what if God could open the curtain for all expectant mothers to show them just what potential and purpose that baby would have if it just got the chance to be born and nurtured? What if more pregnant mothers were impressed that they do have a choice -- to keep their child or put them up for adoption to one of the millions of adults that desperately want (but can't have) children of their own?

What if we, as a civilization, said that all human life is precious and not subject to being disposed of just because it is an inconvenience to another? Would we finally be growing up at that point?