I am starting this thread as a response and continuance of a discussion in another thread, because I did not want to further derail the topic...
This also involves a bit of personal testimony, and a good dose of personal opinion, I am not trying to make excuses, but share what has been revealed to me that I may continue to operate with a Spirit of love and acceptance...
The topic is abortion, and I used to be someone who strongly believed there was never any excuse for it... I have met people and situations that have convinced me that I am not qualified to make a clear cut decision on this matter...
I grew up very rural... I made mini escapes from the boondocks as a teenager by going on mission trips... Out of country when I could gather the money, but mostly inner city missions. Abortion was just becoming a mainstream political platform in the 90's, and I believed like most people where I am from that it was one of the blackest evils of the times...
When I was in the city, I would meet girls my own age who had gotten pregnant. Some by rape, some not.. My heart always went out to these women, but it would always harden a bit when I learned one of the girls I would be ministering to had had an abortion...
I was often asked, "What if you were in my situation?" and to the girls who hadn't been raped, but had willingly went to some man's bed of her own accord, I would normally answer, "I have made the decision to never put myself in this situation, and I have the strength of God to steady me in my resolve..." or some such...
To the girls who had endured horrible violence who asked, I would say, "God would never place you in a situation that you were not strong enough to bear." Like it was a comfort or something... I honestly thought it was... I would advocate adoption, and the possibility that having a child might turn a situation that seemed so hopeless into a blessing... For the most part, this is still what I believe, but I have learned that humility was lacking back then.
I would meet girls who were in situations that they saw no escape from... One day one of those girls walked up to me and had a sit down... We were both around 15/16... She seemed so wise... She told me that my attitude had hurt her sister, who was pregnant, and so was she... I didn't know how to respond, because I hadn't spoken directly to her sister. Neither of them even looked pregnant. Her sister had overheard me talking to another girl... She had heard me say abortion is never a solution... The girl who confronted me proceeded to tell me that she was on her 3rd pregnancy, and it was going to be terminated as soon as she had the means to get it done, but it was no deal whatever I thought of her... But the fact that I hurt her sister, who had just found out the day before that she was pregnant, well, She told me to go to Hell... I pressed her to tell me her story, and she pretty much said no girl should have to bear their own siblings... Her deceased mother's husband had been raping both girls since they were preteens...
I remember trying to get them to go to authorities, but then she told me that they would stay where they were, because if they said anything they would be in danger, but the system, in their eyes was just as bad... I went to one of the trip sponsors with the story, and they went to the police, but both girls denied the story... but I never had any reason to disbelieve them.
That though, was the point in my life that I started suspecting that I didn't have the right to draw the conclusion I had made. I started wondering if there might be a grey area.
...
I didn't realize until a year after that, that the gears of a personal revelation had already been set in motion 7 years before. I knew someone who had already been dealing with an issue related to this topic... Someone who had been forced to take a side of this issue, and it might not have been the right side...
When I was 8, there was a certain girl, one year older than me in my school... She was always sweet to me, even when others picked on me for being smaller. I remember sitting with her at lunch, and I remember the day she told me that her mother was getting married, and that she would have a step brother. She was excited, she had always wanted a brother... I had an older brother, 8 years older than I, and she always thought it was great how he took care of me... Her step-brother was 8 years older than her...
I suppose you know where this is going... It was only 3 months later that she didn't show up for school. I never knew what happened to her... Rumors merely stated that her grandmother took her and moved away overnight... As an 8 year old, there was no way for me to imagine what was going on.
So, 9 years later, I run into her... I asked her what happened, and she tells me that she had gotten pregnant and that was why she was taken out of school. AT 9 YEARS OLD! Her step brother had a very sick fascination with sex, and he had forcibly raped her (she didn't even know what was going on at the time), and she had gotten pregnant. Her mother had reported the incident with the police, but when the police investigated they found her mother and step father involved in drugs, and so she was turned over to her grandmother. Her grandma did not believe in abortion, so she carried the baby to term, and that child was being raised as her sister by her grandmother.
She was 18 then, when we had met again. She had been home schooled by her grandmother in another state. She had returned to Missouri to attend her mother's funeral. We decided to keep in touch. She was 20 when she married, she and her husband wanted children of their own... She got pregnant twice, but both times the pregnancies terminated within 9 weeks... The doctors decided to take a look and found that her reproductive system was so damaged and scarred from her childhood pregnancy, it wouldn't sustain one now, and to top it off, they were going to have to have to do surgery to fix a circulatory issue , and that surgery would seal the deal... She could never have children, because by the time they were done, she didn't have the necessary equipment.... She was tormented by this...
She never learned how to love her daughter... She had so many reasons to resent and be jealous... Her daughter never knew the truth of her situation, and after taking an option that my friend was never presented, for a pregnancy she was responsible for, she died at the age of 15... My friend felt worse for the fact that she didn't feel any love lost... and she regretted that anyone, including her daughter should never know the feel of a mother's love... She truly feels it would have been better for everyone if the child had never been born.
....
I have had the opportunity to meet several women who are on one side of this issue, or another... I have a friend, who believes that in the end, her daughter is so much more wonderful than the atrocity that she suffered. She advocates life, but even she knows not all women are equipped to live with the reminder forever of what they lived through... She is a staunch adoption advocate, and she has arranged several adoptions for the children of rape victims...
I have also have another friend who gave her daughter up for adoption as a teenager... Last year, she got a letter, and having her daughter as a pen pal now has given her closure that she has needed for 12 years...
I know a woman who kept her son, she tried but was never able to get quite past the regret for having lost her youth... Her son left her a letter the night he killed himself saying he regretted he was ever born... She never told him that she had considered it... she never told him he was the result of rape... She never told him anything about a father, except that he had God the Father...
I know two other women who have children who are the result of rape...
... and I know two women that have had abortions after rape, and they say they don't really think about the abortion... They don't regret it, and they have been able to move on with their lives... Both of those women have families now, and neither of them show as many signs of PTSD as the women who have kept their children...
...
Yet my experiences with these women have helped me see that the abortion is a secondary issue... attacking it is pointless, and telling women who have suffered that they must continue suffering doesn't stop the evil of these situations... Just because they decide against abortion, does not mean that the cycle of evil consequences in their individual instances end there...
The choice to have an abortion usually follows an immoral act... Whether it is un-sanctified consensual sex, or rape... It is not going to diminish until these problems are attacked...
Girls need not only to be taught the possible consequences of sex, but that they have the ability to keep their hormones in check... The media needs to quit drowning our children is messages that lust is love...
We need to teach our young men respect... A quality that is rapidly disappearing in this age... We need to attack the venues that open their minds to the kind of corruption that leads them to sexual violence... We need to counter the message that society sends that self gratification is more important than self-respect... We need to counter the message that the media gives, that women and sex are the ultimate pleasure...
As to those girls who would use abortion as a means of birth control, and continue in their ways... I do not advocate the access of abortion... If they are old enough to truly understand the risks of sex, they are old enough to deal with the consequences... I believe their decision should be whether to keep a child or offer it for adoption...
As to those who would kill a child because of a birth defect... I still have a hard time showing love in this instance... I work with developmentally challenged people very often in my field, and I don't see them as defective...
...And I will refrain from making judgment in the case of risk to a woman's life... Women who are put in the situation that they may live or die for a pregnancy is a hard situation to fathom... In the cases of family, allowing a child to live over the mother may take the mother away from a spouse, not to mention other children... I will leave this topic to the Holy Spirit, because it is too heartbreaking for me to find justice in...
I hope this post exhibits why I take a deliberately passive stance on the issue of abortions... I do hope it leads some people to really think about issues they view in Black-and-White... Many of the issues Christians feel so strongly about are secondary issues set in motion by an earlier evil, and attacking a secondary issue really doesn't ever make any progress... We have to get to the roots of these issues, and many times, there are several issues that can trigger a secondary one...
Secondary issues are normally issues that involve interpreting the lesser of 2 evils, and it must be left to an individual to make a final decision of what is the lesser... and normally it is a no-win situation to begin with...
This also involves a bit of personal testimony, and a good dose of personal opinion, I am not trying to make excuses, but share what has been revealed to me that I may continue to operate with a Spirit of love and acceptance...
The topic is abortion, and I used to be someone who strongly believed there was never any excuse for it... I have met people and situations that have convinced me that I am not qualified to make a clear cut decision on this matter...
I grew up very rural... I made mini escapes from the boondocks as a teenager by going on mission trips... Out of country when I could gather the money, but mostly inner city missions. Abortion was just becoming a mainstream political platform in the 90's, and I believed like most people where I am from that it was one of the blackest evils of the times...
When I was in the city, I would meet girls my own age who had gotten pregnant. Some by rape, some not.. My heart always went out to these women, but it would always harden a bit when I learned one of the girls I would be ministering to had had an abortion...
I was often asked, "What if you were in my situation?" and to the girls who hadn't been raped, but had willingly went to some man's bed of her own accord, I would normally answer, "I have made the decision to never put myself in this situation, and I have the strength of God to steady me in my resolve..." or some such...
To the girls who had endured horrible violence who asked, I would say, "God would never place you in a situation that you were not strong enough to bear." Like it was a comfort or something... I honestly thought it was... I would advocate adoption, and the possibility that having a child might turn a situation that seemed so hopeless into a blessing... For the most part, this is still what I believe, but I have learned that humility was lacking back then.
I would meet girls who were in situations that they saw no escape from... One day one of those girls walked up to me and had a sit down... We were both around 15/16... She seemed so wise... She told me that my attitude had hurt her sister, who was pregnant, and so was she... I didn't know how to respond, because I hadn't spoken directly to her sister. Neither of them even looked pregnant. Her sister had overheard me talking to another girl... She had heard me say abortion is never a solution... The girl who confronted me proceeded to tell me that she was on her 3rd pregnancy, and it was going to be terminated as soon as she had the means to get it done, but it was no deal whatever I thought of her... But the fact that I hurt her sister, who had just found out the day before that she was pregnant, well, She told me to go to Hell... I pressed her to tell me her story, and she pretty much said no girl should have to bear their own siblings... Her deceased mother's husband had been raping both girls since they were preteens...
I remember trying to get them to go to authorities, but then she told me that they would stay where they were, because if they said anything they would be in danger, but the system, in their eyes was just as bad... I went to one of the trip sponsors with the story, and they went to the police, but both girls denied the story... but I never had any reason to disbelieve them.
That though, was the point in my life that I started suspecting that I didn't have the right to draw the conclusion I had made. I started wondering if there might be a grey area.
...
I didn't realize until a year after that, that the gears of a personal revelation had already been set in motion 7 years before. I knew someone who had already been dealing with an issue related to this topic... Someone who had been forced to take a side of this issue, and it might not have been the right side...
When I was 8, there was a certain girl, one year older than me in my school... She was always sweet to me, even when others picked on me for being smaller. I remember sitting with her at lunch, and I remember the day she told me that her mother was getting married, and that she would have a step brother. She was excited, she had always wanted a brother... I had an older brother, 8 years older than I, and she always thought it was great how he took care of me... Her step-brother was 8 years older than her...
I suppose you know where this is going... It was only 3 months later that she didn't show up for school. I never knew what happened to her... Rumors merely stated that her grandmother took her and moved away overnight... As an 8 year old, there was no way for me to imagine what was going on.
So, 9 years later, I run into her... I asked her what happened, and she tells me that she had gotten pregnant and that was why she was taken out of school. AT 9 YEARS OLD! Her step brother had a very sick fascination with sex, and he had forcibly raped her (she didn't even know what was going on at the time), and she had gotten pregnant. Her mother had reported the incident with the police, but when the police investigated they found her mother and step father involved in drugs, and so she was turned over to her grandmother. Her grandma did not believe in abortion, so she carried the baby to term, and that child was being raised as her sister by her grandmother.
She was 18 then, when we had met again. She had been home schooled by her grandmother in another state. She had returned to Missouri to attend her mother's funeral. We decided to keep in touch. She was 20 when she married, she and her husband wanted children of their own... She got pregnant twice, but both times the pregnancies terminated within 9 weeks... The doctors decided to take a look and found that her reproductive system was so damaged and scarred from her childhood pregnancy, it wouldn't sustain one now, and to top it off, they were going to have to have to do surgery to fix a circulatory issue , and that surgery would seal the deal... She could never have children, because by the time they were done, she didn't have the necessary equipment.... She was tormented by this...
She never learned how to love her daughter... She had so many reasons to resent and be jealous... Her daughter never knew the truth of her situation, and after taking an option that my friend was never presented, for a pregnancy she was responsible for, she died at the age of 15... My friend felt worse for the fact that she didn't feel any love lost... and she regretted that anyone, including her daughter should never know the feel of a mother's love... She truly feels it would have been better for everyone if the child had never been born.
....
I have had the opportunity to meet several women who are on one side of this issue, or another... I have a friend, who believes that in the end, her daughter is so much more wonderful than the atrocity that she suffered. She advocates life, but even she knows not all women are equipped to live with the reminder forever of what they lived through... She is a staunch adoption advocate, and she has arranged several adoptions for the children of rape victims...
I have also have another friend who gave her daughter up for adoption as a teenager... Last year, she got a letter, and having her daughter as a pen pal now has given her closure that she has needed for 12 years...
I know a woman who kept her son, she tried but was never able to get quite past the regret for having lost her youth... Her son left her a letter the night he killed himself saying he regretted he was ever born... She never told him that she had considered it... she never told him he was the result of rape... She never told him anything about a father, except that he had God the Father...
I know two other women who have children who are the result of rape...
... and I know two women that have had abortions after rape, and they say they don't really think about the abortion... They don't regret it, and they have been able to move on with their lives... Both of those women have families now, and neither of them show as many signs of PTSD as the women who have kept their children...
...
Yet my experiences with these women have helped me see that the abortion is a secondary issue... attacking it is pointless, and telling women who have suffered that they must continue suffering doesn't stop the evil of these situations... Just because they decide against abortion, does not mean that the cycle of evil consequences in their individual instances end there...
The choice to have an abortion usually follows an immoral act... Whether it is un-sanctified consensual sex, or rape... It is not going to diminish until these problems are attacked...
Girls need not only to be taught the possible consequences of sex, but that they have the ability to keep their hormones in check... The media needs to quit drowning our children is messages that lust is love...
We need to teach our young men respect... A quality that is rapidly disappearing in this age... We need to attack the venues that open their minds to the kind of corruption that leads them to sexual violence... We need to counter the message that society sends that self gratification is more important than self-respect... We need to counter the message that the media gives, that women and sex are the ultimate pleasure...
As to those girls who would use abortion as a means of birth control, and continue in their ways... I do not advocate the access of abortion... If they are old enough to truly understand the risks of sex, they are old enough to deal with the consequences... I believe their decision should be whether to keep a child or offer it for adoption...
As to those who would kill a child because of a birth defect... I still have a hard time showing love in this instance... I work with developmentally challenged people very often in my field, and I don't see them as defective...
...And I will refrain from making judgment in the case of risk to a woman's life... Women who are put in the situation that they may live or die for a pregnancy is a hard situation to fathom... In the cases of family, allowing a child to live over the mother may take the mother away from a spouse, not to mention other children... I will leave this topic to the Holy Spirit, because it is too heartbreaking for me to find justice in...
I hope this post exhibits why I take a deliberately passive stance on the issue of abortions... I do hope it leads some people to really think about issues they view in Black-and-White... Many of the issues Christians feel so strongly about are secondary issues set in motion by an earlier evil, and attacking a secondary issue really doesn't ever make any progress... We have to get to the roots of these issues, and many times, there are several issues that can trigger a secondary one...
Secondary issues are normally issues that involve interpreting the lesser of 2 evils, and it must be left to an individual to make a final decision of what is the lesser... and normally it is a no-win situation to begin with...