Pros and Cons of the Pro-Life Issue– Part Three

Back to the issue of public policy. According to the surveys I’ve seen, the vast majority of Americans are not in favor of abortions of convenience, by which I mean abortions that do not involve medical emergencies which risk the very life of the mother, and do not involve rape or incest. The general public thinks abortions should be legal and available from capable medical professionals in such exceptional cases. But one should not make a principle or rule out of the exception. They should be seen as exceptions to the general rule or principle. Unless Christians can convince the general public otherwise about such exceptions, they are wasting their time protesting all abortions or trying to get the Supreme Court to rule them all out, not the mention preventing them from having any positive witness to those with whom they disagree.

But there are problems from the other side of the coin as well. Pregnancies not caused by the Holy Spirit (and I know of only one such case, see the picture above), seem always or at least 99% of the time to involve two parties (or in this day and age, the sperm of one male, and a woman). We used to say it takes two to tango. And this brings up a crucial point— why should a woman think that she alone should be able to decide the issue of whether to have an abortion or not, if in fact she has had consensual sex with a man? Should he have exactly no say in the matter? This seems inherently unfair, and frankly not Christian. Since the mother must carry child, fair would be that she has the determining vote on these matters, since it impacts her and her health most directly, but not without consultation of her partner. There are in fact a plethora of thorny issues surrounding the whole matter of getting pregnant with some unknown man’s sperm, just so one can have a child, and thereby depriving that child of a relationship with the person who would be his or her birth father. I do not propose to address this issue here, but will simply say that there is a good reason why in the Bible sex is confined to marriage— there is a desire that a child be reared by a mother and father together as a family matter. And while often, sadly that does not happen, that is rightly assumed to be best and the norm for which we strive. A friendly reminder— birth control is not infallible, no matter what form you use.