Confessions: Both Sides of The Issue

Often, because of my work with Central Minnesota LifeCare Center I find myself in discussions with people on both sides of the abortion issue. The stories I’m about to share with you are from people I have met outside our Center - none of them are client stories.

During the Stearns County fair I had a chance to visit with a young woman in her twenties. She said that all her life, abortion has been legal - culturally accepted, and presented by media and medical professionals as a normal acceptable option to women facing unintended pregnancy - obviously, she was born after the United States Supreme court legalized abortion in Roe v. Wade, on January 22nd, 1973.

"It’s a cultural issue", said a friend of mine -- “we need to change the culture”. Cultural changes happen over time. It’s taken us 38 years and 2 generations to get here. We DO need to change the culture. Cultural changes happen one person at a time through education and awareness campaigns. We see firsthand that we are changing people’s lives, one person at a time. And we couldn’t do it without you.

Last year I visited with a young woman who wanted to argue in defense of abortion. “It’s a woman’s right, it’s her body, it’s her choice, it’s legal, it’s between her and her god”, - the usual arguments we’ve all heard in favor of abortion. We talked for awhile -- but the conversation reached an impass - So I said to her: “You’re in favor of abortion … then you probably won’t mind looking at some pictures of aborted babies, right?” She agreed. So we went to the computer and searched Google Images for “abortion”. We spent forty five minutes looking at pictures and videos of abortion. I took the time to explain the gestational age of the babies and what abortion methods were used to kill them. When we were finished she was horrified and said, “I had no idea! Abortion is evil!”. Then she told me about a pregnant friend of hers who was considering abortion so I gave her some brochures and information from the Center to share with her friend. Two weeks later she called to tell me that her friend decided not to abort. A baby’s life was saved.

Just last week someone told me she had seen a woman who was obviously neglecting her infant - the child appeared to be starving - “that baby should have been aborted”, she said. “Why not kill him now?” I replied, “Really, what’s the difference?”. Born or unborn, abortion is murder any way you look at it.

Some states have made abortion illegal after 20 - 24 weeks gestation - but that doesn’t mean late term abortions are not being done - babies continue to be killed throughout all stages of pregnancy. Abortion is infanticide. The state of Minnesota puts women on buses and sends them to Kansas to get late term abortions. Our taxes pay for the trip, lodging, and the abortion itself. This is an outrage!

At the county fair a stranger told me the story of her daughter’s hysterotomy. Hysterotomy is a legal late term abortion procedure, done in the last trimester of pregnancy - a Cesearean Section, performed in hospitals, that results in the death of the unborn child. Most babies are born alive with hysterotomy, and simply left to die in a surgical pan or linen closet. This woman’s daughter was 49 years old and following routine genetic testing it was confirmed that her baby suffered from a terminal birth defect and his chance of survival was poor. This is news that no expectant parent wants to hear. So her doctor convinced her that hysterotomy would be the merciful, compassionate thing to do for the child - “Why allow him to suffer after birth, he said. Just let him go now”. Hysterotomy is abortion. Abortion at any stage is infanticide.

Abortion is the un-choice. And abortion is no respecter of persons. Another woman told me about her abortion as a teenager. Church was a regular part of her family life in those days. When she found herself pregnant she feared the wrath and anger of her parents so she turned to someone she thought she could trust - someone from church. The woman from church was eager to help and although the teenager had chosen adoption for her unborn child, she was coerced into abortion. The Elliot Institute reports that 67% of women who chose abortion do so because they are being coerced, pressured, and threatened by parents, boyfriends, husbands, or friends. So the woman from church took care of everything for the teenage girl. She called Planned Parenthood, made the abortion appointment, and let the girl stay at her house for the night. In the morning, the trusted woman drew a nice warm bath for the girl. Then drove her to the clinic and dropped her off. A nurse led the girl by the hand to the “procedure” room, all the while telling her, “it’s not a baby, it’s not a baby." After the abortion the girl was take to another room full of small cots where other women who’d just had abortions were sobbing. The nurses did nothing to console them. So the teenage girl took her place among the crying women knowing that she had just killed her baby. And there was no going back. She didn’t realize that this was a forced abortion.

Women - I encourage you to mentor - and work to build trust relationships with the teenage girls you know. Because one day you may be the one person that a scared confused teenager might reach out to.

Abortion is genocide. In December of 1936 Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood wrote, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” Abortion is the leading cause of death among African Americans - more than 37% of them are aborted. Since Roe v. Wade, more than 53 million babies have lost their lives to abortion. -- At least 13.85 million of those babies were African American.

Roe v. Wade changed the legal definition of infanticide by stripping unborn children of their humanity and renaming them “products of conception”, “blobs of tissue”, “parasites”, and "blood clots".

I have seen Planned Parenthood’s “informed consent” video. In one or two short minutes they flash the shadow of a baby, 6 weeks after conception, and describe it as a “clump of cells” that has multiplied - as if it were some kind of tumor or cancerous growth. There is no mention of heart beat, facial features, limbs or organs. The child is not even acknowledged as a living thing.

Some people believe that First trimester abortion is a lesser evil. But there are no grades of evil. We live in the days when evil is called good - and good is called evil.