It’s about midnight, and as I type this, my three children, 5, 2, and 8 months are sleeping soundly in their beds. I probably won’t have too long before someone wakes up and needs a diaper change or a sip of water, but for now it’s quiet, and I’m left alone with my thoughts. This week has been sad and strange. The trending topics of Planned Parenthood, Chattanooga, and Sandra Bland are blowing up my Twitter feed. Honestly, I just want to turn everything off and go to bed. It seems that the very issues of life and death are before us, presented in every tragic way possible.
I’ve avoided discussing the pro-choice/ pro-life debate for years. It may be one of my least favorite topics mainly because of the polarizing effect it has on people. The idea of abortion conjures up so much emotion. Even the most civilized among us can turn into yelling, screaming monsters within a matter of minutes. In my early years, I was decidedly pro-life. Period. End of discussion. Of course, all of that was when I had the luxury of naivety. I was young, and I had no concept of atrocities such as rape, incest, human trafficking. And I was also healthy, so the idea that the life of an unborn baby and the life of a mother might not be able to coexist without one dying never even crossed my mind. Looking back, I have to offer grace to my younger self. I honestly didn’t know better.
After college I pursued a Master’s Degree and eventually began to practice therapy. I still actually thought I had the world pretty much figured out. I was overly confident and judgmental… Charming right? I had all the answers… until I didn’t. I was in complete control… until I wasn’t. You see, to be a therapist of any value, you must be willing to enter into another person’s pain. Once you begin the process of walking with another through their pain, your ideas about life begin to change. Once your ideas about life begin to change, you panic a bit. You might even begin to ask questions like, God, who are you? Why do you let these things happen? What if you’re not as good as I thought you were? All of this is kind of like pulling a thread on your favorite sweater. One firm tug, and the whole thing starts to unravel. Before you know it, your warm and cozy world isn’t quite so comfortable. For me, it was downright scary.
I have to admit that my stomach turned when I first read the headline claiming that Planned Parenthood was selling fetal tissue for a profit. As I began to research the story, I came across the full length, undercover video released by the Center for Medical Progress. I’m not one to trust edited versions of stories, so I chose to watch the almost 3 hour video in it’s entirety. So rather than debate the issue yet again, here are 4 responses I believe would be healthy and appropriate:
Listen: One of the things that so often get Christians in trouble is our unwillingness to really hear what another person is trying to tell us. I believe this happens for a variety of reasons, but mostly because we have already developed some sort of theology on the issue of controversial topics like abortion. Many of us believe that human life is sacred. We’re familiar with Scripture that specifically tells us that God “knit us together” and that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” If we place a high value on life, the idea of ending a life before it begins sounds unimaginable. But I think that people on both sides of this debate would be wise to try and understand the opposite point of view. Try to enter into the pain of another in order to see things from a different perspective. You probably won’t change your views on the sanctity of life, but you may come away with a better understanding of just how valuable life is. Hearing another’s story helps us to cultivate empathy. And empathy for another helps us grow love.
I was horrified as I listened to Dr. Deborah Nucatola discuss ways to abort tiny human organs for the purposes of research. To be honest, I was eating my lunch, at the time, and I literally thought I might vomit. I wanted to stop the video all together. (I did stop it long enough to collect myself.) But then I became interested in her as a person. I began to wonder why she was in this practice to begin with. Later in the footage, Deborah tells about her experience watching a young patient die from a botched abortion. Although my emotions were still very strong, I began to have a strange sense of compassion for her. Don’t get me wrong, I strongly disagree with Nucatola’s work. But she isn’t the monster I had read about in previous blogs and news articles. She’s a person, and listening to her pain began to shape me.
Love: Hearing stories from people who are marginalized and forgotten breaks my heart. As I have processed these stories over my years of practice, I have felt intense conflict at times. Our world is so broken. But I can honestly say that every time I’ve looked to God, I’ve found Him to be as loving as I imagined… Even more than I expected. I guess what always keeps me coming back is His love. He shows love for the marginalized, love for the victim, love for sick and poor, and always love for the judgmental know-it-all. So it’s probably best for us to remember that we are not politicians. We are not activists. We are not officers of morality. We are Christians. In every situation let’s ask this one question: What does love require of me today?
What would love require in our response to Deborah Nucatola? The question seems almost offensive in such a context doesn’t it? I mean, she killed and dismembered babies, right? I read yesterday that she closed all of her social media accounts. She is basically in hiding I guess. I began to wonder if she was scared or embarrassed. And then started to consider what Jesus might do if He were here. Would He bend down and begin to write in the dust? Everyone around her is shouting, “She deserves to be punished! She deserves what she gets!” Maybe he’d say something like, “Go ahead and judge her. But only if…”
Speak: After we have loved and listened well to the perspectives of others and entered into their pain, I do believe that we have a responsibility to speak truth and to spread a message of hope in Jesus. We serve a God who specializes in the impossible. He shows up BIG for the poor, the marginalized, and the outcast. What an unbelievable opportunity we have right now to tell the world of His love! The same theology that leads us to oppose the killing of the most vulnerable should be the exact same theology that would convict us to tell a hurting world about our Savior. The lives of unborn children are just as valuable as the lives of the women who would choose to abort them. We must stop acting as if one is greater than the other. Speak truth in your church, your school, and your community that the lives of all people matter to Jesus. He died so that every single one of us could be set free.
It’s easy to lose sight of this in our current culture I suppose. We’ve gotten pretty good at holding people’s sins against them. After all, Facebook is forever. What if that had been the case for Apostle Paul? Imagine, the most notorious murderer of our time asking for forgiveness– Even claiming that he’d been saved! (Eye roll) Granted, Deborah Nucatola hasn’t made any public statements about faith or salvation, but would we be willing to tell her about the love of Christ if she were interested? Would we speak the truth and grace of Jesus Christ so that even Deborah knew that He has the power to make all things new?
Act: What are our next steps? After all of the conversation is over, where does that leave us? I would suggest that our actions would be one of the primary ways our world begins to trust that we aren’t simply providing lip service on this issue of abortion. If we truly believe that life is valuable and that people matter, we will start to live as if that is true. What would it look like? It may mean that you decide to have fearless conversations with your own children regarding sexuality so that they begin to trust you with the most private areas of their life. It might look like building relationships with women and families living at or below the poverty line. Your family may decide to begin the process of ethical adoption for orphans or special needs children. And some of us may take even bigger steps in order to address the systemic issues that lead to poverty and social injustice. The key is to begin with the people currently in your circle of influence and then work outward.
In this specific situation, I believe that Christ-like actions would consist of clicking responsibly in terms of electronic publicity and social media related to this story. When we make comments about people being “demented, “ “evil,” or “sociopaths” we are making statements about a created child of God. We may not be committing physical murder, but we are using our language to kill someone else’s spirit. And it’s hard to take any anti-abortion arguments seriously when the very language used against the opposition is filled with hate and death.
The truth is, most of us will never meet Deborah Nucatola. We probably won’t interact with the leaders of Planned Parenthood. I’d suggest that it’s unlikely that we’ll even know a physician who performs abortions. But we all know someone who has been impacted by abortion. Statistically speaking, we probably know several women and men whose lives have been drastically altered by the events of unplanned pregnancy. What if we listened, loved, spoke, and acted in a way that represents the love of Christ that is in us? What if we decided that life is indeed so valuable that we committed to protect all life by submitting our life to the One who created it all?
missihippie 