Heartbroken women and men
Last week I watched a documentary called The Choice. In it, six people (five women and one man) share their experiences of abortion. It was a very sad piece of television. Regardless of whether they remained pro-choice or not, abortion had clearly caused these people much pain, and affected them deeply and profoundly.
Three things struck me as I watched. Firstly, to be quite honest, I was shocked by the fact that at least two of the people interviewed had had two or three abortions. I'm not sure why that surprised me. It's hard to imagine the pain of going through it more than once, so maybe I thought that once you'd had one abortion, you'd take extra precautions to avoid being in that situation again.
Secondly, when pro-choice people talk about abortion they generally use language that dehumanizes the baby (words like ‘embryo’, ‘foetus’ and ‘termination’ are used in favour of words like ‘baby’ and ‘death’). What struck me about this documentary was how many times the participants used words like ‘baby’ and ‘life’ as they talked about the children they had aborted. It seems that whatever else they thought, the one thing they all accepted was that they had aborted real children—real lives. None of them were talking about ‘just a bunch of cells’.
Finally, as I watched these people share their stories, and as I saw their pain, I realised how many heartbroken women (and men) must be sitting in our churches each week, quietly grieving over their own abortions. It stands to reason, with the increasing rate of abortion in the West, that there are women at church who—for whatever reason—have had an abortion at some point in their life, whether before or after they became Christian. But it's one of those topics that we don't talk about except to say, “Of course it's wrong, so don't do it”. There must be many women in our churches who hide their pain for years because they can't bring themselves to tell anyone.
But God unconditionally forgives the repentant sinner, even when we can't forgive ourselves. I pray that we will be careful and sensitive in the way we talk about abortion at church so that those who quietly grieve might feel able to talk to someone about it and get some help in casting their burdens on Jesus:
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matt 11:28-30)
Information about the documentary can be found here.