Compelled to be pro-life
else? It is either a baby or a blob of tissue in both cases. It is either something precious or something worthless in both cases. No one has their identity or worth determined by whether or not someone wants them. They are what they are regardless of whether someone wants them or not.
I am pro-life because I cannot agree with a clearly faulty argument, “It is my body.” I am not aware of anyone ever having two heads, two hearts, four arms, four legs, two brains, two beating hearts, two different circulatory systems, and two completely different sets of DNA. The fact that one human is inside another human does not mean that the second human is not real and can be damaged or destroyed. If it does, then we all have a right to bite our dentist’s fingers off, since they are “our fingers” while they are in our mouths.
I am pro-life because I see, every single day, very real people who want children and cannot have them. If someone does not want a child, there are others who stand willing to adopt him or her.
That is something I truly love: a win-win-win situation. The biological mother wins by not having to raise the child she does not want, the child wins by being allowed to live, and childless parents win by being given a child to love and raise.
I am pro-life because so called “flawed children” are often the very biggest of blessings. We have Downs children in our circle, children whose parents were told to abort them. They are among the most vivacious, precious people I know.
I am pro-life because doctors are often wrong. One of our ladies in church was told that her son would be born a deformed vegetable and that she should abort him. That child was born perfectly healthy and now has children of his own.
I am pro-life because God can make a great life out of a bad start. A child may be born in poverty, even squalor, can go on to became a great composer, a brain surgeon, or a statesman.
I am pro-life because as a pastor, I have seen the bitter tears of regret from women who aborted their children. Twenty and thirty years later, they still wish they could undo that irrevocable decision.
I am pro-life because what is in the womb is clearly a human being, capable of experiencing pain, and having done nothing worthy of death.
Lastly, I am pro-life because Genesis 1:26 says that we humans were made in the image of God,
and the proof of that truth is everywhere evident. Neither bunnies nor dolphins nor dogs or any other animal has built hospitals, set foot on the moon, or cured diseases. But mankind has done all of that and infinitely more. The potential of animals is limited, the potential of man made in the image of God is almost limitless.
Life is precious, and no life is more so than an innocent, vulnerable, wiggling, growing, living baby that will only be in its mother’s womb for a very short while.
Bo Wagner is pastor of the Cornerstone Baptist Church in Mooresboro, N.C., a widely traveled evangelist, and author of several books, including a kid’s fiction book about the Battle of Chickamauga, “Broken Brotherhood.” He can be emailed at 2knowhim@cbc-web.org.