We Need to Talk About the "A" Word

In light of today’s national election results, I need to say a few things about abortion.

My opinion is informed by my experience as a previously unwed mother who knows what it's like to have to choose. It's informed by my experience as a survivor of sexual and domestic violence. It's informed by my time working at a pregnancy resource center, by my time volunteering in women's shelters, and by my time spent on the frontlines in defense of women's hard fought sex-based protections.

For more than 50 years now, women have been conditioned to believe that motherhood, an actual superpower, is, instead, a curse and a liability. We see the messaging everywhere from pop culture to billboard ads in our city streets: “Motherhood is the end of the line for your dreams.” But how did this lie ever become so appealing? Why were women so desperate to evacuate their wombs in the first place? These are the questions that I think Christians ought to concern ourselves with a lot more thoughtfully, and we need to do so with the willingness to recognize our own complicity in creating the problem.

I hate to have to acknowledge this, but the more actively I engage a number of influential (usually male) Christian thought leaders, the more clearly I understand just how the lie about abortion took hold. I understand the chauvinistic fertilizer that primed the soil to allow that seed of cognitive distortion to grow, and I understand how critically important it is to weed out the misogynistic roots of the problem if we are to have any hope of ever arriving at anything resembling a workable solution to it.

And this means being honest about some of the rot in our camp, starting with acknowledging that yes, historically (and continuing into the present in some spheres), women were reduced to the function of breeder and relegated to the home and service of men. This isn’t some fantastical feminist talking point. It’s a lived reality for too many passionate women, whose gifts and callings were stifled as they were forced into lives of someone else’s choosing.

If we’re serious about solving the problem, we need to get serious about making sure that we are not its source.

When I got knocked up out of wedlock, there was no shortage of messaging on the left convincing me that a choice to continue my pregnancy was a choice to kill my career goals. “You have to pick,” they told me. “Do the merciful thing for both of you; have an abortion.” The very clear message was, “You can’t do both.”

And it’s messaging the right inadvertently regurgitates every time we platform influential men who preach loud, shame-filled condemnations about women working outside the home. Even this morning, I stumbled upon a John MacArthur sermon that waxed on for paragraph after scaremongering paragraph about how terrible it is when mothers leave their children in someone else’s care during the day. There’s a pervasive, rapidly increasing resurgence of conservative men trying to push women back into the kitchen. If you need examples, I’ve got them in spades. They are not helping.

So here are a few pointers I would like to give to conservatives as we navigate these issues in the future:

1. STOP TELLING WOMEN WE HAVE TO CHOOSE BETWEEN OUR CHILDREN AND OUR OTHER PASSIONS. In so doing, you are pouring salt in the very wounds that inspired abortion in the first place. Throughout history, women have always managed both careers and family life. We can, too! Read some Dorothy Sayers, for crying in the night!
   

2. Stop crapping on single moms. Seriously. Stop telling them their children are destined to fail without fathers. Stop blaming them for the decline of society. Stop throwing shade at them on social media. In the past week, I’ve seen no fewer than half a dozen popular conservative Twitter threads taking pot shots at single moms. One self-declared abortion abolitionist pastor actually referred to them as “sloppy seconds.” Men’s groups are encouraged to hold these women in suspicion, to treat them like damaged goods, to brand them with a scarlet A. What we ought to be telling them is, “Thank you.” Thank you for loving well enough to hold down the fort. Thank you for prioritizing your child even after you were abandoned. Thank you for choosing life. Thank you for your sacrifice and heart.
   
   The way we talk about welfare isn’t much better. Wanna know one of the very first things we did for women in crisis who visited us at the pregnancy center? We connected them to state assistance with medical insurance-because they needed it. Earlier this week, a man I know in real life told me he didn’t think I should have been allowed to vote while I was on welfare. These are the types of things people to say to unwed mothers all the time. Over time, it can be pretty discouraging. I weaned myself off of food stamps as fast as I possibly could, but I promise the one thing I did not need while relying on them was the judgment of other people who seemed to believe I should only eat ramen until I could get my act together.
   

3. Stop platforming “abortion abolitionists.” They are the Westboro Baptist Church of this movement, and they’re a hideous liability. Pro-lifers need to value and elevate the voices of women who regret their abortions. Instead, too many zealots who identify as abolitionists are working to put these women in prison cells instead of behind microphones. This makes me want to bash my head against a wall.
   

   Do I think abortion should be illegal? Yes. Do I think we should prosecute the women who've been conditioned to believe it's just a lump of tissue? No!!!! Prosecute the butchers who account for the limbs and know damn well what they're doing, not the women who believe they're just getting rid of blobs of tissue. I promise you that if you put a living breathing baby in the arms of 99.9% of these women, they would never commission its slaughter. Intent is everything when it comes to criminal convictions. Stop exacting revenge, and start binding wounds already!
   

4. Some of the most abortion-vulnerable women are sitting in pews next to you on Sunday mornings. The stigma of their sexual sin can be downright paralyzing. What can we do to foster a church culture that maintains high standards of conduct while also communicating the grace we all need? Is your church a safe place for the abortion vulnerable to turn?
   

5. Adoption isn't the magic cure-all for a crisis pregnancy, and we need to be sensitive to the message we communicate to women when we flippantly say, "Oh just give it up for adoption if you can't take care of it."
   

   This point always gets me in hot water with adoptive parents, so I'll take this opportunity to reiterate that adoption can be a BEAUTIFUL thing. There are people out there who legitimately aren't capable of parenting, and their children deserve a loving family to embrace them as one of their own. Some of you are amazing adoptive parents whose children are blessed to have you.
   

   But whenever possible, we need to be doing everything within our power to keep babies with their mothers. If you are willing to spend $30k on adopting a baby, would you be willing to spend that same amount of money to help keep a mom with the child she would only relinquish under extreme duress? These are prickly conversations that don't win me very many fans, but my gosh, are they important.
   

   In a recent study of post-abortive women, a large number of the women interviewed explained that adoption felt even more like death to them than abortion did. In abortion, they had to process a feeling of loss once. In adoption, they had to experience 9 months of physical identity as a mother only to have that identity suddenly cut off and the emotional bond abruptly severed.
   

   We don’t have to validate or agree with that mentality, but our feelings about it are irrelevant. The fact is, that’s how they felt and why they chose their course of action, and we would be foolish not to listen to the information these women are providing for us. A question we should be asking more often in these scenarios is, “How can we keep the mother and baby together?”
   

6. Foaming at the mouth and screaming "Murderer!" outside abortion clinics is just about the least effective way to affect change I can imagine. If you're doing this, please stop. When is the last time anyone changed your mind about anything by screaming at you or telling you that you're going to burn in hell? Reel in the crazy. "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." "It is the goodness of the Lord that leads to repentance," not a vindictive self-righteous picket sign.

I think abortion is a scourge that grieves the heart of God. I won't be silent about that. It's an idol that needs to fall. I think it either breaks a woman's heart, or it hardens it. But I have long maintained that the very best way to save the unborn is to learn to care as much about their mothers as we do about their babies. Conservatives, we’ve got some work to do in this space.