Manhood & Abortion
by on Jan 27th, 2010 at 12:58 am
The first time I ever saw my son, he was no bigger than a single grain of rice. Just a few millimeters long, my wife and I watched in astonishment as this little being’s heart was already beating at a rapid pace. Seven weeks later, we volunteered ourselves to let a pregnancy clinic train their nurses by performing fetal measurements on my wife through ultrasound.
For an hour, we watched our son, still less than a trimester old, jump, kick, raise his arm, and fidget whenever we pushed on my wife’s stomach. I counted all ten toes and fingers, studied his nose, viewed his heart beat through his skin while my own heart danced. The whole time, I was internally rejoicing and yet I felt as though we had intruded upon a most sacred space: the womb in which God worked His most profound creative act. David said he was fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:13-16), but I watched with fear and wonder what he could only see in the mind’s eye. God made a human and then spent nine months giving him a functioning body.
Being involved in the whole pregnancy process has only increased my passion and concern for the unborn. Prior to our pregnancy, my wife had spent five years as a counselor at a center designed to help women who were in the midst of crisis or unwanted pregnancies. She has counseled a great number of women, mostly teenage girls, and through her heroic service has given courage to most with carrying out their pregnancies. There have been those who aborted their babies, but her intense passion for unborn humans keeps me close to the struggle against pro-abortion teachings and organizations.
Sadly, our experiences and my very small amount of research has revealed that men are just shy of absent in the struggle for defending the unborn. There are pastors proclaiming the worth of the unborn (last Sunday was Sanctity of Life Sunday), there are men engaging in public protests, but there are very few who are volunteering their time, energy, resources, and comforts to ministering to the young men who have impregnated these teenage girls.
I know I’m only a father of one, but I’m pretty sure that pregnancy, apart from in-vitro fertilization, involves both a female and a male. My wife has told me that, more often than not, the fathers-to-be are present for the first meeting at their center, and further conversations with other counselors from a number of various centers have said the same thing. This tells me that we have young males coming to get help and advice about this difficult situation, but there are usually no men of God present to give them direction and vision for their lives.
The problem with these young fathers-to-be is not that they have sinned sexually, though they did sin. Rather, these young males lack any biblical vision for manhood and they lack any legal leverage in the whole abortion issue. This country is full of grieving fathers who lost their unborn children to abortion even though it was against their will. I give the ones I have heard about and seen credit for having the courage to directly seek advice for the future. They want to own up to their decision, but they rarely have the chance to walk under the guidance of God-honoring men who can help them become God-honoring men and fathers.
If you are looking to do God’s will with your life. If you want to give yourself to something that matters. Let me submit to you that fighting for the unborn would be a cause that easily fits both requirements. Furthermore, let me encourage you to consider offering your hours, even if it is just a few hours a month, to mentoring teenage males at your local Christian crisis pregnancy center. An entire demographic is being either ignored or left aside because there are no Christian men who will step up and meet that need.
You may never get earthly credit for making such an investment. You will suffer pain as you witness first-hand the effects of abortion on the babies, mothers, and powerless fathers. The chances are pretty strong that the more effective God makes you in your ministry the more Satan will attack you and pressure you to quit. Yet, the Heavenly Father, the Maker of all babies, the Father to the Fatherless, will use you in ways that could far exceed your tiny ambitions.
In any case, we should all take up a greater interest in the battle for the unborn. We should know where Christian crisis pregnancy centers are located. Their financial viability should matter to us. Just last week, we read portions of a letter written by a man who recognized injustice and put himself on the line to see it end. The genocide of an age group sounds like an injustice worth ending to me.