I have seen the
same problem that Jeff Durbin is speaking about here. Not in the context of legislation,
because there is no large political party in Australia that would ever bother
to try and stop abortion. Does anti-abortion legislation even get a consideration
in any parliament in our country today? Our nation is given over to this evil
at the moment, though this can change[i].
But as
Durbin highlights, many Christian advocates on the pro-life side see the vast
majority of women who practice abortion as victims and not as the perpetrators
they really are. I have seen this a lot over the years and it is just not true.
Some women are victims. Some woman are pressured into abortion by their abusive
boyfriends, or controlling family or even in some cases church leaders (though they
could ultimately tell the doctor and get help if this is the case), or they are
coerced and bullied into it in other ways. This does happen, but it is by far
the minority of reasons, as the data shows.
The act of
abortion is on the whole an act of choice by the woman to improve her
circumstances. It is a fundamentally selfish act,
"The most commonly reported reasons for abortion in 2004
(selected from a researcher-generated list of possible reasons with write-in
options for other reasons) were largely similar to those found in the 1987
study [11]. The top three reason categories cited in both studies were: 1)
“Having a baby would dramatically change my life” (i.e., interfere with education,
employment and ability to take care of existing children and other dependents)
(74% in 2004 and 78% in 1987), 2) “I can’t afford a baby now” (e.g., unmarried,
student, can’t afford childcare or basic needs) (73% in 2004 and 69% in 1987),
and 3) “I don’t want to be a single mother or am having relationship problems”
(48% in 2004 and 52% in 1987)."[ii]
Economic, or
lifestyle reasons are the dominant reasons for abortion. These women do not
want to have to make the necessary adjustments to their lives that having
a child, or another child, would entail.
It is really
about power in the most basic sense; their desire to control their
circumstances. Or to put it more bluntly: they care more about their education
or career than the child they have conceived. It is a mere inconvenience. This
does not mean that this is an easy choice, or a happy choice for many of these
women. But just because they may be unhappy about doing it, does not mean that
they are not exercising the ultimate power over another persons life, the child’s, and showing where their true priorities lay.
It matters
not that many women do not see it as an actual child. The slave owners did not
see slaves as fully human. This did not make them any less guilty. It only
explains how they rationalized their evil.
If, as I
know many Christian people believe, ultimately the man is responsible for this
sin being tolerated in society, then it is incumbent on us men to call out the
act of evil for what it is, and not to say the perpetrators are the victims.
The real victims of slavery were not the slave owners who saw the slaves as
less than human and were "tricked" into the benefits of free labour, it was the
slaves that were dehumanized who were the victims. The real victims of abortion
are not the women who may not see that they are killing a child, the real
victims are the children who are killed in the process of an abortion. Tens of
thousands a year, just in Australia. Many more worldwide.
I am
convinced that the best strategy for undermining abortion, is working towards a
society that sees a woman wanting an abortion, or a man pressuring his woman
for an abortion, as distasteful as the person who wants to own another human
being. We should already see it that way, since abortion is far more evil than
even slavery. Showing the evil of what the slave owner was doing to the person
they had as a slave - that is correctly identifying the perpetrator and the
victim - helped lay the foundation for slavery to be seen as disgusting, even by
many modern unbelievers. Taking the position that the women who have abortions
are victims is undermining the pro-life position. Because it is wrong and it is the
fundamental foundation that the left uses to justify abortion.
Progressives
cast the women as helpless without abortion to help justify it. Many
conservatives cast the woman as helpless in the face of relentless pressure to
prefer or practice abortion. Both sides are infantilizing women and removing
their responsibility from the act.
“We feel
sorry for you, that you felt you needed to make that decision,” is clearly a
failing strategy at the society level, even if it occasionally works with some
individuals to druve them to repentance. Abortion needs to be recast as a thoroughly disgusting and
disgraceful act, that even to consider practicing can cast aspersions on one’s
character. Until we make that switch, it is going nowhere.
This does
not mean those who have had an abortion need stay condemned in the eyes of God.
Paul, the Apostle, and David the king, were both guilty of shedding innocent
blood. God forgave them both. There is grace for every sinner, we are all
seriously damaged goods compared to God. Jesus' mercy is abundant and vast. But to receive
forgiveness from God someone must repent of their sin. To repent of their sin,
people have to be shown very clearly that they were culpable, not the victims.
References
[i] We
should never forget that it has been worse and it can get better.
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