You see, support for abortion providers comes in a whole host of ways. Much of that support is easily recognizable. More of it comes in powerful, subtle, and unnoticed ways.
With a blog of relative insignificance that is read primarily by family, friends, and those within my Christian ministry circles, chances are that you are pro-life. You're not reading this because you want to support Planned Parenthood, but because of your surprise that I of all people would write about supporting them.
And here is where this post makes gets tough. As pro-life, crisis-pregnancy-center-loving, adoption supporting, conception-to-coffin lovers of life, we have been supporting the massacre happening at Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics.
I'm not talking about our tax dollars.
I'm talking about our silence.
Let's forget the media's silence on the issue and look at our own.
The excuses come easily even in light of the horrors revealed by recently released videos showing Planned Parenthood officials bartering over the price of baby parts:
- I don't want to bring negativity to Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- I can't bring myself to watch the videos. I can't stomach that kind of stuff.
- I'm not really a political person
- This is controversial and I don't have the energy to engage the debates
- People's minds are already made up on abortion
Our silence, our unwillingness to speak, up condemns more babies and possible mothers to horrifying choices. It allows this worst possible "choice" to persist in the public's mind as a reasonable and liberating "choice" for women in often desperate situations. Our silence is wholehearted commitment to the status quo.
I wish that silence were broken. With tears. With anger. With prayer. With action.
Silence in the face of evil and injustice is a symptom of deeper issues. In the case of the horrors of abortion the two primary issues seem to be ignorance and apathy. Too many people are intellectually limited and emotionally unaffected.
Our ignorance leaves us paralyzed and unable to speak truthfully or graciously. Sadly, it seems that much of our ignorance is willful. We don't watch the videos. We don't study moral arguments against abortion. We write it off as political banter that never goes anywhere. And we stay unknowing. Ill-equipped. Ignorant. And impotent to bring change.
In addition to, or perhaps because of our ignorance we are apathetic and emotionally unaffected. In our hearts we know how deeply disturbing the truth is and how revolting the videos are so we avoid them. We know that there are things in life that we can't un-see, un-hear, and un-feel without betraying our consciences.
So we avoid the videos and the conversation using the excuses above and try to cauterize ourselves from the pain we know is there. We don't enter into the lives of the broken, hurting, or desperate women who are considering abortion because we know it will be costly. We know that the emotions that will be triggered if we really see what happens and we will be uncomfortable with those feelings. Our idolatry of comfort runs too deep for us to be bothered by reality so we remain silent.
The silence needs to be broken.
We need to know the realities behind what happens over 1,000,000 times a year in abortion clinics.
We need to hear the barbaric language of massacre: crushing, cutting, slicing, severing, extracting.
We need to understand the medical language used to inoculate the public's mind to the violence: tissue procurement, fetal extraction, procedure, research, clumps of cells, line items.
We need to know why abortion statistics are racially and economically skewed.
We need to enter into painful, broken situations in order to love the women facing unplanned pregnancies.
We need to weep and lament. Over lives lost and over our silence.
We need to confess and repent of our apathy and ignorance.
We need to pray. Fervently. Urgently. Constantly.
Please watch the videos. Read the blogs. Let your tears stream and your wails resound and your stomach retch and your heart cry out.
And then speak. Loudly. Resolutely. Repeatedly. With wisdom and knowledge and grace and mercy and love and compassion. To those you know and those in power and those involved and those considering such a dreadful 'choice'. Use every resource available to you: social media, family, friendship, pulpits, your political representatives.
We too, have a 'choice'. For too long and for too many that choice has been silence.
Abortion isn't something that will change with our silence. God willing it will eventually change through politics. But first it will change through tears of lament, prayer, repentance, courageous words and actions, and through a growing moral revulsion over the sacrifice of babies to the idols of convenience, finances, research and comfort.
No words can better capture what we are facing than those from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He spoke these words facing a Nazi regime that killed millions. Their doctors did 'research' too.
"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."
So we avoid the videos and the conversation using the excuses above and try to cauterize ourselves from the pain we know is there. We don't enter into the lives of the broken, hurting, or desperate women who are considering abortion because we know it will be costly. We know that the emotions that will be triggered if we really see what happens and we will be uncomfortable with those feelings. Our idolatry of comfort runs too deep for us to be bothered by reality so we remain silent.
The silence needs to be broken.
We need to know the realities behind what happens over 1,000,000 times a year in abortion clinics.
We need to hear the barbaric language of massacre: crushing, cutting, slicing, severing, extracting.
We need to understand the medical language used to inoculate the public's mind to the violence: tissue procurement, fetal extraction, procedure, research, clumps of cells, line items.
We need to know why abortion statistics are racially and economically skewed.
We need to enter into painful, broken situations in order to love the women facing unplanned pregnancies.
We need to weep and lament. Over lives lost and over our silence.
We need to confess and repent of our apathy and ignorance.
We need to pray. Fervently. Urgently. Constantly.
Please watch the videos. Read the blogs. Let your tears stream and your wails resound and your stomach retch and your heart cry out.
And then speak. Loudly. Resolutely. Repeatedly. With wisdom and knowledge and grace and mercy and love and compassion. To those you know and those in power and those involved and those considering such a dreadful 'choice'. Use every resource available to you: social media, family, friendship, pulpits, your political representatives.
We too, have a 'choice'. For too long and for too many that choice has been silence.
Abortion isn't something that will change with our silence. God willing it will eventually change through politics. But first it will change through tears of lament, prayer, repentance, courageous words and actions, and through a growing moral revulsion over the sacrifice of babies to the idols of convenience, finances, research and comfort.
No words can better capture what we are facing than those from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He spoke these words facing a Nazi regime that killed millions. Their doctors did 'research' too.
"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."
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