Abortion: What the Church is Missing

I’ll admit it. I love cheesy movies. As the only female in my house, I have endured countless hours of harassment from the “boys” in my house over the Hallmark and Hallmarkish movies I watch. The bad acting, the fairy tale endings, the assurance that the guy always gets the girl and everyone reconciles-I love it all. I am not sure why I love these movies, but I tell people that I deal with enough real life as a public school teacher. Depression, drugs, sex, abuse, neglect, hopelessness-I accept this as my normal a lot of the time, so when I am at home, I want to know what I’m getting.

The other day I happened to watch one of these cheesy movies. It was on Netflix because I actually don’t have Hallmark Channel anymore, and it turned out to be about a Christian young man who gets his girlfriend pregnant during his freshman year of college. It was clearly made with a pro-life message which is fantastic, but every time I see something like this movie or sit through “Sanctity of Life Sunday” at church, I feel somehow like the church is missing the reality of what girls who have abortions really go through. Don’t get me wrong, the abortion industry is big business, and I can affirm the fact that they really do tell the young girls I’ve known that what is inside them isn’t a baby. They do brain-wash them. I have personally heard this from girls who have visited Planned Parenthood. So, what is the church missing? Well, in this movie I watched recently, this young man has an incredibly supportive family. They don’t want to take a life, and they let the mother live with them. She also has an incredibly supportive mother who believes in the sanctity of life, etc . . . I think the problem with these movies is they are not portraying what life is like for a lot of people with unwanted pregnancies. Yes, there are some people who have abortions because it is inconvenient, but I have never encountered this. What I have seen is young girls with zero support from anyone whose mothers also have no support. The girls I know of have no father they know very well, and in one case, the girls father was the father of her child. They are not close to the “father” of their child, and in one case, the girl may not have even consented to the sex in the first place. If they are actually in a relationship with the father, it is often unhealthy.

The other aspect the church is missing is how incredibly hard it is for the girls who DO have their babies. It may surprise you, but many young girls with zero religious background don’t want to take a life. They would never think about killing their child, but they have no parenting skills. They often do not have supportive families, as I stated above, and know nothing about raising children because, as I like to say, they were not raised themselves, but “survived” their childhoods. They deal with ridicule, poverty, lack of education and unhealthy relationships with the father and their own families.

Much of the time, the church loves to stand against abortion while missing the complex reality behind abortions and unwanted pregnancies. So what is the point? What can be done? It is important for the church to be fully pro-life. It is not enough to be pro-life or protest at clinics, a practice I don’t support for several reasons. We have to be INVOLVED in the lives of those at-risk for unwanted pregnancies. We can volunteer at Crisis Pregnancy Centers, mentor in schools or organizations for at-risk youth, coach a sports team or simply encourage our own children to pray for and be supportive of their peers in the public school setting. We need to walk along-side those who are essentially “orphans” as the Bible commands. When we do this, we are not only fulfilling the command from James 1:27 but actively promoting life in deed instead of word only.