And, somewhere in this country, every 26 seconds of every minute of every hour of every day, that choice is made. It staggers the mind to think that 1.2 million little lives are savagely ended in the womb every year. Incredibly, 70% of these women who make this awful choice are Christian. ( Alan Guttmacher Institute and Planned Parenthood's Family Planning Perspectives.)
Why? Why do they choose not to wait? Well, 93% of these women make that terrible choice because the child is not wanted or will be an inconvenience! And, 47% of all those women have made that choice before! Disturbing statistics.
Preaching that life is sacred is the moral coloring, if you will, that we give to the black and white act of taking a life. Often, that message doesn’t register because many of those who make that choice to end a life do not believe the fetus is alive. Ah, there’s the rub. For them, to end a pregnancy is simply to remove “a bunch of tissue” or “some blob of matter”, as some practitioners of this procedure have been quoted as saying. They no doubt have forgotten or chose to forget what they learned in Biology 101.
How could they forget that human development begins with fertilization, the process in which the male sperm fuses with the female egg to produce the single cell, the very beginning of medical pregnancy, the very beginning of their child? Did they not remember that this single cell divides and divides again in an orderly way as it travels down the Fallopian tube to find the place on the uterus wall where it will continue to grow and from whence it will be taken to the outside world?
Before the first month ends, the heart in that child-in-the-making begins a lifetime of beating. Before the second month ends, brainwaves are detected in this wonder of creation. By the end of the third month, all the organs and systems of this child, now called fetus, are developed and functioning. This is not religious dogma, but scientific fact.( Alabama Physicians for Life) ,
How did this happen? How did we get to this place where a woman was given the right to end a life? Blame it on the Supreme Court that made a sad and strange ruling in 1973 that the only time of pregnancy when a woman had that right with no restriction was in the first three months. The first three months!
And so, we wait. Advent is that time of great expectation. Soon Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, will be born. Let’s not forget that Mary carried Him in her womb for the whole nine months.
My prayer during this holy and happy season is that women who are thinking about making that cruel choice will not. May God inspire them to wait with joyful hope for the coming of their child.
Joy to the world! The Lord is come. Let earth receive her King. Let every heart make room.
Every heart. Especially those that have just started beating.
Have a joyous Christmas.
