NOTE: Daniel and Kelly speak to this question on Episode #28 of The Abel Speaks Podcast. You can listen on Apple, Spotify, or your app of choice.
AS:
Welcome to the Abel Speaks podcast where we speak to commonly asked questions by parents who have received a life limiting diagnosis for their child. We’re Daniel and Kelly Crawford. And we’re glad that you’ve joined us. Okay. This is gonna be a unique episode. If you’ve been tuning in with us previous, or if you’re brand new, this podcast really exists as an archive of commonly asked questions where we are speaking to parents who have chosen to carry a child with a life limiting diagnosis, navigating what that journey looks like. A part of that journey often times is encountering the decision around what is often presented, from at least up to this point in our nation’s recent history from a medical provider, as considering terminating or aborting the pregnancy after you have received a diagnosis of this sort for your child, that indicates that your time with them might be short.
And so, that’s what we really exist to do and what this podcast exists and who we’re talking to. And yet in this current cultural moment where after nearly five decades, the federal law of the land was such, that abortion, you know, has been framed as a freedom, a women’s right to choose. And, specifically if you’re a person of faith and you’re thinking, okay, how do I think through this conversation, the culture and the conversations that I’m seeing online, the voices are so loud and coming from both directions. What should I think? And so I’ll try and simplify all that with just the question of, okay, Roe V. Wade has just been overturned, now what? And so we’re joined again by our friend, Todd Wagner, pastor for 22 years at Watermark Church and somebody who has just led extraordinarily well in helping Christians process this conversation around abortion and being pro-life, and what does that even mean? And being pro-choice, what does that even mean? And so to the people out there that are now wondering, hey, what is my next step of faithfulness? Okay, now there’s this legal decision that’s come down. What does that mean? And what does that not mean? And as a person who seeks to walk with and honor the Lord how should I be feeling about it, right now? So there’s a nice, simple question for you, Todd.
Guest:
So first of all, let’s just talk about what happens when Roe v. Wade is overturned, is it doesn’t make abortion illegal? What it does, is it throws it back to where it should have been in the very first place. In 1973, what happened was almost, uh, the injustice was that through an activist judiciary, they made a decision that states could not make laws, that legislators who hadn’t made laws related to this issue, could not make laws as to whether or not abortion was going to be something that our society allowed, encouraged, and facilitated. And so what was happening with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which needed to be overturned because it was a bad laws, bad legal precedent, we have separation of power in our country for a reason. And the legislature legislative branch is made to legislate. And uh, they’re the ones who create law.
Now it’s the job of justices to determine whether or not the laws that were made are consistent with our Constitution, which talks about giving people certain inalienable rights. And so now we get to the question of, does a woman have a right to choose? All right. And should our legislators, whether our states or local or our federal government make decisions about a woman’s right to choose. And I would just say, well, choose what? What clothes she wears, who she marries. All right. What her favorite movie or band is? Well, absolutely. Does a woman have a right to choose to terminate the life of another person? I don’t think so. Okay. Um, you know, her body, her choice that’s right. But we have to understand that child inside of the woman is not her body. It is not a cyst. It’s not a clump of her cells.
It’s a separate individual with unique DNA that that child is dependent upon that mother for life. But so is a two month old dependent upon that mother or that father for life. So all Roe v. Wade is doing is pushing this back to legislators that will then make a decision as to whether or not they wanna facilitate, the right for women to terminate life, or men to terminate life by paying for an abortion to happen to a woman. Let me just say this. Roe v. Wade, being overturned is simply justices with, I think, integrity looking at our Constitution and just saying this had never been something that we decided. Okay. And then secondly, to people that would just say, well, should we really decide that? I would say absolutely. Every law is a moral decision. You know, people go well, should we legislate morality? The answer is that’s what a law is. It’s a judgment on what is right and what is wrong. And so the question isn’t, should we legislate morality? The question is who’s morality, are we gonna legislate?
So I just would say, this is not a nuanced conversation. This is not like, I don’t really know. You know, I don’t wanna impose my values on other people really are you against rape, against pedophilia? Are you willing to impose your values that you live in a society that doesn’t allow for rape? I mean, let’s just go right down the list. Think about your words and think about what’s going on. You first, you wanna impose your ideas about slavery and racial injustice on people? Because you’re gonna know about the character of a nation based on its laws. And I wanna tell you one of the things that’s happened as you watch this initial leak of the decision that was made, and then you know ultimately the way people are responding to the decision, becoming more public, you see that this, that people are arguing for a right to abortion.
And when you listen to how they talk about it. I mean, I’ve seen the most horrible thing saying like, yeah, tear ’em apart who cares, destroy your baby, rip that little, you know, thing outta your, and throw it away. And while that doesn’t represent everybody who is quote unquote, pro-choice, it ultimately is expressing the reality of what we’re doing.
AS:
Which has been prettied up with, just, Kelly you can speak to, that of just how masterful it feels like the issue, which is where I want to lead you next is just, hey, like, help us sift through the semantics. And, would you wanna speak to for a second, just the language and the softening, of the deceit?
I think that the language, I mean, I don’t even like to use pro-choice and pro-life, but I would say the language that the pro-choice side has used, the narrative that they have written, I mean, it was masterfully done, right? Because it has desensitized us to what is actually happening and what’s not happening and desensitized us to, I mean our offspring. Which is like mind blowing, you know, that we as humans, I mean, you were talking about on a previous episode, but the fact that a mother can view their offspring as an evil thing that is worth getting rid of is, outside of how God created us, you know, to love our children. There is something innate in us as parents that makes us wanna move towards our children, not to move away from them. And so I think just the power of our words, has been used well, unfortunately,
Guest:
Right, Kelly. So many people go,”really, I did, I thought it was a blob of cells”. Even if you go back and look at the original, majority decision written by Blackman in 1973, when he talks about what happens is, he said, “Hey, during the first trimester” and science as what it was in 1973, it was, it was a made up really differentiation, right? That, Henry Blackman, looked at this thing and just said, “Hey, the first, you know, trimester”, which we know that babies are in utero nine months and they’re not, it’s really 10 months, you know, because we don’t know for the first month that we’re even pregnant. All right. And now we see that there’s a heartbeat of eight to 10 weeks and feeling comes almost immediately. And so, he was making the case that during the first, you know, trimester. Yeah, no problem. Okay. Second trimester. Maybe states can some make laws. And then certainly in the third, you know, he created the idea that maybe you need to really be careful that third trimester, but that’s just a, you need to know it was a human all along. It wasn’t like it all of a sudden became human. The second that, that zygote exists, that, you know, blastocyst exists, that fetus exists, that embryo exists. Those are all just different stages of human development. I mean, blastocyst embryo, teenager, toddler, young adult, those are all different descriptors of the same thing, a human being. Okay. And so you gotta ask yourself, is it ever okay to terminate the life for a human being? And then some people go well. Yeah, but that poor mom, you know, she doesn’t wanna be a mom. Well, okay.
So does that mean when she’s having a tough time with a Terrible 2’s, she can off that child. I mean, we think that’s ridiculous, right. But it’s, but if, if we’re gonna apply logical consistency and all. I would just say, um, to my friends that are listening out there is we need to apply logical consistency to some of our decisions. And, and, and just like, it’s wrong to only care about child children in the womb, and then just letting them suffer when they’re at be, you know, in their abject poverty or with disinterested parents. No, we need to care about those children as well. And so, first of all, Roe v. Wade doesn’t say it’s illegal to have an abortion, right. It was amazing to me, Bill Maher you know, who’s a rather well known contemporary pundit, you know, at least had the integrity to come out not long after that initial opinion in its draft form was released. He said, listen, I had no idea that America has some of the least restrictive abortion laws in the world. He goes, I thought we were the suppressive nation. All of Europe has more restrictive abortion laws than we do. We talk about how progressive Europe is. It turns out really what is true is America is more barbaric, you know, and he goes, I mean China, North Korea, America. And we got, those are the top three. Those are the top three in terms of company of just saying that you can do whatever you wanna do with these children in the womb. Secondly, he was surprised to find out that more women were against the idea of legalized abortion than men. He goes, I thought it was men who didn’t want this to happen, but he had never even really looked, but it doesn’t matter if it’s men or women who are against it, if it’s wrong, it’s wrong. It’s not wrong because women are against it. Okay. It’s wrong because it’s wrong.
AS:
Yeah. And I think the reason as a ministry we wanted to address this is just because, in all things, I stated this on other podcasts, but our heart really is to educate and equip people so they can make the best right decision. And so, we often find whether it’s a family that we’re serving or just people in the community that we’re talking about, this topic with most people don’t understand what the procedure of abortion is. They don’t understand the science behind when life begins. And so for us, our heart is just to hopefully pose some thoughts that make you go, “Hmm. Maybe I will go and do a little more research to educate myself on, what is and isn’t happening. So I can form a more educated decision”. And then I think also from just a biblical perspective as believers, what would you say to people who maybe feel like, hey, this feels just like a complicated nuanced situation and so I just don’t feel comfortable addressing it or speaking to it, even though I might speak on all the other political, social issues that have been going on in our day but this one I’m gonna choose not to be willing to enter into dialogue about.
Guest:
Yeah. Um, you know, I would ask what they mean by complicated. Okay. Does that mean that you might say something that’s gonna make people lash out at you? You know, all that’s required and Burke said, you know, for, for evil to triumph, for good men to do nothing. And one of the ways to not have a problem with evil is to go along with evil, but I’m gonna tell you evil’s gonna complicate your life. And so sometimes when people say, well, it’s complicated. Yeah. We can talk about all the, uh, unique issues that are out there. Like what about, you know, uh, abortion in the instances of rape, okay. You know, one of the ways to deal with the wrong is not to do wrong to somebody else. But, let’s throw out even the 1% of pregnancies that we’re talking about when you talk about incest and rape.
Okay. Um, and just go, let’s just deal with the other 99%, just for a second. And I’m, by the way, I’m not surrounding that 1% ground but what I would just say, you know, it’s complicated when you start to stand for something that a world that is either not thought all the way through it or the world that is just flat out in rebellion to what’s best. Okay. Because listen, the south, during the slave trade, was pretty committed to doing what they wanted to do. And it was complicated to speak up for the rights of slaves in the 1800’s. It was complicated to speak up for the rights of blacks in the 1960’s. But I wanna tell you something, it was the right thing to do. And you ought to go ahead and complicate your life if you’re an individual, especially, with any conviction.
Okay. Because, that’s your privilege, that’s your job. And it’s going to be sometimes expensive, but it’s going to be something that when you look back on, you’re gonna find out that if we don’t do what we’re supposed to do, it’s even more expensive for our society. So yeah, I would tell you, go ahead and complicate your life. It’s really, if you look at it, it’s not as hard as you think. What’s hard is: that truth sounds like hate to those who hate the truth. And the truth is that’s human life, human life is worth protecting, and you want to be that individual that was willing to in a compassionate way, maintain clarity and conviction when everybody else is abandoning that.
AS:
The element of like the nuance or the complication, life limiting diagnosis is one of those scenarios that’s thrown in there, rape, incest, life limiting diagnosis. And so I, I think, people feel like we can’t say, hey, no abortion is wrong. And simultaneously acknowledge the issues within our society of like, hey yeah, single moms do need more support. Or, a family who receives a life living diagnosis does need more support. Or maybe more people in our country should be open to foster care or adoption. Like there are real systemic issues that are happening that we can acknowledge while still saying, but that doesn’t make abortion okay. And I think that people really struggle with that. As a ministry, what we’ve seen is that support really does change stories. And so whether you’re talking about the 1% or you’re talking about the 99% that are in maybe a difficult situation or a season where they weren’t expecting to be pregnant, what we always encourage all people, but specifically believers, is just like, hey, what are you doing to engage in the conversation to be a part of this solution?
Because we can point out the problem all day long. But that still doesn’t mean that abortion is right, just because there are problems with the system that we are operating within. And so we just encourage people, whether, that’s supporting and investing in a ministry like Abel Speaks or, a million other opportunities out there, whether that’s foster care adoption, or a myriad of other options to really engage in, being a part of the solution and not only talking about the problems and the issues that you’re seeing.
Hey friends, thanks for listening in. We hope this content has been helpful. At Abel Speaks, we exist to support families who have chosen to carry a child with a life limiting diagnosis. And we want you to know that the foundation of that support is rooted in relationships. And so, if you are a parent in this circumstance and by all means, continue listening in, but we’d really encourage you to reach out by sending an email to support@ablespeaks.org. Again, our heartfelt prayer is that this episode has served you in some way and that we might have the opportunity to serve you further in the future. The Abel Speaks podcast is produced mixed and edited by the team at Sound of a Rose.
