Changing the Conversation around Unplanned Pregnancies

Changing the Conversation around Unplanned Pregnancies

by Kristyn Komarnicki In the Dec 15th issue of the ePistle, I ran a piece called “Aborting Advent” in which I criticized Planned Parenthood for tasteless marketing campaigns and irresponsible sex education. My objections were met with a number of reader objections, of which we printed two in the Dec 22nd issue. You can read those letters, and my interim response, in which I acknowledged the difficulty of the issues involved, at the Christ & Culture reader response page. I promised that I would offer a fuller response after praying and seeking deeper understanding over the holidays.

I’d like to do that here, but after much reflection, I don’t think there is any point centering our discussion around Planned Parenthood. Whatever your or my feelings about the organization, they are a secular organization and therefore cannot be expected to approach the world biblically. We can complain about secular culture until the cows come home, but unless we remove the plank from our own eye, we haven’t got the right to speak let alone much to offer the world. Therefore, I believe that a far more productive conversation would be to pick up on what Peggy MacGregor wrote in her letter: “Where are all your pro-lifers when it comes to being a foster or adoptive parent of the thousands of available children? Without being willing to take on that responsibility, I think ‘just saying no’ is a cheap stance.”

What will it take?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the body of Christ was leading the way—not in carrying protest signs in front of abortion clinics, but in providing the following: top-quality, truthbased education; models of healthy relationships/sexuality; and loving care for teens and women who find themselves with an unplanned pregnancy? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were known for welcoming and loving both single parents and kids who need parents?

My friend Angie Weszely is changing the conversation around unplanned pregnancy and abortion through her role as president of Caris Pregnancy Counseling and Resources, a pregnancy counseling agency in Chicago. Angie shared some very important thoughts with me last week. According to Caris research, when a young woman learns she is facing an unplanned pregnancy, it is the emotional equivalent of receiving a terminal diagnosis. “Suddenly she is faced with grieving the loss of her life as it is, her idea of who she is, and her plans for her future. In this place of hopelessness and despair, she will often move towards abortion as ‘the only choice’—which is to say no choice at all,” Angie shared. As pro-lifer Frederica Mathewes-Green once said, "No woman wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg." (Interestingly, this statement has always resonated with folks on both sides of the abortion debate.) And, Angie

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added, “while someone facing a terminal illness would automatically receive emotional support from her family, friends, school/job, and church, a woman unexpectedly facing an unplanned pregnancy is all too often abandoned and shamed—and at one of the most painful crossroads of her life.”

Christians must take responsibility for what we have done to contribute to the abortion problem—that’s right, we contribute to the prevalence of abortions every time a church shuns a pregnant teenager from its youth group, every time a church refuses to host a baby shower for an unwed mother (“We don’t want to send the wrong message to our youth”), every time we stigmatize an unwed mother or send the message that having a baby “at the wrong time” will ruin the rest of her life and her child’s.

Through her work with Caris, Angie challenges the church to develop support networks for women facing unplanned pregnancy. “Can we as Christians change the conversation by insisting on the dignity and value of both the woman and the child, by meeting their emotional and physical needs both immediately and over the long haul? Can we agree to embrace these people and their very real needs, regardless of our place in the political debate?” Angie asks.

Of course we can. And some isolated hands and feet of the church are doing it already.

At the bottom of the page are some links to ministries or articles that show what the body of Christ can do when it seeks to change the conversation about abortion by serving women and children over, above, and alongside political arguments. I invite you to explore these, pray about them, and to speak to your friends and church leaders about offering similar support to women facing unplanned pregnancies.

My wise colleague Heidi Unruh reminds me that another area in which Christians need to put their money where their placards are is in providing reproductive healthcare services for low-income folks. "Anonymous" refers to this in her letter. She rightly points out that Planned Parenthood does more than abortions; it also provides contraceptives, pregnancy tests, prenatal care, and reproductive health screenings, something married couples need as well as teens. “Until there is a Christian family health center in every poor neighborhood where a Planned Parenthood center operates,” says Heidi, “we've lost some of our moral high ground."

Calling each other to higher ground But just as it is good and right to exhort the church to a higher love when it comes to dealing with women with unplanned pregnancies, so it is good and right to exhort each other—Christian to Christian—to make sure that our stance on issues is based on biblical truths and not just personal opinion or convenience. I appreciate Peggy MacGregor’s exhortation to do better as the church. It prompted me to dig deeper, learn more, and consider specific ways the church cannot only help with solutions but stop exacerbating the problem. In the same spirit, I’d like to exhort Christians who think of abortion as a necessary evil to reconsider their stance and perhaps broaden their view.

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Is abortion necessary only because the church is bad at caring for unwanted children (as in some instances it in fact is, as the stories below illustrate)? If so, then is it safe to say that it would no longer be necessary if the church was at the forefront of caring for unwanted children? Or is it necessary because the mother’s current identity (the shape of her life) is more important than the child’s actual physical life? We need to be honest about the wide variety of reasons abortions occur.

If our hearts are broken for unwanted children or women with unplanned pregnancies, are we willing to have our hearts broken by the stories of people who have moved from the conviction that abortion is a woman’s right to the conviction that abortion is violence against a woman’s body and soul? See Karen Shablin’s “Don’t Underestimate Women,” former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson’s Unplanned, and the testimonies of former abortion providers at Pro-Life Action League to consider some of these stories. Regardless of what we think politically about the subject, we must be willing to listen to the journeys these women and men have taken and what they learned about abortion along the way.

Lastly, all of us need to consider the assumptions that lie behind our propositions. Peggy MacGregor writes, "No one I know thinks that abortion is great, but many of us have seen too many abused and neglected children, and families in desperate situations, to think that it shouldn’t be an option." The unspoken assumption here is that a dead child (or a non-child) is better off than an abused or neglected child. I have many friends— survivors of neglect and abuse—who are glad to be alive, and I can’t begin to imagine my life without their distinctive view of God, healing, and hope. I know that our reader is not advocating euthanasia for abused/neglected/poor kids any more than she thinks I am advocating abandoning women with unplanned pregnancies. However, just as prolifers must carefully consider their assumptions, so pro-choicers must consider theirs. It is a small step from "abused and neglected children shouldn’t be brought into this world” to "children with disabilities and chronic diseases shouldn’t be brought into this world.” Is abortion an acceptable option in these cases?

Of all people, Christians should not be tempted to say that a child born into desperate circumstances has any less claim to life than other children. Jesus, himself born into a "desperate situation," specifically told us that those who are poor, hungry, in mourning, or persecuted are blessed or happy. As Heidi Unruh reminded me, “Poverty, abuse, neglect, and dysfunction are terrible breaches of God's loving intent for these little ones, but if we say that it would be better for a child not to be born than to experience suffering, we deny the power of the Cross and the miracle of God's healing grace to redeem these lives, restore them to wholeness, and give them a valued place in the body of Christ.” This heightens our call for the church to respond in a loving, embracing, and healing way to women with unplanned pregnancies.

Recent reports show that the current scenario is untenable. A shocking 41% of pregnancies in New York City end in abortion (it’s 59.8% among African Americans in the city). It’s clear that in spite of all our sex “education” and the widespread of

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availability of contraceptives, we are failing our young people in a most egregious fashion.

Can we change the conversation? I pray that we can. For the sake of countless women, children, families, and the future of our society as a whole, please, let's do this, together.

Links: Caris Pregnancy Counseling and Resources is a faith-based, nonprofit pregnancy counseling agency. The Caris Approach® of commitment, counseling, and connection focuses on supporting all women facing unplanned pregnancies. This approach meets the needs of women, builds common ground in a divisive issue, and reduces the number of abortions.

A Church for Orphans (PRISM Magazine) profiles Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale, a church that has done such a good job embracing foster children that the city contracts with the congregation to help them deal with the large foster population.

The Single Pursuit (PRISM Magazine) calls the church to address the needs of single parents, and discusses the work of Hagar’s Resource Center in Nashville.

How to Begin a Ministry to Unwed Mothers and Fathers (Dallas Baptist Association) offers practical advice to churches.

Showered with Love tells of a church’s adventure in reaching out to a young unwed mother.

Step by Step is a support ministry to unwed mothers.

The Church and the Single Mom is a call to the church, written by Jennifer Maggio, author of Overwhelmed: The Life of a Single Mom. What Help Really Looks Like profiles a single mom ministry in a 15,000-member church.

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