In addition to the carnage of abortion, there is this little tidbit:
More than 1 million abortions took place in the U.S. in 2008, and about half of women getting an abortion had already had one before.
This is a serious problem on several levels. Demographic, political, and–yes–spiritual.
A little over 20 years ago, among women who had abortions, women who had multiple abortions were the minority. Now, we are reaching a critical mass where the women killing their children are doing it multiple times.
Compounding matters, we have reached the point where nearly half of all women–between 15 and 44–have had an abortion.
From the standpoint of male-female relations, this further muddies the waters. If you are a single man and the woman you are dating has EVER had sex, there is a significant chance that she has blood on her hands. Think of the implications of that for a while…
In 2008, Suzanne Hadley Gosselin–an ally of mine at Boundless–presented a list of hard questions that women should ask the men. (I’d link to the article, but due to the re-design of the Boundless website, the articles are difficult to find and the links I had are broken.)
FWIW: I had no problem with her list, while including some of my own. Back then I mentioned that a man may need to ask a gal–who is not a virgin–if she’s ever been pregnant, because of the risk that she may have post-abortion baggage that she’s carrying. That is even more the case now. In fact, a man may have about the same chance of landing a gal who has blood on her hands, as a gal has of landing a man with a porn addiction.
Oh, and while I am on the soapbox, while the male leaders in the Church do a wonderful job calling attention to the porn issues among the men, there is almost no mention of the abortion issues among the ladies.
(When abortion IS addressed, it’s in the general, national sense: with mention of the political and demographic issues.)
But what rarely gets coverage: there are a mother lode of mothers in the pews–and fathers who enabled them–who have such skeletons. Pastors rarely bring it up, and one must wonder if–due to the demographics of those occupying the pews and putting the money into the offering plate–that the factor driving the lack of coverage of this matter has to do with a lack of courage.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t call men out on porn; we absolutely should do that. Ditto for women who delve into such media.
That said, we also need to address–soberly–the abortion elephant in the room. It is a very large one, and it is defecating all over the place.
I have dated one christian woman who owned up to having had an abortion. I do not say and I am not saying that all women who have had abortions wind up with pronounced mental stress such that it affects their capacity to live with stability; but in this woman’s case it continued to be a source of grief and striking out for her. It was hard for her to reconcile herself to this act, given her up bringing. The relationship did not proceed for other reasons; this wasn’t a deal breaker for me. Nor do I think it should be for most men. But I think I see this phenomena in more secular women as well. But it is uneven.
sigh. it is so sad. such a devastating tragedy in our culture – though killing babies is certainly not new to our culture or generation. their solutions are ineffective band-aids.
other issues related to what you wrote here which are just as prevalent:
– men whose girlfriend/wife/significant other has an abortion without his knowledge and/or consent and who wanted the baby but didn’t get a choice (well, after sex).
– men who press for the abortion and pay for it and expect it.
– women who are addicted to porn.
i think there’s also a fine balance between a church reaching out to these women to aid in healing … and then the women taking it to the other extreme and becoming a kind of martyr in that *I had an abortion but the Lord healed me! Aren’t I awesome!* … i don’t know how often that happens, but i have seen it once.
I’ve seen it quite a bit in pro-life circles.
it would be nice to reward the people in life who live under the radar because they don’t do outlandish things like that, but they sacrifice everyday, choosing God. it looks easy to those on the outside, but on the inside it’s still a choice. they choose to be faithful to God, to their spouse, to their kids. i recently read an old post on someone’s blog where they exalted their mother on mother’s day … she was just a mom, who loved their dad, who was there when they needed her, and who loved them unconditionally.
i’m certainly not knocking those who have fallen big and been forgiven big … just get tired of them being promoted in ways that really aren’t even honest to them.
Yep
The Internet Archive is your friend. Odds are if you plug in the URL you have from before it’ll find a cache copy. (Also useful when Boundless has in the past attempted to alter their history by pruning inconvenient articles from the site).
Thanks!
Oh, and I am not knocking Boundless here, although I HATE the new website design.
Suzanne Hadley Gosselin wrote a good piece in that case, and I usually like her work. I was simply calling attention to an issue that doesn’t seem to get a lot of coverage, either at Boundless or in churches today.
The abortion elephant is indeed a very large one.
While I agree with Charles in that there are probably fewer post-abortive women in the Church than in secular society, I would also contend that the number is still higher than anyone wants to admit, just as divorce–while less prevalent in the Church when you factor in regular attendance–is still problematic.
Women are largely at fault in this, although we cannot let the men completely off the hook either, as many men have served as enablers for abortion. By that, I refer to men who become uninvolved when they realize the woman is pregnant, and who encourage abortion by their actions.
For both sexes, it’s a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.
At the same time, the Supreme Court hath decreed that abortion is exclusively a woman’s right, and that the father–even if he is married to the woman–has no say-so.
i went to a christian college in the 80’s … it was said that town had a very high rate of abortion per capita because, if a woman got pregnant, she was kicked out of the college … the guy that got her pregnant was not (i personally know a couple this happened to – she lost all her scholarships and got kicked out; he got to keep all of his – despite the fact they got married).
also, there was, at least at that time, the image of being pregnant out of wedlock.