“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Without faith and hope, we are dead, spiritually. As I was preparing to write this article and began to gather my thoughts, the above verse rested on my mind. It’s a verse that seems to be hidden from the minds and psyche of many in our society causing them to seek answers elsewhere.
We now live in a society that teaches us to ignore faith and hope; why hang on to what you can’t see or feel? The world is trying to get us to live according to, and line up with statistical data, projected outcomes, psychological profiles and social standards which change daily to fit the times. We are now a people that rely more on the information that comes out of a lab or research center, replacing the absolute truth given to us and recorded in the Word of God. I am not dismissing the validity of empirical data or scientific results. As a matter of fact, I do believe they are valuable tools and gifts bestowed to us by God to enhance the quality of our lives. My point here is that oftentimes, we use the same God-given gifts and knowledge to counter His truth, ridicule His people, and discredit the Bible. This is why I wrote this article, and why faith and hope resonate in my mind. I have been curious as to why we have such a vast sector of our society so eager to protect what we call a “woman’s right to choose”. Yes, I am referring to abortion, a topic that has caused tremendous division and hurt in our time.
I stand with Pro-lifers, just to make my position known before I continue with this article, but I urge you to continue reading because I want to impart some facts about abortion that are often ignored by Pro-lifers. I also want to shed some light on a few disturbing elements in the abortion debate which have blocked and will continue to hurt the Pro-life movement if we do not adjust our thinking.
Now, for starters, why have so many in our society accepted the Pro-choice position and why are they so fervent in their approach? That is my question. It is a question I keep asking: why is there such a determination to make abortion not just legal, but make the practice of abortion as normal as one going to a cosmetic clinic to remove an unsightly and undesired growth. There are those who try, in every way, to dismiss the fact that a pregnancy is a life…a life uniquely created by God with an ordained future for His kingdom. We try our best to discredit the obvious fact that life does begin at conception; we use terms such ‘fetus’, collection of cells, and ‘viable organism’, to describe the new life beginning in the mother’s womb. There is a systematic attempt to prove that during this period of gestation, the unborn baby has no feelings, no senses, and is devoid of all consciousness. One of the newest labeling I came across for the unborn child by someone I was in debate with is “mystic fetus”. This caused me to think: why would a person come to such a callous conclusion regarding a precious life, and what can I do differently to reach each skeptic God places in my path? Certainly, I have done my share of public expression, personal persuasion, and even used my right to vote, all in an effort to slow the advance of abortion and eventually bring this practice to a halt. But there is so much more to be done. And I became curious for a fuller understanding.
Well, I figured that if I was going to understand the views and concerns shared by the advocates of abortion, I should look at this from a historic point of view and figure out how we got to where we are in modern times. I could have settled on obvious answers that most Christians accept: their views are secular; they rely on pure scientific results; they are too humanistic. I wasn’t satisfied, though; there had to be more to society’s learnt approach to abortion. In my quest for an answer or explanation for my questions, I first decided to research the history and root beginnings of abortion in this country and the reasoning why so many accept this as a necessity for society. The name Margaret Sangster became front and center in my research; she is known as the mother of the Pro-choice movement. Margaret Sangster first promoted what is known as Eugenics, a systematic approach to the elimination and quarantine of a certain group of people base on their race, social status and mental state of being. Ms. Sangster justified her belief by using a gauging system to label individuals as not fit for society and even went as far as to say it is most cruel for us to allow them to live because of their intellectual deficiencies. Here is a person who was able to operate and influence many during her time with this warped way of thinking. Most of her followers were those who felt threatened by the new freedom given to African Americans immediately after the Civil War. They believed that over three million unskilled, uneducated freed blacks would cause tremendous stress on the country’s socioeconomic system. These concerns caused many in upperclass to sought a legal and acceptable way to control the population growth of freed slaves.
A group of people that took notice of Ms. Sangster’s work and writings on eugenics was the Nazi party in the late thirties to the mid-forties. They not only took notice of her “innovative, cutting edge” approach to population control, they went on to practice and make it a policy for their party and country. The result of this evil is now a well documented tragedy in history.
With the world watching and living the reality of the Nazi Germany atrocities and the knowledge that the Nazis embraced the eugenic model, Ms. Sangster realized that she was now under a microscope and decided to drop the eugenic title because it was now tied with Nazism. She changed her approach to her work and the cause she so championed to gain wider acceptance from the public. As a result, Sangster reinvented her movement and the organization to what eventually become known as “Planned Parenthood”. Planned Parenthood is now the number one venue for abortion throughout the U.S., with most of their locations situated in minority and low income neighborhoods. Now, I wrote all this about eugenic and its apparent successor, Planned Parenthood, because I wanted to point out the methodology behind the supporters’ thinking and the reason for my research. The supporters of eugenic think that by eliminating certain ‘less-than-desirable’ people, they would make society better for all. They believed that by practicing eugenics, economic and financial burdens on the country would be reduced, certain diseases would be controlled, and even better, they would be able to further their effort to prevent the mixing of the races. To justify all this, they provided compelling statistics and manipulated empirical date, that over time, many accepted as truth.
So compelling was the eugenic model, as explained by its proponents, that many saw it as a fix for their beliefs and desires as to how society should be. This is the most troubling realization for me in this whole movement: the eager willingness for man to accept the worldly explanation why this should be. It was very disconcerting that we used science and self-compiled statistical and mathematical conclusions mixed with racism, to trump God’s innate love and moral instruction given to man. So much so, that after this evil kind of thinking sank its into people’s psyche, it took the deliberate massacre of tens of millions of innocent people and a globally crippling world war before the brakes was drawn to stop the first state-sponsored eugenics program: Nazi’s “Final Solution”.
Now to the present time, the abortion debate! Such a fiery topic to discuss! I call it the ‘mutation of eugenic’…a subtle yet covert change so the evil cause can continue without alerting the people as a whole to its inhumane roots and morally deprived beginnings. In modern times, abortion has ravaged the minority communities in ways that are immeasurable with earthly scales; the magnitude of the damage was made possible because of the crafty way that it is promoted over the years. Again, just like eugenics, the proponents use scientific, statistical and other earthy standards to justify the practice. However, there is a major change to their approach to distance themselves from the tainted title of the eugenics movement. The first tactics the Pro-choice supporters adopted was to operate under the umbrella of “care”. Many women were forced or tricked into having abortions after being convinced that this was best for them. Some of these ladies were secretly sterilized without their permission after being labeled as ‘feeble-minded’, a term used to describe someone of low intelligence and not particularly productive to society. This new ‘care’ policy was so effective, that some civil rights leaders who once spoke passionately against abortion, arguing that it is akin to a genocide campaign against their race, have bent under political pressure and now openly accept and endorse the practice. The ‘care’ approach seemed so acceptable to the general public that these civil rights leaders saw it as an opportunity to dismiss their initial concerns and moral standing to accept the practice of abortion, thereby securing their political party’s acceptance. Never mind the millions of babies who were terminated or the tremendous impact this decision would have on the community. This tremendous campaign to normalize abortion has surely found traction in our society today.
I believe that society as a whole has turned away from being faith-based to a society driven by probability, statistic and skepticism. These are major factors contributing to the success of abortion supporters. Because of our reliance on probability and statistics, it is very easy to use these tools as a buy-out, bypassing the moral standards given to us by our Heavenly Father. Most people who are coached into having an abortion are presented with probability and statistical projections which in turn create skeptics out of them; they are steered away from the truth of the One who created not only them, but the baby they are carrying as well. This was the next talking point used to convince many after the “care” generation. We are bombarded with all kinds of probabilities if the mother decides to keep her baby; quite often, they are able to fabricate enough negative reasons to overshadow the positives, creating skeptics out of the pregnant women.
My wife and I experienced this “probability approach” personally during the pregnancy with our last child. A certain test was performed to determine the health of our unborn child. Upon receiving the results, the doctor summoned us to his office with some urgency and proceeded to inform us that the result was of some concern. It was a test that was based heavily on statistics, and according to the result, along with profiles and combination of both our ethnic backgrounds, he said there was a higher than normal chance that our precious little baby would have Down’s Syndrome. After first absorbing this unnerving news, we began to ask questions regarding the exam, and became quite alarmed when the doctor strongly recommended for us to get reproductive counseling including scheduling an appointment for “pregnancy termination”…”as one of your options”. This was even before we had had a chance to give our own opinion! His recommendation was based solely on the probability outlook, and his concern for our welfare seemed genuine and sincere, just deadly misguided! At the time, young and naïve, we did not argue with this highly trained medical professional, but we were convicted enough in our faith to know that he was dead wrong. We very respectfully declined his offer and walk out of his office, never to return. We both knew that our baby, Down Syndrome or not, was ours, and that our Heavenly Father who had created her in Him image, fearfully and wonderfully made, would see us through any difficulty to come. That’s not to say we were not concerned; we just rested on our faith and hope in God to give us the strength we needed to get through the uncertainty and to prepare us to do our best. Well, our now beautiful fourteen year-old daughter is still perfect and well, all praises to God. We refused to react to a statistical report, a compilation of numbers designed to chart our future and make moral decisions for us. Instead, we turned to faith and hope as the bases of our preparation to accept any condition that God placed us in with our child. This is the ‘faith and hope’ approach.
Presently, we have now entered into a more advanced stage, which I will refer to as ’my choice’. This current era has to be the scariest of all, where decisions are not driven out of fear or the unknown; they are just simple a “choice”. Our eyes have become so blind, and our hearts are now at a point that is so hardened, that many among us no longer recognize the unborn as a living child. Imagine that, we get to choose when the tiny baby growing inside a woman’s womb is actually human or not! So much has this attitude become engrained in our society, that we are now experiencing what I call ‘serial abortionists.’ These are men and women who refuse to change their lifestyles of irresponsible sexual behavior and are not too concerned about getting pregnant because getting an abortion is so easily attainable; after all, it is ‘my choice’, and I choose this form of birth control. We are now campaigning to have over-the-counter drugs readily available to terminate a pregnancy in the early stages…just the pop of one pill, and the unwanted, annoyance of the pregnancy disappears. If you pay close attention to the lingo being use presently, you will notice that there is a subtle but persistent effort to treat pregnancy as a disease, by ‘choice’, when the baby is unwanted.
As we examine where we are today with the abortion issue, I will say since its inception, the movement has crossed over three major thresholds: ‘Care’, ‘Probability Scale’ and ‘My Choice’. All three thresholds were able to succeed because our society has moved further and further away from a heart of faith and hope. Instead of placing our trust in God’s Holy Word, society now heavily relies on the government and other secular based institutions as our guide for life and moral issues. Planned Parenthood and the entire abortion movement are nothing more that is a cleaned-up version of eugenic. Just as Margaret Sangster sold the evil she called eugenic by presenting data that easily convinced a wide sector of the populous, so it is with the abortion movement today. People are still willing to accept a good convincing report that fits nicely into their own desire; they were willing to disregard any moral and Biblical teaching to achieve their self-gratifying goals. In other words, like the Bible explains in Romans 1, they now operate under a reprobate state of being.
The three thresholds were not attained overnight; this achievement by the Pro-choice group was accomplished over a few decades with persistent campaigning, adjusting to social and political changes and the subsequent invasion of other aspects of community such as the unbridled influence of public school policies, businesses, government and yes, if I dare say so, the church. What can be done to counter this evil that has spread its tentacle in all areas of society? What is the responsibility of God’s people? How do we approach and battle for the Kingdom of God? This is the burden of God’s people today: to reach the lost and love them back to Christ.
There are a number of ways to counter the evil of abortion. We can do so by raising public awareness through a variety of ways: making every effort to get Pro-life candidates elected, holding public prayer chains and hosting civil demonstrations. All of these are being done on a regular basis throughout the country, but still there is an uneasy feeling that the Pro-choice movement is slowly and methodically gaining ground. I believe the reason for this steady gain for the Pro-choice supporters is that we are now living in a time when people rely more on the tangible than the intangible. Society has given in to the results and opinion of those who push secularism as the moral standards to adhere to. The secularist’s claim to knowledge is viewed and accepted as wise and the Pro-lifer and Christian as a whole is said to be narrow-minded. In spite of this “narrow minded” label and sometimes discouraging outlook, we cannot afford to give up. For the sake of the children, and for the preservation of our moral integrity, we must carry on with the work of ending abortion. I believe we have to focus on the heart of the community rather than the action of the abortionist. In other words, we need to change society to rely on faith and hope rather than science and numbers. A society that will trust in God’s Holy Word instead of man’s worldly ways is still possible. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we will have to somehow let the world know, that no matter how bleak it all seems, our faith and hope in Christ will enable us to manage all situation. You see, we can change politicians, we can change laws, and we can change hearts. The first two are but a means to an end; if we fail to change people’s hearts, then our efforts will be for naught. So how do we change people’s hearts?
God’s will for us is to be more like Christ. While Christ admonished the secular government and religious factions, He showed overwhelming concern for the heart of the people. Jesus accomplished this by demonstrating the greatest of love and compassion to everyone, especially the marginalized and scourged. This should be our focus today, to be more like Christ, not only in our nature and state of being, but also in our actions. We should also be more like Him when we go about doing the work of the Kingdom. So while we petition the government to stomp out the evil of abortions by making it illegal, we must not forget that the real battle is for the heart of the people. First, we have to acknowledge that this is going to be a slow process, so slow that we may not see the fruits of our labor in this generation. We must start small and become a movement, reaching people one at a time until the love of Christ penetrates the society like an unstoppable force. Start with your own family because it’s the youths of today who will be the ones running the last leg of this race. Remove any semblance of anger and judgment from our public expressions. This is not the love of Christ emanating from us and will just alienate us from those we are trying to reach. We don’t want our actions to have a reverse effect. The process we should adapt to succeed should be: one child, one family, one church, one city, one state and one country at a time. Our goal should be to turn a people from a secular view of life to one that is faith based and hope driven.
Abortion is a practice that has existed for centuries, rearing its evil head and gaining momentum at various times under certain political and social conditions. My thought here is that abortion, as we know it today, is one of the by-products of slavery and the Jim Crow laws that was accepted in this country. I say this because we know that Eugenic was formed a few years after the Civil War to counter the Emancipation Proclamation order to free the slaves. Out of Eugenic, Planned Parenthood was formed, which is the single most successful organization in the promotion of abortion. I did not make connection and refer to this relationship to cause any controversies whatsoever. My only desire here is to seek understanding on what we are really facing and to find an honest approach on how we should pray, minister and campaign to end the abortion practice. As Christians, we do recognize and accept the concept of generational curses as a real effect, not only on individuals, but also on society, based on the sins of our fathers. This, the Bible tells us is real. Does abortion have its roots in our earlier collective sins as a nation? Are we reaping the negative repercussions of our fore-fathers’ actions during the enslavement of blacks in America? These are questions we should ask ourselves, not to cast judgment but to get clarity so we are more equipped to fight this cause. We can better prepare ourselves to minister to various groups by knowing the past and present hurt of the community, both consciously and subconsciously. This approach will also help Pro-Lifers to be less judgmental and be able to minister with a greater sense of humility knowing that we all have some involvement or another in the abortion process and how we got to this point. It is going to take all of us to approach the hurt, disenfranchisement, the loss in taking the Gospel of Christ to the community. This is not a right-wing or left-wing fight. It is a human fight which requires the entire fleet in the Kingdom of God.
A model of this approach is demonstrated to us in the Gospel story of Christ and the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus knew of her sins, her hurt and her disappointments. He knew of the individual and societal burdens that she carried around like a yoke around her neck. Yet, He did not pass judgment on the woman. Instead, He used the information to reach out to her, to minister to her, to love her. With this approach, Jesus was able to restore her and her entire community, who for generations had bought into and lived the ugly lie that they were not good enough to be a part of the greater religious community. They were so beautifully and compassionately enlightened by Jesus with the reality of love, and faith, and the comfort of hope, amid social separation and death, as Christ minister to them.
One person at a time, and through one generation at a time, we can turn back the hearts of people to God. With this approach, we will not need governmental regulations to stop the progression of abortion. Government cannot fix what is broken between God and man. We will be a people of faith and hope in our Lord. For where faith abides, there is hope, and where hope dwells, there is life, which is in our Lord Christ Jesus.
Fr. Jerome Tracey
The Branch Life 
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