Pregnancy = New Life
“Crisis pregnancy.” It’s a term conjuring pictures of a couple struggling to get by on meager incomes and without the means to support a child. Or maybe some think of a young girl on her own lacking the support system and income she needs to carry and raise a young child. Tragically, a crisis pregnancy is much too often one where the baby’s life hangs in the balance as the mother considers an abortion.
Some use the terms “planned” or “unplanned” pregnancies. Maybe the pregnancy was the result of modern science. Or perhaps the pregnancy was the result of a hideous crime. What the word “pregnancy” ought to make us picture is new life, because that’s what pregnancy means—regardless of whether crisis, planned or unplanned precedes it.
Regardless of the circumstances surrounding a human pregnancy, the results are the same: a human life exists now that did not exist before.
With that existence, we believe, comes the inalienable right to life. The life of that new person, unborn though she be, is as sacred as the life of her two-year old brother or her mother or father. That is the essence of the pro-life movement.
The possibility of being born into poverty or even into an unloving household does not cancel the inherent value of that unborn human life. If the value of our lives outside the womb were determined by the inconvenience we cause our family, or the state, or by whether we’re living in poverty or not, most of us would be in pretty bad shape.
Socio-economic status, education, gender, ethnicity—not one of those characteristics determine the value of a human life after birth, so why should they determine value before birth? And yet, the lucrative abortion industry in our country determines value on a regular basis by those characteristics.
The abortion giant in the U.S., Planned Parenthood, was founded on the eugenic philosophy of Margaret Sanger. Miss Sanger believed, as did many of her cohorts, that certain lives were less desirable than others. She was a documented racist and held the poor in little regard.
It is not surprising today, then, that the abortion centers she helped found, including those in Wisconsin, are usually placed in urban areas right where the poorest minorities are congregated. The eugenic strategy is working. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), black women account for more than twice the overall rate of abortion procedures.
The point is every single unborn human life has inherent value; that’s the sanctity of human life. Since 1973, approximately 55 million babies have been legally aborted in the United States. In Wisconsin, in 2014 5800 unborn babies were aborted, giving us a total of over 540,000 unborn babies lost to abortion since 1974.
That is a travesty for which we have no excuse—and is a total disrespect for the sanctity of human life. In the U.S., our call to freedom is taken from our Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The first right listed is, notably, life. Without life, none of the other rights, liberties or freedoms is possible. The right to life is the foundational right for humankind. It was established at Creation, when, “…the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”
God created the sanctity of life when He created the human race at the beginning. The role of government where life is concerned is to protect all human life by instituting and enforcing laws that protect human life.
I am grateful for Baptists for Life and the Pregnancy Resource Centers they help establish around our state—all of which affirm the dignity of human life from the moment of conception. When we as a nation associate the word pregnancy with new life with inherent value, we will be well on our way to abolishing legalized abortion in our country.
Devotional submitted by:
Julaine Appling is president of Wisconsin Family Council and also serves on the board of directors of Baptists for Life.