To George Verwer and Denny Hartford:I sent this today to our ministry staff and board. Thought I would forward it to you. When I read [about Christians] affirming their “pro-choice” convictions...it was discouraging to say the least. It wasn’t the first time, and won’t be the last. What a reminder of our need to teach people a biblical worldview and an understanding of the Creator’s vested interests in human life, not limited to the unborn, of course, but beginning with them.
[Below is printed Randy's response to the opinions he had read.]
Thanks for speaking up for the little ones.
Randy
Randy Alcorn
www.randyalcorn.blogspot.com
www.epm.org
...I don’t question anyone’s sincerity, and I don’t wish to be adversarial... Unfortunately, I think the stakes in this discussion are incredibly high, and close to God’s heart. And I believe I’d have to answer to God if I allowed my desire not to hurt anyone’s feelings (and that desire is very strong) to outweigh the biblical command to “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; defend the rights of the poor and needy” (Proverbs 31:8-9). You and I can each defend ourselves in this discussion. The children can’t.
Who is more poor and needy, more incapable of speaking up for themselves than these unborn children, created in the image of God? Who in our country has been stripped of legal protection and is being killed at the rate of over one million per year? There are many other issues, of course, but what issue is more important and horrific than the killing of children? And who will speak up for them if not us? The election, mercifully, is about to be over, but this issue will not leave us as long as we live, and we will surely face it, when all is said and done, at the judgment seat of Christ.
Nearly thirty years ago Nanci and I opened our home to a pregnant teenage girl who had been kicked out by her non-christian parents. Having her live with us wasn’t easy, but we helped her place the child for adoption, and had the joy of seeing her come to Christ. Diane had two abortions, one before and one after the child born when she was with us. This is Diane’s story told by her.
Diane remains today a dear friend. She is also a passionate advocate of the unborn, and goes into prisons telling women about Christ and leading Bible studies to help them find forgiveness and healing from their abortions.
After what we learned from Diane, Nanci and I knew we had to do something about helping girls in crisis pregnancies. I joined the board of the first crisis pregnancy center in the Pacific Northwest, and the church where I was a pastor became the center’s biggest supporter. It was only later that I became involved in advocating for unborn children. We started with a concern for the women, and have never lost our commitment to helping women in these pregnancies, financially, medically, legally, psychologically and in any way we can.
Those who question whether pro-lifers do much to help women in these situations are apparently unaware of what has been called the single largest grass-roots volunteer movement in American history. It involves hundreds of thousands of people not merely writing out a check or going door to door once a year (like many “movements”), but giving large blocks of their personal time, opening their homes, volunteering services and products, offering free counseling, lawyers offering free advice, physicians offering free treatment, day after day, week after week, year after year, decade after decade.
While you can always find exceptions here and there, the notion that for the most part pro-lifers don’t back up their convictions with loving sacrifice for the good of pregnant women, that we care only for unborn children not women and born children, is simply a lie. But it is a very effective lie, since it is incessantly repeated, sadly even among Christians. [A colleague recently] addressed the false dichotomy between helping children and helping women. If you want more on this, see my take on it here.
When you have stood outside an abortion clinic every week for years, as my wife did, talking to women who have been lied to and told they’re not really carrying a child, and that an abortion will solve their problems, it changes you. When you hold in your arms women utterly devastated by their abortions, remembering the date of their child’s death twenty years later, you will never be the same. When you have held in your hands the remains of an aborted child, as I have, it brands you deep in your heart. When you have seen the world of abortion on the inside, it is, I suppose, like touring a slave ship. You will vomit and weep and never forget it. As it did Wilberforce, it will wake you up in the night and you will find yourself crying for the innocent. So forgive me if I do not sound dispassionate about this issue. I am not. Even as I type I must wipe away the tears to see the words.
In John 8 Jesus combined the two notions of Satan being a murder and a liar. He said “when he lies he speaks his native language.” Satan murders, and he lies to cover his murders. And what an amazing liar he is. Jesus was showing us how holocausts, large scale murders, vicious and cruel, actually happen, with ordinary people of conscience, including Christians, supporting what is unspeakably evil. (I am so sorry to have to say that. I am at a loss to say it otherwise.) The devil cannot pull off large scale murders without attaching a series of lies to deceive people into thinking these people being killed (Jews, slaves, Gypsies, the disabled, or unborn children) aren’t really full-fledged people and therefore are expendable and don’t deserve legal protection.
I wish I could say this without it sounding to some as being mean, hateful, closed-minded and intolerant. God knows my heart in this, and flawed as I am, He knows I am not firing off an angry response, but a grieving one. I don’t want to fight with anybody on this.
We have wept with many mothers exploited by abortion. And you know what’s interesting? All those pro-choice folks, sincere friends or family members and Planned Parenthood and abortion clinic workers, who told them they’d be okay and took their money, are long gone. The only ones who offer help for them now, five and ten and thirty years later, are the countless pro-life centers, support groups and counselors all around the country and in many parts of the world. (One of the common things which must be addressed in counseling post-abortive women is their need to forgive the Christian friends and family members who did not try to dissuade them from an abortion, thinking they were loving them as they did nothing to provide alternatives to killing their child. They may struggle with great bitterness toward the people who could have warned them and begged them not to get an abortion, and offered to help them raise the child, rather than drive them to a clinic. See “I wish someone had told me.”
What I feel, as I write this, is no hostility toward anyone (except Satan)...However, contrary to what has been expressed...there is effectively little difference between being pro-choice and pro-abortion. People’s argument that they are personally opposed to abortion but are pro-choice about abortion (whether they are Nancy Pelosi or anyone else) does not hold up logically or morally. See my explanation.
My entire small book Why Pro-Life is online in pdf form. We give it away and it’s downloadable at no charge. The book is endorsed by Democrats for Life, Feminists for Life, a rabbi, a priest, etc. Feel free to use it, or portions of it, however you wish. This election, like all those before it and after it, will not end this discussion, any more than American elections in the nineteenth century ended the discussion of whether Africans were really human and deserving of civil rights.
Here are some of the questions in Why Pro-Life relevant to the [issues at hand] with answers based on extensive research and interviews. (The first two have links posted earlier in this email, the others do not):
Pro-Woman or Pro-Child? (The myth that we must be one or the other, not both)
Personally Opposed to Abortion, but Pro-Choice?
Is the Unborn Part of a Woman’s Body?
Is Abortion Really a Woman’s Rights Issue?
Do We Have a Right to Choose What We Do with our Bodies?
Does Abortion Harm a Woman’s Physical and Mental Health?
I can’t wait for this election to be over. But I especially can’t wait for our Lord to bring to us a New Earth, without war, racism, and hatred, without suffering, evil, holocausts, the exploitation of women, and the killing of children.
"Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" (Revelation 21:3-5)
Randy Alcorn
www.randyalcorn.blogspot.com
www.epm.org
P. S. You may wish to check out this powerful video by popular Mexican actor and producer Eduardo Verastegui.
