Desperation: the Motivation of Abortion and Adoption

She was thinking about an abortion.  Something I've realized recently is that almost no woman wants to have an abortion. In nearly all cases, desperation, fear, hopelessness, shame and pain surround everything about abortion.  This is not to excuse the seriousness nor the wrongness of such an act.  All life has value.  Whether unborn child or radical religious terrorist.  We are all created in God's image and bear an innate value.

But its not like most women wake up, take a shower, put on a nice dress and drive casually to the abortion clinic.

Imagine that you have struggled with four kids, all under 6 years old.  One is a new born.  You're out of work, recently married and he too is out of work.  You live in a small and broken apartment.  You do not have food and bathroom essentials.  Your kids are a mess and you don't know where last month's rent is going to come from much less how this month's rent will appear.  You suffer from depression and anger management issues and three of your kids are in therapy.

You just had your kids taken away by the state and getting them back looks impossible.  You have come undone and don't know what to do next.  And then you miss your monthly visit from Aunt Flow.

Fear, desperation, hopelessness, reinforced by a culture that make it easy to remove responsibility, causes you to consider abortion.  But long forgotten Sunday School lessons and a love for the children you already have bends you towards reconsidering.  It's wrong.  Life, this life has value.  Maybe there's another way.

The second we heard she was pregnant and considering an abortion, my wife and I instantly said, with no hesitation, that we would take the child.  We did not consider the cost (and there is a considerable cost that we'll go into later).  It was immediate and unified.  We'll take the child.

The cool thing is...there were no less than a half dozen other people in our church that said the exact same thing!  This family had support.  They had love from a family of believers that wanted to demonstrate grace, generosity, kindness and a spirit of adoption that reflect exactly what God is like.  We did not judge her that abortion was being considered but rather valued this family and this new child.  Wanting the best for them.  Demonstrating what bearing God's image meant.

The reality is...abortion is not mankind's greatest sin.  That is not what separates us from God.  It is easy to see people's messy sin when its clearly visible.  Its easy to judge and condescend.  It's easy because we can see their sin in high definition clarity.  But what people do is not what separates.  It's what we are.  We violate a Holy God. We are sinners by nature.  Apart from God, we are all fearful, desperate, hopeless.

We are all walking abortions.  But we have a Father that wants to adopt us.  Give us meaning, value, life.  Adoption is one of the most beautiful relationships one can have.  We were once unloved, unwanted, un-valuable.  God, through love and grace, makes us lovable, wanted and valuable.  Bren and I were desperate to "save" this child.  God is "desperate" to adopt us.*

We know what our adoption as Christians looks like.  But what would it look like for us to adopt someone?

*By desperate, I don't mean that God has to adopt us.  But rather that His desire to do so is so strong that He is willing to sacrifice even His son to reconcile us to himself.  It looks desperate to us and when you realize that He did it because he wanted to and not because we deserve it, it makes it truly an amazing gift of grace.