being pro- Christ

I want to tell you about t.j. She is a woman of colour, very socially and politically aware, and radically left in her worldview. She self-defines as 'queer' and has a somewhat aggressively anti-authoritarian attitude to pretty much anything you might consider 'straight', in any sense. She views sexuality in what she considers an open and progressive sort of way, holding 'bacchanal' parties - 'clothing optional spaces' in which sexuality is freely celebrated.

Orgies to you and I.

She had created for herself a world which is antithetical to everything stable and balanced, and she already had one child. And then. She discovered she was pregnant again. She is unrepentant about the conception - she revels in the pleasure she recieved, and the 'power' she channelled. But she doesn't really want to have the baby. She's got lots of really deep, leftist, individualistic reasons why. But basically, she just doesn't 'feel' its the right time.

She finds herself angry and emotionally flailing about. Upon a large amount of introspection, she comes to this conclusion.

so, i mourned the loss of the baby i was still carrying. i mourned it's death while it still lived. part of this was finally deciding about two days before the scheduled abortion itself that i would have a ritual to mark the impending passing of the baby.



Realizing she is grieving, she is still firm in her choice. She attempts to bring some peace to her violated conscience by deciding to memorialize her childs passing. The macabre nature of such ritual seems lost on her.
Flashes of reality appear to break into her carefully crafted fiction. While preparing for her ritual, she says this;

i sorted through my birthed daughter's time capsule of objects/talismans tracing her existence to present day.

i burst into tears when the realization that the unborn child inside me would never have these bits and pieces of time encapsulated to mark her way. no clippings of hair. no ultrasound pictures. no labour manifestation cards. no little boots. no little crocheted hat.



Yet, determined to forge ahead, she simply creates a little memory box for the child she is discarding, made up of a pregnancy test, some borrowed booties and some candles. The ritual goes ahead, and she finds it a helpful cathartic release. But injustice and grief still haunts her internally. Characteristically, she turns this outward - it is society's problem, another socio-political issue for her to rail against. She writes;

in a world where wimmin's experiences of abortion and miscarriage are silenced, erased, shame/guilt-ridden, medicalized, divested of acknowledged links to the everyday flow of wimmin's own lives, where the lives of our gestating, soon to be aborted babies are ignored/erased as if they never were...although many/most/some of us know different, feel different at our core...


You didn't miss that, did you? Amid the self-indulgent complaint of 'wimmin's' oppression, there is the open acknowledgement that their children are not something that can be ignored or erased. Admittedly it's hard to get past the twisted reasoning that would complain about the de-humanization of the unborn while preparing to kill them, but perhaps she believes logic is tied to patriarchy.

So, the day of the big event arrives. And in t.j.s words, it is horrid. The clinic is just so...clinical. She thinks it would be better if it was a comfy space, filled with cushions, woman-centric artwork, plants, and a general ambience of 'it's ok to be vulnerable'.
She seems to have decided that for all the 'calm resolve' bestowed upon her by the ritual, she will view everything through a confrontational eye. The receptionist isn't tender enough, the counsellor isn't quite gentle enough, the policy of no support partners in with the patient is unpleasant, and so on. Once she is finally in the room, she is most unhappy that the surgical nurse

doesn't seem remotely interested in taking a moment to look closely and see who i am.


In truth, the procedure she describes, and the behaviour of the medical professionals involved, are certainly insensitive and detached. But t.j. is still labouring under the illusion she created with her ritual that she somehow has an inalienable right to be treated like she is very, very special. She tells us;

i'm not a pro-lifer. i was/am a mistreated and furious about it, pro-choice mama who made her choice and expected to be cared for in a way that said my body and my spirit mattered!


The basic injustice for t.j., and mark this, is that she truly believes;

i shouldn't have to put up with this because i am an unmarried woman who got pregnant while in search of pleasure.

If you got this far, congratulations, it's taken me a good long while to adequately describe her testimony, and quite a few tea-breaks to compose myself.

So what can we hear t.j. telling us? What is she saying? Is she pressured because of economics, tormented because she is in a controlling relationship, forced into pregnancy? Is she unaware of the growing life within her, ignorant that it's a child, deluding herself with the 'clump of cells' mantra?

t.j. is none of these things. Her frustrations and unhappiness come from a restrictive mean-spirited society that does not actually congratulate her on her choices to be eagerly promiscuous, and then pseudo-spiritual about murder.

How do we reach t.j., and women like her? The simple fact is that she is well aware of the 'personhood' of her baby. She just believes she is more important. She is a woman with herself on the throne of her heart.

There is only one way to reach into a heart and dethrone the self. It cannot be done by holding a placard with a picture of a child in utero. It cannot be done standing on a pavement outside an abortion clinic, praying around a circle of lit tealights. It cannot be done by linking arms with a Roman Catholic and hearing them whisper a rosary.

Only the gospel of Jesus Christ will change this. And if you do all the above, and especially if you stand with those who oppose the gospel, you go close to working against that which will save both mother and child.

Proclaim the personhood of the baby, and the girl who is truly ignorant of it may carry it to term. That may happen. But proclaim the saving power of the finished work of Christ, and you may actually dethrone the woman, and then she will respond to what she already knows in a different way.

Yes, it is right and proper to stand up for the unborn - for those who have no voice, just as it is right to stand up for the oppressed, the poor, the refugee. It is indeed a Christian work to do these things. But these things are foolishness if we do not do the work of an evangelist.

I used to be a member of a Roman Catholic pro-life organization. While I still keep abreast of what they are doing, I can no longer stand with them, because I've come to see that I cannot save women and children by convincing them to conform to the standards of a God they hate.
This doesn't leave me impotent in the face of the waving placards, and the accusation that I am an old republican man (I am neither old, republican, or male). If I stand true to the gospel and preach Christ crucified that those dead in sins may live, I am more powerful than the US senate, the UK Parliament, the Family Planning Association and the assorted debaucheries of all those who believe that woman or man can stand in the place of God.

Do pray for t.j. She is mired in things I cannot possibly describe here. And do be pro-life. Write to senators or members of parliament, provide financial support and care to those affected by abortion, or those who want to carry their children to term and have them adopted. Consider adopting children written off as 'unwanted'. Show the world that being 'unwanted' is a crummy reason to be killed.

But be pro-life in the only way that eternally matters. Be pro-Christ.