Sorry Mrs. Sanger, I am for real

 “I heard your son has gotten someone pregnant?” This was the shocking announcement a 40-year-old mother received from a friend regarding her teenage son. The news began to spread fast across the young man’s high school and neighborhood. A couple of teens under the age of 18 were now expecting a new baby. They were young, immature, and had their entire lives ahead of them. For both, having a baby at such a young age was not in the picture. It all seemed unfair that a baby would ruin such young lives full of amazing potential. The young woman, confused and nervous about the reality of raising a child, was encouraged to seek an abortion. So, she gathered the funds from a family friend, headed down to the local abortion clinic, and waited. In a moment and for only $300, her little problem would be removed, and she could move on with her life. Yet, in the stillness of that cold room, a family member sitting with her whispered, “I can’t let you do this; just kill your baby.” Those words caused this young woman to choose life. Her family situation didn’t change, the possible future outlook was the same, but now, she saw that baby as an innocent human life; not deserving of death. In 1982, there were 1.57 million abortions that year, and thankfully I was not one of them. 

 Nancy Pearcy, the author of Love Thy Body, writes, “Human life and sexuality have become the watershed moral issues of our age. Every day, the twenty-four-hour news cycle chronicles the advance of a secular moral revolution in areas such as sexuality, abortion, assisted suicide, homosexuality, and transgenderism. The new secular orthodoxy is being imposed through virtually all the major social institutions: academia, media, public schools, Hollywood, private corporations, and the law.” In our postmodern world, Christians should be the loudest voices proclaiming humanity’s value that every human being is made in the imago Dei, the very image and likeness of God. No matter how small or old, human life has value and worth. Yet, this one singular truth is lost in the abortion debate. We so often get caught up in political jabs, emoting, laws, and meanderings of postmodern culture. The cultural haze can cause us to lose the heart of this issue; humanity. Since 1973, 61 million human babies have been murdered. Specifically since, 1973, 19 million African American babies have been murdered. According to Life Dynamics, the African American population has been reduced by 25% from abortion alone.  

 What if we went back to the core question? What is the unborn? To the slave master, the slave was property. One could say their argument could translate well in our postmodern culture. The postmodern view of the body is deficient, almost leaving no value of worth for what God deems as good. For the unborn, the postmodern view is that the unborn human is nothing but a clump of cells, not truly human yet. Francis Beckwith lays out a simple syllogism:

“The unborn entity, from the moment of conception, is a full-fledged member of the human community. It is morally wrong to kill any member of that community. Every successful abortion kills an unborn entity, a full-fledged member of the human community. Therefore, every successful abortion is morally wrong.” 

 The real struggle for civil rights centered on humanity, dignity, worth. I, for one, am glad those who went before us refused to be silent. While the culture pressed against them with threats, beatings, and even jail, they would not go quietly into the night. The Government may say what is legal, but what is legal may also be immensely immoral. I want to make it very explicit. We have a culture that has called that which God calls evil good. Even more, we now have Christians and pastors affirming a postmodern worldview that accepts the murder of innocent human life as a moral and necessary good. Have we come to the point that we have to convince Christians that humans are made in the image and likeness of God? That an unborn human has dignity, value, and worth? What happens when those who should be the loudest are now silent voices in the wind? Men like Jessie Jackson were once staunch advocates of the preservation of human dignity in the 70’s. Jackson wrote in 1977, “Another area that concerns me greatly, namely because I know how it has been used with regard to race, is the psycholinguistics involved in this whole issue of abortion. If something can be dehumanized through the rhetoric used to describe it, then the major battle has been won.” 

 As an African American pastor, I take the issue of abortion personally. Yet, some would levy: the charge to care about the womb is to neglect life outside of It. Others would opine and say that this is indeed not an issue blacks should even be concerned. The most recent statics from the CDC show that while African Americans make up 12% of the American population, they account for roughly 28%-36% of abortions. Nancy Pearcy writes, “If you favor abortion, you are implicitly saying that in the early stages of life, an unborn baby has so little value that it can be killed for any reason.” In short, this view is in explicit agreement with Eugenicists such as Margret Sanger, who desired to rid the world of the “feeble minded.” Sanger wrote, “Every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive period. Otherwise, she is almost certain to bear imbecile children, who, in turn, are just as certain to breed other defectives.” The “feeble minded” she wrote and spoke of was none other than those who were poor, black and undesirable. Well, Mrs. Sanger, my melanin is neither a defect nor a liability. I don’t desire pity nor shame for who the creator of the Universe formed in my mother’s womb. While seemingly unfortunate to some, God used birth and circumstances to weave the fabric of my life for his glory. 

 Is it gutless, as one pastor wrote on Facebook, to care for the unborn. See, the issue we are arguing for here is not dismissing the problems outside of the womb, but the reality that a postmodern culture has deemed an innocent human worthy of murder. In the end, to the postmodern culture, it matters not what solutions we offer, how many children are adopted, or the millions of dollars given in benevolence to care for women and children. Why? Because, to the postmodern worldview, none of these things truly matter. Simply put, they have deemed humanity as something they decide based on certain variables, not what is morally right. We must return to the core question. What is the unborn? The Scripture is clear, “For it was you who created my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I will praise you because I have been remarkably and wondrously made. Your works are wondrous, and I know this very well.” Psalm 139:13-14. 

 I pray that we see more [people] rise to champion the protection of innocent human life in the womb. That more will seek to support mothers and fathers who find themselves in overwhelming situations. That churches will seek to love the broken and hurting who have faced abortion and need the grace of Jesus Christ. Those who stand on truth will declare to an immoral culture what is morally right, even when the Government allows what is immorally legal. 

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