Nicole D. Hayes, Founder, Voices Against the Grain
I see the birth of a baby and I say, “There must be a God.”
I see the killing of more than 60 million babies and I say, “There must be a devil.”
Former Bryan, Texas Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson was complicit in more than 22,000 abortions. As the clinic director, most of her work occurred seated at her desk and not in the operating room. That is, until one day when the doctor and OR staff was short-handed. Abby was asked to assist with an ultrasound-guided abortion. She pushed back from her desk to help and once done, she would return to her work. Upon entering the operating room, she sees an anxious female patient writhing and crying on the table. As the doctor is trying to calm her, Abby turns to the screen to see the fetus squirming and twisting to avoid the vacuum tube used for abortions. This awful, noisy, life-ending suction machine literally sucked and dismembered the baby from it’s little foot to it’s head out of the womb as a bloody blob into a tube until the womb and screen was void of any activity or life.
While the staff buzzed around in the operating room, Abby sank to the floor in disbelief, grieved and abhorred by what she had seen and participated in. She resigned nine days later on October 6, 2009. What she experienced changed her life forever. It changed mine too. Images from the movie Unplanned —like seeing large drums of fetal tissue being wheeled out of the clinic to be dumped elsewhere —will be ingrained in my memory forever. I was unprepared for Unplanned.
I have been pro-life for as long as I knew what the term meant. I’ve known that abortion does not fulfill God’s desire for the sanctity and value of human life, as He is the Creator for all life (Psalm 139:13-16, Genesis 1:26-27). “Pro-life” seemed merely a label created by groups to publicly say that we support life. But it wasn’t until seeing Unplanned (encouraged to see it by a dear high school friend) and some weeks later, hearing the raw and regretful stories shared by physicians who had previously performed abortions, that I am so strongly in support of life for the unborn.
Society is Doing the Devil’s Work
Since 1973 with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision, there have been more than 60 million completed abortions in the United States.
There is indeed a devil who seeks to steal, kill and destroy.
Through abortion, physicians and patients have been participants and victims of deception. In the earliest years of abortion, physicians were told that the fetus was “just a blob of tissue” and many presumed this to be true. Deception is often cruel. Abortion is skillfully marketed to a woman as an on-demand solution during a pregnancy crisis in her life (mother is told by the abortion industry “we can make this go away” whether the pregnancy was not by choice in cases of rape or incest, or in cases of moral irresponsibility, or on rare occasions, the pregnancy poses a threat to the mother’s life–given today’s technological advances in medicine, there is rarely a medical reason that makes it necessary to do an abortion). But are those complicit in abortion the same ones who will help the woman after she regrets her decision? Are they there to help with the physical and psychological harms sometimes experienced post-abortion?
While abortion is often presented as part of a broad access to reproductive care to champion a woman’s healthcare choices, there is important information in which the abortion industry is inordinately mute. Abortion advocates do not broadcast the physical and psychological harms women may experience who undergo an abortion. There are chances of hemorrhaging and increased risk of infection because the body is already traumatized. Possible damage to nearby organs. Suicidal thoughts, major depression and substance abuse disorders years after the abortion. A woman who has aborted a child has a 30 percent higher chance of premature births after her first abortion and a 60 percent chance after a second abortion. Who is picking up these pieces? Planned Parenthood?
We are doing the devil’s work. We can destroy our culture with abortion and attempt to obliterate an entire race of people (that’s another story, as abortions are highest among Black women, and Planned Parenthood clinics are most disproportionately located where? In our Black and brown communities. Planned Parenthood will say this is because they offer affordable family planning and reproductive healthcare options to these communities–to include abortion). Through abortion, we have managed to eliminate the talents, gifts, creations and inventions of more than 60 million would-be contributors to our society; would-be voices in government, in education, even as payees into our tax base. We will never know what we have lost in our culture through abortion. This is tragic.
Maybe We’re Next
The moment we allow society to question personhood is the moment you and I should know that someone someday may question ours. When life is considered arbitrary today yours may be considered arbitrary tomorrow. It’s only a matter of time and shifting criteria. From slavery, to the Holocaust, to human trafficking, to violence, to physician-assisted suicide, history has proven that the value of another’s life is subjective.
“Personhood” is often questioned by abortion/pro-choice advocates to make it more acceptable to kill a “blob” of tissue. “Oh, it’s just a blob. It’s not a person yet.” But human development from the scientific perspective is observable and a seamless process from fertilization to birth. The “blob of tissue” has a complete genetic makeup. Even Jeremiah 1:5 says, “I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb,” establishing personhood even before conception.
As the Washington, D.C. Area Director for the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, I represent the largest faith-based voice of healthcare professionals on this and other issues with the position to preserve, protect and promote life. In my role, I am grateful to partner with the faith-based and healthcare community to disciple and equip our healthcare students and healthcare professionals to serve their patients as the hands and feet of Christ; to respond to these issues biblically and ethically in an industry that wants them to compromise. I can’t imagine leaving this equipping in the hands of our immoral and self-serving society. I am grateful for those who support and pray for our ministry so we can do God’s work particularly in our nation’s capital.
Many physicians say they would leave medicine if they had to compromise their values. This creates a vacuum in care and access for the patient. If we have fewer practicing Christian OB-GYN healthcare professionals, we may have even fewer healthcare professionals who care to protect your life and mine, or lives of the unborn. We should preserve, protect and promote life at every stage.
Death should not be a desirable outcome for mom or baby. Though abortion is a choice, there are other life-honoring alternatives to be considered. People focus heavily on the challenges and overlook the rewards. Even in difficult, horrific and life-altering circumstances such as rape or incest, out of the chaos and pain, God can do beautiful work, as rape survivor Jennifer Christie shares in this July 2017 CBN News article and powerful YouTube video testimonial. Sexual assault survivors also need care and supportive resources to help them in this most fragile time. We must also continue to call out the injustice of sexual assault.
Redemption and Not Another 60 Million More
Abby Johnson was devastated by what she saw and participated in that day in the operating room. She comes home and tearfully asks her husband Doug how God could forgive her, how could she reconcile being complicit in more than 22,000 abortions? She saw no possible way forward. No possible means of forgiveness.
But there is.
In this extreme blight of the devil’s work, there is indeed a God. A good, loving, God of great compassion whose mercy does not punish us as our sins deserve. Slow to anger and abounding in love, the Lord desires to be gracious to the faithful and to those who have rebelled against Him. Redemption and restoration is available through His Son Jesus Christ, who purifies us from all sin as told in 1 John 1:7. For those redeemed to new life through Christ Jesus, we can approach the throne of grace boldly as all of our sins have already been forgiven. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).
In the way forward, we pray for others to know God better and thereby know His ways. We can also speak to these issues in the public square in hopes to bring truth to those deceived. Ultimately, we pray for hearts to be made pure, no longer self-seeking and self-serving but instead readied to serve Him.
Our world is sinful and imperfect as a result of the fall. Because of, there is an ignorance and arrogance when we trust ourselves instead of God and we limit wisdom to ourselves. May we trust God’s sovereignty in all things. May we allow God the opportunity to work beautifully out of chaos and things unplanned when we fully trust Him.
One of my Catholic neighbors, an older woman, said to me “We can’t speak on this issue. We’ll be labeled ‘hateful’ and ‘intolerant’ by those who want to be their own gods.” But I encouraged her as I have others that we have every reason to speak out and to speak truth. Not another 60 million more.
We will miss waving to one of these children and receiving their smile or wave in return. We will miss their laugh and silly giggles. We will miss the opportunity to answer their questions or teach them—or to be taught by them.
All I can say is this: Not another 60 million more.
Heavenly Father, please forgive us. Thank you for your great love and mercy even as you are a Holy God who will indeed check evil. Help us to desire and seek your perfect ways to best serve you and all those created in your image.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Nicole
Voices Against the Grain 