Do you ever just get tired of reading all of the gloom and doom that your conservative pro-life friends post on social media? I confess that I just skip over some of it, even though I am the CEO of an evangelical pregnancy medical clinic. I have to keep my mind in a fresh, creative mode and I need to concentrate on things that are positive.
There is a tendency to blame the organized church for the fact that abortion is still with us, 42 years after Roe v. Wade. I won’t even try to debate the merit of that argument in this short space. But I can make a statement based on facts about abortion in the church right here in Broward County: IT IS HAPPENING MORE THAN WE THINK.
These statistics are not from any national polls or from biased information gatherers. They are right out of my computer, based on clients who visited Hope Women’s Centers in 2014. I think they present a compelling argument that our local churches might want to help raise awareness of alternatives to abortion:
1,428 (35%) of our new clients in 2014 were Christians who indicated that they attended church “Somewhat Regularly.”
80% of these clients were single and pregnant (which raises another whole question about how we are teaching purity to our teens and young adults).
224 (24%) of these professing Christian women were strongly determined to abort.
After counseling and ultrasound, 54 of these Christian women left our center, saying they were terminating the pregnancy.
After counseling and ultrasound 154 of these Christian women were still undecided about continuing the pregnancy when they left our center.
Only 16 indicated that they would carry their pregnancy to term.
When was the last time you heard someone in your church speak the truth in love about abortion? Unfortunately, it is often dismissed as “too political”, or a “social issue”. I am firmly convinced that abortion is a moral issue that deserves attention from our pulpits and I implore the leaders in our churches to talk about abortion in light of God’s Word. Abortion takes the life of an unborn human being, created by God in His own image. Abortion is a cover-up for our sins of sexual immorality. Abortion terminates the life a child with the potential for greatness and alters the lives of the mother and father of that child forever. Abortion is not something we can overlook; it has become part of the fabric of our society and to ignore it is to pronounce a death sentence on future generations.
If our churches are not a safe place to talk about abortion, where is it safe? If our churches do not instruct our young people about this issue, who will? What does a young woman in an unplanned pregnancy think if she has never heard her pastor mention abortion? She is left at the mercy of a culture where anything goes.
What does a woman or a man who has already chosen abortion think when God begins to convict them of their sin and they start to feel the loss of the child they never knew? Are they hearing a message of grace and truth that extends to abortion? What are they thinking when there is silence on this issue? I believe they think one of two things:
it must be okay, because my pastor would surely say so if it’s not…
it must be the unforgivable sin, because it’s so bad it is never even mentioned
According to a recent post on the Talk To Action website, Focus on the Family has announced that its new target in the cultural wars is women inside the evangelical church — because Abortion IS happening in our churches. Three Christian men share candidly how abortion impacted their lives in the short video “The Apology.” You can read stories of women AND of men who regret their abortions. There are women AND men in our churches who need healing from past abortions. But frequently all they hear at church about abortion is silence. My friend Reverend John Ensor said a revival started in his church during a small prayer meeting one night when one of the women in his congregation stood up and blurted out, “I have had an abortion and I need help.” Read an excerpt from his book, “Answering the Call”.
If you want to be part of the solution to ending the silence in our churches, call Hope Women’s Centers today and ask about learning to be a “First Responder”. You can be trained to be a positive voice and speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves!
For a complimentary copy of Answering the Call by Rev. John Ensor, contact Hope Women’s Centers’ Business Office.
-Nancy McDonald, President/CEO of Hope Women’s Centers