I believe in the rights of the yet-to-be-born and the rights of the yet-to-give-birth. I have a hard time NOT seeing abortion of a viable fetus as the taking of an innocent life. I also believe that the way most, if not all, pro-life advocates respond to the idea of abortion is part of the reason we see a doubling-down on abortion rights activism. I keep seeing memes of [mostly white, mostly healthy] babies pleading for their mothers to not kill them. I keep reading impassioned stories from mothers of babies born in the second and third trimesters who cannot imagine how someone would want to kill their baby.

Abortion, to me, is a situation that requires us to not only consider the life (or potential life, as you may see it) of a human being, but also the life of a woman (or even a child), who has yet to become a mother.

The new law, whose precise wording was hard to find in a google search, seems fairly well parsed bbnCCC            N N             TRCVTEDV CCGGU7YX     6666666666666666666CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCFFFFFFFFF6666666666666666666F3 in this publication (is it a blog or an article??).

Pardon my son. He awoke one minute after I began writing. He watched me type while he ate his breakfast, so he was sure I was getting a better meal than he was and has since been trying to consume my laptop in one bite.

Anyway, I believe in a God who loves each of his children and has asked us to love one another as we would want to be loved. How many of us want to be judged without getting to explain ourselves? To have complete strangers and people you thought you knew closing their minds and hearts to you just because you made a difficult choice in which you did the very best you could? We don’t have to like each other’s choices to love the person. We don’t even have to understand. But we can be curious instead of hostile, compassionate instead of confrontational. See others as children of God before we call them killers.

Before we judge a woman who is choosing, or would like to choose, or would like to know that, were she to choose, there would be a safe means available to her to have her pregnancy aborted, can we possibly stop and ask why? Before we call her a killer or assume she felt inconvenienced or determine–without knowing a shred of her story–that she was acting selfishly, can we wonder what this moment means to her?

In case we don’t, I know someone who does. Our Savior cares about her story. And he knows what the wrestle of conscience, the weighing of options, the moment, and the aftermath feel like. This perfect understanding comes through the miracle of the atonement. Which he took on because he loves us and because without it, we could not make choices and grow. He knows what a precious thing it is to get to make a choice. Would he rather see all of his children get the chance at life once their journey begins? I believe so. But does he feel for the woman who chooses to prevent an outcome that, according to her own private conscience, has not yet come to fruition? Of course.

He cares for her and the unborn child because he knows them, knows their value, and gave everything for them. He already loved them and all of us before we made any decisions or had those decisions taken away from us. We aren’t here to prove to him why he should love us. He chose to love us and he proved his love for us and will continue to prove his love for us.

All of us.

The abused woman and the abusive partner. The children who have too little and the mother who has nothing left to give. The baby who never saw the light of day and the would-be parents who called it a medical procedure. The scared teen who placed her newborn in a bag and left it in a garbage can. The pedophile who fathered his own grandchild and the victim who seeks an abortion. The clinician who performed thousands of abortions and the fanatic who blew her up. The woman who was expecting a baby until it was cut out of her and the crazy person who wanted a newborn at all costs. And He loves the activists and the lawyers and the politicians and the people posting in desperation to social media. So he gets to judge.

What we get to do is to love people–broken, hurting, needing people. Those who kept their pregnancies, their babies, and those who did not. And if we are willing, we get to find out what love is, and then we can begin to understand who God is. In the meantime, leave judgment to Him. Love shows the way to a better future far better than condemnation will.

[I first heard this song performed by my 8th grade science teacher, Jeff Bibbey. In the same school where I began to understand that girls just like me were giving birth or getting abortions.]

I felt the need to run momentarily from my life today. I took this picture in case I needed to tell my husband (I was past using words) where I was. I’m resting against the garbage can.