A billboard campaign supporting abortion rights, sponsored by the Kentucky Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (KRCRC), came to a screeching halt in Louisville last week after the billboard owner at the Fair and Expo Center pulled the ads. One of the billboards in question featured a somber woman with the text: “Abortion is a personal decision between you and God.” Rev. Diane Snowa, a KRCRC board member and spokesperson for the campaign, argues that “God knows and understands and cares and supports a woman making a [decision to abort].”
But would God really support such a decision?
Orthodox Christianity acknowledges God as the author of life— life that begins in the womb. Many scriptures point to this truth. Psalm 139:13-14 says, “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” In Jeremiah 1:5, God tells the prophet, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you….”
The pain and confusion felt by many women who find themselves in a crisis pregnancy is extraordinary and many women unfortunately see ending a pregnancy as the best way out of a difficult situation. Those like Snowa on the Religious Left deny scriptural authority and assert that tough circumstances justify ending an unborn life. But when does a crisis ever justify the ending of an innocent life?
So is abortion a moral good approved by God as the KRCRC asserts? Only if their “creator” is a god of their own making. Abortion, the ending of a human life, is contrary to the very nature of God. After all, how could a life-giving, life-sustaining Creator approve the violent end of one vulnerable human being in order to make another person’s life simpler?
Without God as the Author of life and a reference point of truth, we become a self-referencing authority with the capacity to justify anything. But sin and our self-justifying ways keep us from the relationship our Creator intends to have with us. This behavior also keeps us from the relationships God intended for us to have with one another.
We’ve seen these scenarios play out again and again: the coercive man pressures his girlfriend to get an abortion; the parents of a teenage daughter tell her she’s is not ready for a child. When women are pressured to abort, they’re left with a load of guilt and shame. The question is: will the KRCRC be there for that woman in her time of greatest despair?
The KRCRC message appears to be guilt-free. But such rhetoric, no matter how neatly packaged, rings hollow with post-abortive women who know firsthand what it’s like to be stripped of their motherhood and filled with regret. After all, conscience confirms that abortion is utterly contrary to the deepest instincts of humanity.
Two of my board members are post-abortive. Instead of telling other women God is okay with abortion, they work to offer women hope and encourage them to make life-affirming choices. Both have devoted themselves to ministries that go the “extra mile” to walking alongside women in crisis pregnancies. Their faith in Christ motivates them to both share the truth with woman while at the same time offering the hope of healing in Jesus. Wouldn’t that be a better message on those vacant billboards at the Expo Center this Mother’s Day?