Thoughts on abortion in the church

What I’m about to say is enough to make some people cringe. I grew up in a very conservative, very affluent Southern Baptist church.

I suppose I didn’t realize how much some people dislike the Southern Baptist Church until I was in upper grade school and I couldn’t take a Methodist friend of mine to an activity because her parents thought she might become “indoctrinated”.

I was confused. I couldn’t understand what was so terrible about my church. Eventually my friend did go to some events with me in high school and she is untainted—still pretty adhered to the Methodist school of thought in which she was brought up. To this day, I struggle to find anything from my old church that is doctrinally opposed to how I understand scripture and Christianity (not that I have it all figured out). There was one thing that was lacking, though. And the element that was missing is something that turns me off to the majority of churches that I’ve ever visited, or attended long-term.

The Church today, at least in the current time and short-term past, and in the location of the country and world in which I find myself (which is admittedly limited), is unable to understand that if they support something, they need to find ways to help other people support it, rather than shoving ideas down peoples’ throats and walking away.

It’s not enough to practice what you preach—you need to kindly, gently and ever so respectfully provide ways for other people to practice what you preach.

My big beef with this comes in a variety of forms, but perhaps most prominently in the form of abortion. There are protestors and picketers that sit outside of abortion clinics chanting and yelling at those who enter. There are nasty and condescending remarks posted on social media, and there are those cheesy billboards on the side of the highway that say things like “Smile, your mom chose life.”

There are certainly more issues that this applies to than just abortion, too. What does that do for the mission of the church? Alienates people? Check. Embitters people? Check. Turns people off to anything that Christ has to say? Check.

Instead of spending so much time and resources forcing information and loaded propaganda on people, what if the church spent that time and money in another way. For example, looking into why people go through with abortion.

Those who want to do away with the right to an abortion often pinpoint those who are sleeping around and having multiple abortions in order to avoid the responsibility that results from their decisions. However, an article “Who’s getting abortions? Not who you’d think” written on nbcnews.com notes that “half of the roughly 1.2 million U.S. women who have abortions each year are 25 or older. Only about 17 percent are teens. About 60 percent have given birth to least one child prior to getting an abortion.”

Economic hardship often lies at the heart of these abortions. The same article states that “the women [who are aborting] come from virtually every demographic sector. But year after year the statistics reveal that black women and economically struggling women — who have above-average rates of unintended pregnancies — are far more likely than others to have abortions.”

If the Church would spend half as much time as some of its members do picketing, protesting and basically just making people feel rotten for their choices, and invest it into solving economic hardship so that people could actually feel as if they can choose life for their unborn baby, it could have a major impact.

What if the church poured that time and those resources into creating childcare systems for children who are born out of a crisis pregnancy or into economically challenged homes? Instead of harassing women who have an abortion, what if the Church spent time lifting those up who chose to keep their babies?

Perhaps we would see a decline in abortions when expectant mothers feel that they can adequately provide for their baby. Perhaps we would see an incline in church attendance if women who had an abortion felt accepted there. Perhaps we would see people acting like Jesus to those who are in need. After all, how would Jesus respond to these women?