The young woman had come with her boyfriend to the abortuary to kill their unborn baby. They were both 19 or 20 year-old college students. As they walked through the parking lot I talked to them from the sidewalk. I told them that we wanted to help them. Did they need rental assistance? Legal or medical referrals? Counseling and support? Maybe even help with adoption? I asked them to please take my brochure with vital information on the dangers of abortion and the help available to them. I pleaded with them to protect their child, and let us help them in their time of need. The men and women of our pro life center had helped hundreds of women over the last 20 years, I told them, and we would help them too.
Her response was clear. “This was a mistake. I can’t have a kid. It will really screw up my life.” The boyfriend and father of the child did not want any interference. He was clear too: “You’d better x#@x shut up, and if you don’t I’ll make you wish you did.” With that they opened the front door of the abortuary, and went in.
What was a mistake, albeit a very serious mistake, was about to become a blood soaked tragedy. If the young woman thought that allowing the birth of her child would “really screw up” her life, she obviously had not considered how truly “screwed up” her life was about to become when she killed the innocent human being in her womb. She was oblivious to the heartbreak, shame, and guilt that would unexpectedly descend upon her days, weeks, or even years later, and that it would be relentless until she sought forgiveness for her terrible deed. If she has children in the future, those objects of her love will be reminders of the one she killed. The day of the abortion will be ever remembered.
The tough talking boyfriend/father would almost assuredly not be around much longer. The relationship would dissolve in the corrosive lie that they were acting out: if abortion is legal it must be morally acceptable, and so there will be no ill consequences. She may need him for a while for some level of material and emotional support, but he will also be a reminder to her of that terrible day when she ended innocent life. And she will, even if only in a subtle way, know deep down that he did nothing to help her do the right thing in her time of need and desperation. He is not the protector and defender whom she needs.
As to the boyfriend and father, even if those of us on the sidewalk had “shut up” as he demanded, he still would have known in his heart that he was a participant in something grossly immoral. He smelled the noxious fumes of evil with every step he took toward the abortuary door. That is why he wanted to talk tough and silence any sound of the truth.
For his part, he will not be able to look at his girlfriend, the mother of his child, except through the prism of death. Even if he does not admit it, she will always be the one who killed his child. Unless there is an admission on his part of the evil in which he was complicit, and a willingness to forgive himself first and then her, a loving relationship between the two of them will be impossible.
This scene is common, but always chilling nevertheless. A young father and a young mother decide to kill the innocent life produced by their union, which results not only in the death of the child, but in shame and guilt, and the destruction of their relationship with each other. It is the reverse of the Divine Plan where a man and a woman come together in the love of sacramental commitment, as pro-creators with God to create human life. The fruit of that union draws them together in further love and greater commitment to nurture and protect the new creation, and in so doing they are drawn to the Source of all life before whom they present their child.
But the fruit of the union of those two young parents was not an object of love to be protected and nourished, and to be offered in thanksgiving to the God who created that life. They had travelled to the temple of death to present their child to the abortionist to be sacrificed for their continued “freedom.” But what freedom? Such “freedom” is false.
It is a modern version of an ancient story. “They built high places to Baal in the Valley of Ben-hinnom, and immolated their sons and daughters to Molech, bringing sin upon Judah; this I never commanded them, nor did it even enter my mind that they should practice such abominations” (Jer. 32:35).
The point of this discussion is not just to point out that human beings commit sin, many times grievous sin. Or that they get themselves into desperate and immoral situations that they frequently compound with immeasurable stupidity and arrogance, which sometimes, as in the case of abortion, results in the shedding of innocent blood. Rather it is that because men and women do just those things that the mission in pro-life work is important.
The abortuary is not a place where there is an occasional lapse of civility or momentary loss of common decency. It is created for death. Evil is scheduled. It is a black hole of death and despair. It is a place where innocent lives are killed, and souls lost. What happens there maims the psyche, wounds the heart, dries up love, and breaks apart relationships.
So we must continue to be present at this place of evil to witness to life and to bring good to displace evil. We must be present there to offer hope and a way out of the despair that leads mothers and fathers to choose death for their children. If we are not there we cannot offer ourselves as the presence of good, and as a sign of hope. For these reasons alone we must persevere.
