The Grace of Guilt – Abortion and the Muted Conscience

By: American Decency Staff

Becoming a father has changed me in a lot of ways.

Not the least noticeable is the fact that I now have serious problems with TV shows or movies where parents lose their kids. I can't handle it. A recent episode that I watched caught me with empathetic tears in my eyes when a couple lost their daughter – and I didn't even like her character.

The bond between a parent and his/her child is one of the most amazing manifestations of the character of God in his creations; when God calls us his children and we can compare that to the love we have for our own children – or the love our parents had for us – we can sense an inkling of our Father God's love for us.

When that bond is broken by death, it is a tragic thing to go through – and even to watch.

That's why I'm not even going to try viewing a recent viral video, in which a woman films her own abortion to show people how great it is.

In her own words, "I wanted to show it wasn’t scary — and that there is such a thing as a positive abortion story. It’s my story.”

The awful thing is that it's not hers alone. It's also her child's painfully short story, and I doubt her child considered it to be quite so positive.

Listen to this sad, confused woman explain her emotions as she went through the procedure: "I remember breathing and humming through it like I was giving birth. I know that sounds weird, but to me, this was as birth-like as it could be. It will always be a special memory for me. I still have my sonogram, and if my apartment were to catch fire, it would be the first thing I’d grab.”

In her mind, she loves this child. In fact she says as much: "I realize it was potential life, and I love it in my own special way. I’m not glib and cavalier."  She just didn't think she was ready to be a mom, and our sick culture has convinced her that this is a morally acceptable thing to do.

This woman knows all the arguments against abortion, because she counsels in the clinic where she had her own. This makes me wonder if, at some level, she did this to convince herself of her own arguments – that what goes on at that clinic is really as great as she tells people it is.

But, she insists, she feels no guilt and no one else who's had an abortion should either.

"Our society breeds this guilt. We inhale it from all directions. I didn’t feel bad. I am thankful that I can share my story and inspire other women to stop the guilt.”

Dr. Albert Mohler expertly analyzes this assertion, "Our post-Christian society has been working hard for well over a century to bury guilt in the cultural backyard and deny that guilt can be morally significant. In the wake of Sigmund Freud and the therapeutic revolution, the modern secular worldview demands that guilt be understood as the lingering residue of the Christian conscience, an experience merely forced upon us by a society that imposes oppressive moral judgments. It is to be overcome and denied, never heard.

But the Christian worldview affirms that guilt is inescapably moral, and that our experience of guilt comes from the fact that we are made in God’s image as irreducibly moral creatures. We cannot not know of our guilt, which exists as God’s gift to drive us to the knowledge that we are sinners in need of a Savior.

If [the woman in the video]truly believes that there is no guilt rightly associated with abortion, she would not have to insist, over and over again, that she feels no guilt. When she tells of women who “feel guilty for not feeling guilty,” she testifies to the fact that they are moral creatures who cannot stop making moral judgments, especially about themselves, even when they insist there is no moral judgment to be made.  And this must be especially true when a woman has sought to terminate the unborn life within her."

The abortive mother missed this, but hopefully she won't miss it forever. Guilt is an act of God's mercy. He gives it so that we can find peace in Him.

That is half of the tragedy after all. It is not only that the babies die, it is also that their mothers want to kill them. As this young woman stated about her abortion, "I don't feel like a bad person. I don't feel sad. … I knew what I was going to do was right, because it was right for me, and no one else." 

Her baby and millions of others have died on the altar of the god of comfort and convenience in an effort to satiate the craving that we all have for wholeness that can only be found in Christ.

==========================================================

To support our efforts please click hereor mail your gift to American Decency Association (ADA), PO Box 202, Fremont, MI 49412. 

American Decency Association is a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.

---