A post on abortion

First - just a little heads up. The article I'm posting about includes pictures of an aborted baby. I found them very moving, but if you are very sensitive you should probably not read the article.

I really try not to get in people's face about this topic or any other. I just generally have the attitude that you can't bully people into agreeing with you. But this story really affected me. A basic synopsis (for those who don't want to read the article) is that a single mother with two kids decided to have an abortion at 22 weeks for reasons that seemed sufficient to her at the time. She says she wanted to kill her baby in the "most humane way possible" and had planned with a funeral home to have the baby cremated - even choosing Bible verses to have read over him. That's right she calls herself a Christian. She went to the clinic and had the baby, who she expected to be stillborn. He was, in fact, alive however. She says that at that point she tried to get someone to call for an ambulance - hoping to save her baby by getting him to a hospital. But she is now considering legal action because the clinic workers did not call an ambulance or do anything else to help her keep her baby alive.
The first time I read about this I was just so sad for poor little Baby Rowan. How cruel - to be pushed out into the world from what should be the safest place on earth, so long before he was ready. He managed to survive his premature birth only to be born into a toilet. And then managed to hang on. Anyone who has seen a premature infant knows just how hard they struggle to live. I can only imagine that little Rowan must have tried to breathe on his own with his tiny undeveloped lungs. Who knows what this little boy could've grown up to be? It just breaks my heart to think about him.
But the next time I read it, I got mad. I usually have a lot of compassion. I've held the hands of several friends who went through crisis pregnancies of their own. I know the panic. I understand just how overwhelming it can be. And I know people make mistakes that they wish they could go back and change. Let me tell you, there but for the Grace of God go I. I've made many mistakes myself and I don't ever forget that. It doesn't help women or their babies to say "what were you thinking?" or "how could you do that?" But I am mad for Rowan.
I am mad that a mother with two kids at home - a woman who calls herself a Christian - chose to kill her child. She knew this was a baby. A real, living baby. She felt him move the same way her first two children had. She carried him for 5 1/2 months. She named him. The she planned his funeral and she killed him anyway. How can anyone with even a passing acquaintence with Christ ever imagine that this is okay? And she says "I know you're thinking, 'How can a Christian possibly make that decision?' – but I think it happens a lot more often than you think."
How does that explain it? How does that explain why a follower of Christ can treat the life of their own child so caulously?
I know it can be hard to bring a child into this world. Some of us have nearly died doing it and still committed to doing it again. It's hard to admit that you've made a mistake that you can't "fix" or hide. But a baby deserves a life. Adoption is a good option for women who can not care for a child. So is temporay custody while you get you're life together. For that matter so is getting your life together fast so that you can care for your baby. We need to do all we can to help mothers so that they can raise their children or help them to find families who will cherish the baby that they are about to dispose of. And we need to remind society at large that children are a blessing - every child all the time. And we need to make murder illegal again. Every murder. All the time.