'Dealing with the issue every day, I sometimes forget how bizarre and unnatural and inhuman abortion really is.'
By Jonathan Van Maren
Life Site News
A few months ago, my wife surprised me when I got home. She said something was different, and asked me to guess what it was. I don’t like guessing, but she insisted. Half joking, I gave it a shot.
“You’re pregnant?” “Yes.” She was smiling enormously, with a few tears threatening to spill. I sat down pretty hard.
I now know the meaning of the phrase “an ordinary miracle.” Millions upon millions of people a year get pregnant and have babies. But when I realized that there was a brand-new human being in the room with me, that I was sitting next to two souls, and two heartbeats, and that the little boy or little girl was half me, and half Charmaine—it was simply incredible to contemplate. Terrifying, too. But incredible. I wish everyone who discovers the presence of a new person could and would feel the same happiness and sense of wonder.
As we began to share our news, a lot of people asked the same things: Does knowing you have your own baby change pro-life work for you? Does it make it a lot harder?
I know why they ask. Working in the pro-life movement brings us into nearly constant contact with the ugliest undercurrents of our society. Life’s cruel paradoxes are often up front and difficult to process. On one hand, there are people who desperately want children, and would do anything to be given the opportunity to love an “unwanted” child.
“You’re pregnant?” “Yes.” She was smiling enormously, with a few tears threatening to spill. I sat down pretty hard.
I now know the meaning of the phrase “an ordinary miracle.” Millions upon millions of people a year get pregnant and have babies. But when I realized that there was a brand-new human being in the room with me, that I was sitting next to two souls, and two heartbeats, and that the little boy or little girl was half me, and half Charmaine—it was simply incredible to contemplate. Terrifying, too. But incredible. I wish everyone who discovers the presence of a new person could and would feel the same happiness and sense of wonder.
As we began to share our news, a lot of people asked the same things: Does knowing you have your own baby change pro-life work for you? Does it make it a lot harder?
I know why they ask. Working in the pro-life movement brings us into nearly constant contact with the ugliest undercurrents of our society. Life’s cruel paradoxes are often up front and difficult to process. On one hand, there are people who desperately want children, and would do anything to be given the opportunity to love an “unwanted” child.
And of course there are many, many parents who greet the news that they have a son or daughter with unmitigated joy. On the other hand, every day parents traipse into government-funded clinics and pay adults to transform their developing sons and daughters into piles of shredded flesh.
The contrast really hit me when I attended the Women’s March on Washington, and watched hundreds of thousands of girls and women cheering wildly every time abortion on demand was mentioned, and hoisting signs celebrating the rejection of children they deemed inconvenient.
The contrast really hit me when I attended the Women’s March on Washington, and watched hundreds of thousands of girls and women cheering wildly every time abortion on demand was mentioned, and hoisting signs celebrating the rejection of children they deemed inconvenient.
The speakers declared that nothing and no one could stand between them and the right to whatever pleasure they deemed necessary. It was a celebration of selfishness, the glorification of sterile sensuality, and a demand for fruitless love. Something Peter Kreeft once said crossed my mind as I watched them, shaken: “Feminists are feminine like cannibals are chefs.” It was a rejection of the feminine, and a rejection of children.
