Where I Stand On Abortion
A constituent recently called me wanting to know where I stood on abortion.
Growing up, I was always told life was given by God and therefore, there should never be an option to abort. As I got older, the Bible became irrelevant, I went through more life experiences and continued education. I heard all the arguments from both sides. Some seamed very reasonable in favor of abortion.
When I was twenty five, my wife became pregnant with our daughter. I remember going to one of the ultrasounds around six weeks into pregnancy. I remember seeing her. She was the size of my fingertip. I remember seeing how fast her heart was beating; like a little flicker.
She is nine years old now. Everything she is now, she had built into her when I saw her in that ultrasound; she just needed the time to develop, just like she needs the time now to develop into a teenager, young adult, and into maturity.
In my early twenties, I was faced with this argument and was struggling to come to a conclusion. Who is right? Who is wrong? Who decides when life matters? Who decides when life begins?
I decided my decision would be based on a book that was very old and that I had rejected as a teenager and young adult, but had been recently guiding my life: the Bible.
The old Book, says: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Psalms 139:13 and Jeremiah 1:5 it says: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.”
It was not the words that changed my opinion about life and where it comes from, but the belief in who said the words.
At that time in my life, it was a decision to believe those words, but years later when I saw my daughter’s heartbeat at six weeks old, I knew she was alive, she was being formed and knit together. But it was her mother’s and my responsibility to give her the time; she was dependent on us to give her time.
Men and women can argue any point of view on any topic to justify their point. The problem is that cultures and opinions vary from generation to generation. I believe the reason why the fight for the definition of life and abortion is so relevant right now in our culture, is because our generation has come to the extreme. The left is now saying it’s ok to have a baby, lay in on a table and give the mother the option to kill the child. What have they become? What would we be become as a society to agree with this? Those who have tried to have an understandable argument about a women’s right to choose have been taken advantage of, so much so that the rubber band has been stretched to its limits of tolerance and has shot back at this culture of death.
Why are we fighting to protect sea otters, owls and frogs, yet letting this precious life slip away? I understand as a County Supervisor, I have no legislative power at the state or national level, but I am confident in my convictions and in science, the same science that has allowed me to see life in the womb. Many say life starts at certain stages during pregnancy, some say at six weeks when you can see a heartbeat, some say at conception. I say, it started long before all of that. “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” Jeremiah 1:5.
