An Open Letter to Women Say ‘My Body, My Choice’ by Michael L. Brown for Ask Dr Brown
If you are a woman who believes that it is your moral right to have an abortion, you are likely quite angry or frightened over the enactment of the Texas Heartbeat Bill. All the more is the case if you live in Texas. And you likely think that people like me, conservative, male, pro-life Christians who are glad to see the bill enacted, are heartless, controlling, misogynistic monsters.
After all, you reason, what gives us the right to tell you what you can do with your own body? What makes us any different than the religious fanatics in other countries who put all kinds of restrictions on women? And how dare we interfere with these critical, life-impacting decisions that only the woman should make? Who do we think we are?
What about the 15-year old girl raped by her drunken neighbor, only to find out that she is pregnant? What gives us the right to force her to carry this baby to term, tormenting her with the memory of that rape every day for months as her body grows and changes? How can we require her to bear the shame of that rape before her friends and schoolmates and family members, most of whom would not have learned of the rape if she had been allowed to have an abortion? And how can we claim for a moment that, for this young woman, an abortion is not the compassionate and best choice for her life?
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What about the married couple so excited to welcome their first child into the world, the child they dreamed of having for years, only to learn that the baby has a serious birth defect and will not likely survive? The best case scenario is a few years of life, but only with great pain and suffering, coupled with massive, crippling hospital bills. Is it fair to bring this child into the world knowing what lies ahead? Can the parents survive the upheaval that the baby’s suffering will bring on them? Doesn’t love require making the difficult decision of abortion?
Or what about the single mother of three young kids who can barely make ends meet as she juggles caring for her children while working a job? She and her boyfriend didn’t intend for anything to happen, but the birth control failed, and now she is pregnant again. He took off as soon he heard the news, and she is already beyond stressed with life as it is. To add one more mouth to feed seems cruel – cruel to the other kids and cruel to the mom, who is at her breaking point. Isn’t abortion the practical choice?
Obviously, as a man, I cannot put myself in the shoes of these women. But I write this to say, “I can understand how you view people like me, and I can understand why, in your mind, abortion is often the most compassionate or, at least, most pragmatic choice.”
I would only make this appeal to you: will you take a few more seconds and consider the pro-life side of things?
Do you realize that, at the moment of conception, the child in your womb receives its unique coding – to be precise, three billion base pairs of DNA coding? One science website explained that, “If you stretched the DNA in one cell all the way out, it would be about 2 meters long and all the DNA in all your cells put together would be about twice the diameter of the Solar System.” Put another way, at conception, this baby, which is barely visible to the human eye, “contains more information than fifty sets of the physical 33-volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica.”
All that is planted inside that tiny baby as soon as the egg and sperm join together, almost miraculously. Talk about meticulous and careful planning. Talk about evidence of design. And it is at that moment we believe God breathes life into that little one. At that very moment, you are pregnant with a girl or a boy (or twins or more).
