Confronting Abortion in Louisville: A Seminarian’s Experience (and Challenge)

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A buddy and I went to the local abortion clinic this morning.

Evidently a catholic bishop was in town, so there were quite a bit more people there than usual (or so I’m told). More than 150 at least. They lined the sidewalk for almost the entire block. There were quite a few families out there as well, with each little one holding their own plastic rosary.

Before I could ponder on their prayers any longer, the first abortive mother began being escorted up the sidewalk. At this clinic, patients have to park across the street, or down the block, so the clinic provided escorts which formed a circle around the women and walked them up to the front door – right through the crowd of pray’ers. It was quite a different scene than what I was used to in Texas, where a fence and a parking lot separated the clinic from those who are outside. The escorts here were pretty rough with those who tried to minister to the women, and while they waited on the next patient, they would use a litany of curse words to express their opinion of pro-lifers, both to themselves and to the crowd as well.

We had the opportunity to approach a few of the abortion clinic escorts away from the crowd and talk to them about what was going on there. Most of them attacked catholic dogma, and their idea of Christianity in general to dodge the more penetrating questions that I asked. I was a little taken aback however, with the openness in which many spoke of “population control” as a determining factor in their decision to be pro-choice. And it seemed their major knock on we pro-lifers is that (they say) we are “inconsistent”. What about the death penalty? What about war? etc. Their reasoning really seemed to be that if we are not fighting (what in their eyes is) every worthy cause, then we have no right to fight any worthy cause.

I have no desire here to discuss the philosophical fallacies of that argument, but suffice it to say that they wouldn’t have any problem with a women killing her baby, and protesting a war because it takes innocent life. This should remind us though, of how truly blind we are, apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, bought to us by the work of Christ.

Towards the end of the morning, we got a chance to talk to two gentlemen who were holding large pictures of aborted babies (similar to the Justice for All photos if you’ve ever seen those). They ended up being independent baptists who drove in from Indiana and Tennessee. The Lord gave us an opportunity to minister to them about having grace, even in the midst of a protest. It was a great conversation, and I feel like the Lord really blessed it.

I’ve heard it said by a brother of mine in Texas, that their should never be a time when an abortion clinic does not have a Christian out in front of it. In seminary towns like Louisville, there should never be a time when there isn’t a seminarian in front of it.

Where are you baptists? Have we confined our belief in the imago Dei to the ballot box? What other time in the history of the world have Christians been so able to “stand” up for life, but so unwilling to do so? Put feet to your prayers my brothers. We would not dream of simply going about our days if thousands of 1st graders were being executed in our streets, would we? Law or no law – there would be moral outrage.

As Christopher Ash aptly notes in his book, Marriage: Sex in the Service of God:

“The work of natural procreation and nurture is not evacuated of moral significance just because it is in itself insufficient to make a man or woman a child of God.”

Abortion is not divorced from the Gospel call. Besides the obvious fact that abortive mothers and clinic workers NEED the Gospel, and the burden that we are given as Christians to seek (not social justice, but) Kingdom justice (Zech. 7:9-10); abortion also gives us a shadow of the of the very need for the Cross. We, from the very moment of our sin-filled conception, were being pursued by the deathly wages of our sin. Spiritual death for all of us was imminent. But we were not left without hope. Christ, in bearing our punishment for our sin, reconciled us to God by his obedience and death on the Cross. But Christ did not accomplish this work from his dorm room in seminary. Nor did he say a prayer from his throne in Heaven. Christ entered the trenches. He confronted death with life – face to face.

It’s not a questions of where and how long, rather we should ask ourselves why it is so easy to forebear? Why are we not driven to our knees, and to the side walks of these clinics with tear drenched cheeks and burdened hearts that would be crushed by the sound of the innocent blood crying out from the very ground beneath our feet? Why have we allowed the Deceiver to inoculate us to the silent screams of the most defenseless of the human race? Why has the death of our children become unburdensome for us?

Oh, come quickly Lord Jesus. And may we be found faithful when you do.

‘BH

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Filed under Ethics, Kentucky, Lawn Gospel, Pro-Life, Quote, Religion, School, Scripture, Southern Baptist Convention, Theology