Condemnation is no way to win converts to pro-life position (or any other)

(iStock image by rudall 30)

“But what if you got a girl pregnant?” she volleyed. “How are you gonna raise a baby? I bet you'd drive her to the abortion clinic yourself. I bet you wouldn’t find anything wrong with it then.”

Every eye in my high school English class then shifted from the pretty, popular girl on the opposite side of the room to me. How would I answer that?

“Maybe that is what I’d want, but we’re not talking about what I want,” I snapped back immediately. “We’re talking about what’s right and wrong,” Time to play my trump card. “By the way, I was adopted. My biological mother was a teenager. Thank God I was conceived before abortion was legal or I probably would have been ground up, tossed in a plastic bucket and thrown out with the afternoon garbage,” I snorted. Now for the coup de grâce: “So, no, I don’t think it’s right to kill babies just so you can walk around with a mattress strapped to your back.”

At that, every brow raised, every mouth puckered in rounded surprise and every eye shifted from me to the floor. Mrs. Simpson and I were the only ones still looking at the pretty, popular girl on the opposite side of the room. She scowled back at me, face encrimsoned, teeth gritted, forehead furrowed.

But the pretty, popular girl had no reply.

When the bell rang, a few classmates were still snickering. One of my buddies slapped me on the back and broke out in full laughter. “Damn, you shut her the hell up!” I probably giggled back in reply and congratulated myself for my victory.

My pyrrhic victory.

My pyrrhic, un-Christ-like victory.

The recollection brings no sense of triumph. Only shame.

Yes, for a moment there, I was rolling pretty well with my retort. I believe now, as then, that personal preferences and convenience are not the proper determinants of right and wrong. And as an adoptee, I have thought deeply about how crisis pregnancies play out, because this was no mere academic exercise for my biological mother, Lynette. Her decisions affected me and her in the most emphatic ways imaginable.

But, oh, that last sentence.

I just had to stick the knife in and twist. It was not enough to rest on my argument. I had to go for the insult, too.

And here’s the thing. That pretty, popular girl on the opposite side of the room? I had known her since elementary school. I liked her. We were friends. Yet, in so many words, I called her a whore — in front of a room full of our peers, no less.

Why would I do such a cruel thing?

I suspect part of my motivation was simply to make myself feel superior. She came from more money than I did, and when we entered high school, she started dating guys two or three years older. If I’m honest, I wanted to put her in her place more than I wanted to change her mind about abortion.

Whatever the case, I have no doubt I fell short of the latter objective. Public shaming is far more likely to breed resentment than reconsideration of one’s position on a serious issue.

What’s more, I suspect my classmates were more entertained by the spectacle than convinced by my argument. Take that guy who slapped me on the back as we left the classroom — I heard a few years later that he hooked up with a girl in college, got her pregnant and convinced her to have an abortion. He was a friend, too. Still is.

I thought a lot about my youthful savagery before launching this site and shifting its focus from my adoption-reunion story to my pro-life convictions. Long ago, I stopped talking publicly about those convictions — and most others with a political bent. There were several reasons for this, not the least of which was my occupation as a journalist. I took my role as neutral arbiter seriously. (It’s a quaint notion these days, I know.)

But that was not the only reason.

I haven’t been a journalist in eight years, and although I moved to an occupation that also requires prudence and neutrality, my reticence has less to do with my job than my reflexive lunges for the jugular. I was not sure I could restrain myself, and that’s not good. Insults might bemuse a classroom full of teenagers, but in the adult world, they do not win friends. More to the point, they do not influence people.

So why am I suddenly comfortable talking about this?

Frankly, I’m not. For starters, I know I’m in the minority. The number of unambiguously pro-life Americans has shrunk considerably since my English-class jousting in the mid-1980s. Not only are most folks firmly in the pro-choice camp, conventional wisdom is that our nation is more divided and our discourse more shrill than ever before. I do not expect voicing a minority view in such an environment to be particularly pleasant.

Second, I suspect several people I respect, like and love will take offense, and not merely on philosophical grounds. Recent estimates by the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute indicate nearly one in four women of reproductive age will have an abortion by age 45. That almost certainly means a substantial number of my friends, former classmates, co-workers — and yes, even family members — have or will have an abortion to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

I don’t despise any of these people, any more than I despised that pretty, popular girl in my English class.

Fortunately, I can now pray to Christ to help regulate my tongue and to comfort those who have experienced a crisis pregnancy … or perhaps even ended one.

My interest is no longer in massaging my ego, winning a debate or amusing people who ostensibly agree with me. And strange as it might sound, my aim is not even exclusively about saving the unborn, as important as that is. You see, it is not just babies’ lives at stake; the souls of their mothers and fathers are in peril, as well. Bringing them to Christ is as important as bringing the unborn into the world.

The New Testament hints at this at several junctures, including the passage in the Gospel of John in which Jesus encounters a group of rock-toting scribes and Pharisees who have converged upon an adulterous woman. The throng seeks to stone the woman to death for her transgression. They also seek to trick Jesus by asking Him if they should proceed or stop. It seems whatever He answers, He will be at odds with either Mosaic or Roman law.

Instead, Jesus gives a deft and oft-quoted reply, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” (John 8:7, KJV.)

As the crowd drops its rocks and disperses, Jesus asks the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t any of them condemn you?”

“No, Lord,” she answers.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus says.

Today, it is fashionable to stop the retelling there and omit the rest of Christ’s reply in John 8:11. Some would have you believe Jesus’s message to the adultress was, “You just go do you, girl.”

But this is how he actually concluded: “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

He called her to righteousness, but He did so mercifully and lovingly. We must do the same, keeping our own sinful natures in mind. Yes, we should proclaim truths boldly, but we should also remember our role in His scheme is to assist humbly, not to condemn in false piety.

In a society in which a quarter of all women can be expected to abort at least one child, there are plenty of people who need such grace. Indeed, we are at a crisis point. By conservative estimates, abortion has killed 63 million unborn in this country since the Roe decision in 1973, and after nearly two decades of declines, abortions are ticking up again.

For all the caterwauling about the Dobbs decision that overturned the supposed constitutional principles espoused in Roe, the Supreme Court did not make abortion illegal. As such, children’s lives remain in the balance. So do the souls of their mothers.

And their fathers. Do not forget the men. One of the outrages of the biblical account of the adulterous woman is that the man who committed the same sin was not within a stone’s throw of the mob.

I do not expect this project to change every mind I encounter, or even most. In fact, by invoking Christ from time to time, I suspect I might push some in the opposite direction.

But if my thoughts and my story can make one mother think twice before obliterating her child and imperiling her own soul, if just one guy is convinced to support his partner and his baby, if one couple seeks help at a church or pregnancy resource center, if one person turns toward Christ … well … all glory to Him. This is about His will; it is no longer about mine.

And if you ever see me with a rock in my hand or hear a withering insult on my lips, call me out. I do not expect we will agree on all points — and perhaps we will agree on nothing — but we can hold each other to a high standard of compassion and civility.

And that standard is not just for thee; it is for me, too.

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