Me Matters Are Fueling the Abortion Fire

zombomeme14112016151535Me matters are fueling the abortion fire and it doesn’t look like that fire is going out any time soon.

It seems that we live in a society where increasingly there is a prevailing belief that what matters most is “ME”.

“Having a baby would ruin life for me.  If I speak out against abortion [they] would hate me.  Abortion would end if more church pastors would listen to me.”

Let’s deal with these thoughts one-by-one.

Me One: The fear of a ruined life.  I’ve been there…done that…and what I’ve learned is this.  I think Michel De Montaigne was correct in saying “My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.”

According to an article produced by The Huffington Post, it turns out that “85 percent of what subjects worried about never happened, and with the 15 percent that did happen, 79 percent of subjects discovered either they could handle the difficulty better than expected, or the difficulty taught them a lesson worth learning.  This means that 97 percent of what you worry over is not much more than a fearful mind punishing you with exaggerations and misconceptions.”

It just seemed to me that the biggest fear about choosing life and an unplanned pregnancy is how that pregnancy will affect “me”.  It’ll take away the things that I want.  It’ll cause me to go down a path that I won’t like.

These are the same kinds of fears that fuel racism, police brutality, and attacks on the gay community.

People are afraid of the unknown and unfortunately, our first response to fear is often a violent one.  If someone does something to me that I don’t like I am going to respond with violence whenever possible.  Abortion is violence of the worst order.  I think we want to become better people than that.  Don’t you agree?

I had overwhelming fear in 1993 when I chose abortion and the MAIN concern of mine was “me”.  After 21 years of marriage and raising five children, I’m left with this.  It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be, my life WASN’T ruined, and if I had the chance to go back to 1993, I would choose life–and Sean MacArthur Flowers would likely be alive today.

Me Two: The Fear of Others.  There are many people who claim to be pro-choice and seem to be standing in the middle. They wouldn’t choose abortion themselves but yet they feel like they would never try to take away the right of another woman to do so.  I’ve had many conversations with people around this subject and the bottom line all too often came down to this.

Most people aren’t willing to take a stance that would make them unpopular with their crowd.

Too many people would rather turn a blind eye to the killing of unborn children, and keep their friends neighbors and coworkers–rather than be outspoken about abortion and face the opposition and possible hatred that comes along with it.

We can go back so many years to where people who saw the atrocities that occurred during slavery in America, and who turned a blind eye and chose to do nothing to stop it.

Why?  Because they were afraid of how getting involved would affect them. If I can be specific without offending you too greatly, I will say this.  I wonder how many times the wife of the slave owner has seen the atrocities done by her husband, but simply refused to get involved.

It really comes down to our refusal to take a stand for something that might cause us to lose everything.  Me matters.

Me Three: Church Hurt.  I’ve sat in front of too many pastors who have said to me, and I quote, “abortion is a white Republican issue.”  Why do they believe that?  Church hurt.  It’s possible that there’s so much broken trust between the church and the community surrounding this very issue because some people who call themselves pro-lifers are not much different in their attitude then those who are pro-abortion.  Here’s what I mean.

They are so blinded by their thoughts and opinions concerning their issues that they don’t even listen to people who have an opposing view or concern.

Too many times pro-lifers and conservatives are seen, especially by the black community, as those who care about life in the womb but they don’t have a sympathetic heart toward the poor.  I’ve had many conversations with pastors who say that the abortion issue is something that they won’t talk about simply because they don’t trust the way the white community handles it.  Many times the white Community is perceived as those who care about life in the womb but they have a condescending attitude towards the poor.

In a recent article, Musa Al-Gharbi said this:  “Black people, perhaps more than others, have a healthy distrust of the Man: slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, the current disparities in the criminal justice system and other aspects of institutionalized racism have been sponsored and enforced by the government—at the federal, state and local levels, by Republicans and Democrats, across the nation and throughout its history.

As a result of this experience, many black Americans chafe at paternalistic, top-down policies—to include bureaucratic solutions to problems like crime and poverty—instead preferring approaches that empower individuals and communities to address endemic challenges. Thus Republicans would seem to be a natural ally, but they have often been among the staunchest advocates for micromanaging the poor.”

I agree with many of these thoughts and concerns.  Are you at least willing to listen to and consider some of them?

It’s amazing how you can be making a good effort to push back against something that you believe is evil, and then your “movement” can become a vehicle being used to push your own agenda for your own selfish means.

Me matters.

Opposing abortion is a good thing, but to alienate and persecute the church because pastors aren’t doing what you think they should do could bring the effectiveness of your cause into question, in my opinion.  Many realize that abortion is a symptom that is connected to other real problems, including poverty.

A local pastor recently had this to say to me.  “Many elite whites see welfare recipients as takers, rather than those who are being oppressed by a long-standing system.  That system remains because the current society is not willing to even recognize that system–let alone do the things needed to dismantle that system which is still oppressing them to this day.

That’s what they believe.  Can you hear the broken trust?  If you are not willing to hear or to sympathize with what they believe then you really don’t want to have a conversation with them at all, in my opinion.

If the love of money is the root of all evil, then selfishness is the soil in which that root grows.

My issue. My perspective. My agenda.

Me matters.

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