The bumper sticker

Halfway home from church today, I noticed the car in front of me had a few bumper stickers on it. There was a small sticker that had an immeasurable impact. It had the image of a baby's profile, and it said something like "Abortion stops my heart from beating."

I saw the image, read those words, and it triggered something in me.  The blood drained from my face. I went into a kind of cold shock.  I was fighting back tears the rest of the way home. I bit my lip so hard (so that the kids wouldn't hear me crying or ask any questions; I couldn't have handled that) that I tasted blood.

You've probably seen a similar sticker on someone's vehicle, and you're probably wondering: Why did a seemingly common bumper sticker affect me in this way? Because it was personal. A little more than two years ago, someone close to me made the choice to abort a baby. It was a selfish choice, but a costly one, and one that was made of her own free will. She didn't share this with me until almost a year later. I suspect that she was sad and ashamed, but she never expressed that to me. She acted as if pregnancy was a huge, life-changing inconvenience (I agree, it can be). She told me she felt that it was her only option.

The truth is, abortion is never the only option. That baby could have been adopted. He or she would have lived and thrived if given the chance at life. If I had known the circumstances, I would have lovingly and gladly taken the baby and raised it as my own (would have been a few months older than Noah.) But prenatal children are not able to make choices for themselves. They are at the mercy of God and their parent(s). They can feel, they can see and hear, touch, taste, and smell, but they cannot chose to be carried to term. They can't object when someone chooses to abruptly end their own life.

It makes me so very sad, that there are so many babies who are unable to take their first breath, because someone made the choice to end their life prematurely.