Choose Life

This past week has been a history maker for our country in terms of legislation that both supports and rejects the life of the unborn. Laws that I never believed would pass have been accepted and even celebrated. As if it is some great triumph to deem a life underserving to live.

The news and social media have been flooded with words designed to make both sides feel more comfortable. Words like fetus and viable that seek to turn the right to live into something that must be earned or deserved. Words like unplanned and unwanted that refuse to recognize the gift that a child is. Words like choice, women’s rights, and feminism. All designed to tell us we must stand for one or the other – women or babies. All designed to put us at odds with the very ones we were designed to protect.

And all week the words have flooded my mind,

“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19, ESV).

And while I realize that God was speaking to the Israelites, I believe that we as a nation have the same decision set before us – life and death.

Because despite the rhetoric we are told and the words we are fed, this is what it boils down to – life and death.

You see, I could go through a million scenarios in which a mother’s life and needs would not justify the murder of a five year old child. I could print off pictures of what a beautiful baby looks like in the womb. I could tell you when it’s tiny heart starts to beat and when it’s little fingers start to form. I could show you how modern medicine often allows premature babies to grow into beautiful children. I could tell you that deformities and handicaps do not negate a right to live.

But the truth is, there is a choice before each one of us. A choice of life and death – a choice that will determine quite literally whether our children survive. And we must choose life.

We must choose life for the millions of voices that were never heard, the little feet that never ran, and the eyes that never saw their mother’s face. It does not make me misogynistic and it does not negate a woman’s power. Women in today’s world have been taught that in order to be equal with men we must step on the one’s beneath us and that we must choose death in order to get what we want.

And so over and over again, woman after woman chooses death because they have been fed the lies that this is the only way. That a woman’s rights demands that the baby inside of her not have any. But stepping on someone who is weaker than you does not make you stronger. Because when we choose death, we start a tsunami that ripples and reverberates, crashes and destroys more than we could ever imagine. Death is greedy. It does not stop with one life but it reaches and reaches. It steals futures and hopes. It sneaks into homes and hearts and it will not stop.

Because the only way to defeat death is to choose life.

It is not always easy. It is not always fair. There are moments when babies are not chosen, when women do not ask for the responsibility but are forced by evil men. There are moments when it is scary to put the needs of a baby before your own. There are sacrifices to be made when an unexpected child interrupts your plans. But we must choose life.

Because life does what death cannot – it gives us a future. Death steals, but life gives. It gives opportunity. It gives joy. It gives hope and love. And yes, it gives the chance for hurt, pain, and difficulty. But there is more than pain to life – there is good also.

So, choose life. And let it create a rippling effect around you. Because just as one choice of death starts a tsunami, so does life. So let the tsunami of life touch those around. Let it bring love to the child who is unwanted. Let it bring friendship to the person who sets alone and forgotten. Let it bring hope to the young mother struggling by her self. Let it bring flowers to the widow and homes to the orphans. Let us choose life and watch it change everything around us.