Well-read prolifers likely will recognize what I’m about to
share with you. I’ve seen this material in various forms in past years, but I
can’t remember where so I can’t give proper credit to any original source. My
good friend and colleague, Bob Platt, e-mailed the ideas to me some time ago
from
Here are four separate scenarios where a person with even a smidgeon of sympathy for abortion might think one was justified.
First, consider the case of the preacher and his wife who already have 14 kids. As you might expect, they are living in abject poverty. Now she’s pregnant again. Taking into account the burgeoning world population, and knowing that these parents can hardly feed the family they already have, would you recommend an abortion?
In the second case, the father fights perpetual allergies. The mother has T.B. One of their kids is blind, another is dead. One is deaf and the fourth shares mama’s tuberculosis. Should they abort child Number Five?
A white man raped a 13-year-old black girl in our third situation. Now she’s pregnant. If you were her parents, would you agree with friends and social workers who recommend an abortion?
The last case resembles far too many you know about. A teenage girl is pregnant but unmarried. The father of the baby is her fiancé, but he doesn’t think the baby is his. Should he insist on an abortion?
You’re probably ahead of me. Undoubtedly so, if you’ve seen this data before. But just in case you haven’t, let me go ahead and tell you what these four “reasonable” abortions would have accomplished.
In the first case, we would have killed John Wesley, one of the great evangelists of the 18th century.
In Case #2 we would have snuffed out Beethoven and silenced the symphonies he lived to write.
In the third vignette, the child produced by a mixed-race rape grew up to be Ethel Waters, the inimitable gospel singer. Anybody still want to abort her?
Finally, if we opted to abort the fourth baby, we would have ended the life of Jesus Christ.
In retrospect no abortion would seem reasonable to the person it was supposed to exterminate, would it? Even those who were not famous or talented like the examples above would tell you they’re glad to be alive.