First let me congratulate you and your children on having the best that life can offer.
Secondly, let me remind you that I personally do not believe that abortion is appropriate. Like you, I grieve for all the children lost, all the potential that will never be realized, through such selfish acts.
However, my question is genuine, and the explanation for my question will reveal one reason why I became an atheist.
Not so many years ago in Chicago, a small boy was routinely brutalized by his mother's live-in boyfriend. That of itself is nothing new, but it was the magnitude of the suffering he endured that drove seasoned paramedics and street-hardened police officers to tears. For in addition to being beaten on a daily basis and deprived of food and water for long periods of time, the boyfriend wrapped rubberbands around the little boy's penis to prevent him from urinating, and then hung him upside-down in a closet. Police were finally called when the little boy died one night after hanging like this for hours.
It was the first time I recall ever wanting to kill someone...and being the devout Christian I was at the time I agonized not only over this little boy and the suffering he endured, but also over my desire to slowly and painfully extract the life from the adults who did these terrible things to him.
My question then becomes one of which might have been better for this boy: Death at the hands of the adults who were supposed to care for him, or death before he was even born? Either way, this boy would have died, and I saw no evidence of God or guardian angels at work in this child's life.
My question and the moral dilemma it raises for me are hardly callous. I cried for this child for months, and to this day feel the same rage I did when he died.
First, I'm sorry for going off on you. This subject is very close to my heart. And thank you for the congrats. Sanctity of Life week starts tomorrow and my wife, who volunteers at the local Crisis Pregnancy Center is representing both the CPC and giving our family testimony of how the boys came into our lives at our church tomorrow. Here's one great commercial everyone should see.
However, my question is genuine, and the explanation for my question will reveal one reason why I became an atheist.
Thank you for the explanation. That is truly a sad story.
As I see it, sin entered the world through one man, and not just death through that sin, but all kinds of evil, and that evil will continue to grow. But focusing on the evil is the opposite of that which we should be focusing. What about all the good in the world. God gets blamed for all the bad not doesn't get any credit for all the good.
While the death of that young boy is very tragic, that doesn't mean his example should be held up as justification for abortion or to state he would have been better off aborted. It doesn't seem fair for the boys life, but perhaps some good will come from the horrible way he died. Yes, I have a really good idea how that can come across.
You would probably not believe my life story and I'm certainly not going to share it here. But I too walked away from my faith in 1979. It would be the mother of all understatements to say that on April 3, 1991 God got my attention. Now I'm back for life. To quote Job, though he may kill me, yet I will trust in Him.
Was this little boy all there was? Or was he a spiritual being? Did he in fact survive death? You indicated you had been Christian. Was he a spiritual being before birth? You may want to have a look at Expecting Adam by Martha Beck.