Young People Protest Abortion

We are warned to be aware of false teachers, which is exactly what Mr. Veazey is. Abortion certainly goes directly against what God's word teaches. Sadly, however, too many young people are being deceived into thinking that aborting a pregenancy is the best way to handle a problem, that never should have been made in the first place, but in the end they find out that it causes much more pain and ultimately more trouble.
Our nation went to war with Al-Queda (and rightly so...), because they killed thousands of our citizens, however worse than that each day an even larger number of Americans are being murdered through a terrible execution called abortion. But, what can you expect to happen when a nation tries to remove God from all aspects of its culture?

 

I wonder if youth ever talk about abortion amongst themselves. After all, they have to live with the reality, too... has anyone ever known another person who has struggled with this issue?

I had a friend who had two abortions before she got married. It wasn't convenient to have the children yet, she wanted to marry her boyfriend FIRST. She never really said anything about feeling guilty. Her two children have two siblings they'll never meet. By the way, she told me this after she got married.

But what about really young girls who find themselves single and in trouble? Some think they have to choose between their parents and the baby. How can parents help?

Men like Veazey get a following because so many people want an easy "out", guilt-free.

 

Margie, I would say that in too many situations, the girl DOES have to choose between baby and parents.

I'll cut-n-paste what I posted in another thread:

Too many times, people concern themselves with condemning for unmarried sex rather than praising girls who have decided to keep their babies. Dealing with unmarried sex issues with a pregnant girl is a little too late, IMO.

A difficult issue is how to support unwed mothers in their struggles without endorsing the behavior that got them in those situations in the first place.

Blessings,
James

 

Agreed. I also remember my home church talking about sex and sexual issues with us when we were well into high school. A little late for most of us. But, then I'm a proponent of talking to any and all age kids about sex and sexuality, age appropriately, of course, but I don't think it should wait until puberty (or later).

When in high school, I knew a few girls who had abortions without their parents' knowledge, and one of them told me that if she told her parents she was pregnant, they'd make her get an abortion anyway (which is what she wanted), plus punish her severely for having had sex. So, she figured, why go through the punishment, since she was planning on an abortion anyway? It made me wonder how many parents would think along the lines her parents did.

Some of the girls I knew didn't know what their parents would say in regards to the pregnancy, but they knew they'd be punished for the sex, so they kept it to themselves and went ahead with the abortions they'd planned.

We did have one girl in my high school with a child. She was 16 and a freshman, because she'd taken time off to have her son. He was about 18 months old when I met her. My parents didn't want me to have much to do with her, because she was "trashy to have had a baby at 14." Mm-hmm. If they knew what I knew about some of my friends (that my parents approved of), or even about myself, no one would have been acceptable.

It's just always interesting to me that we, as a society, and even in the churches I grew up in, were accepting of people hiding their sins (sometimes even with more sin) than wearing them openly. This girl I knew in school with the child, she got a lot of flak from her parents and her church, and certainly from people at school, but she held her head high and refused to hide. I can't say that that's bad. But who wants to be a Hester Prynne, right?

I don't think it should be hard to encourage and support a pregnant girl without condoning the sin that got her there. I see it as a "okay, this has happened, and it was wrong, but let's figure out what to do now?" When you're dealing in real situations and not hypotheticals, it's really not prudent to dance around the issue. Teenagers aren't stupid - and it hasn't been that long since I've been one - and should be able to understand that supporting their pregnancy is not condoning sex. Some may need to have that spelled out, but it's certainly within most teens' comprehension.

Most of the women I knew in college who'd had abortions had no remorse. I'm really racking my brain for someone who did feel remorse or guilt, and I can't come up with anyone. For most, it wasn't an issue of choosing parents v. a baby - it was about not wanting a child and having had a contraceptive slip up.

I think you're right, Iakobos, that the "damned if you do" syndrome is heavy in churches (based on my experiences, anyway). We need to be able to get past the issue of sexual sin and deal with the care of the girl. I know that, for some, it can be a real temptation to harp on the sexual sin part, particular when the evidence of it is staring them in the face, and I've heard plenty of "well, if you hadn't had sex, you wouldn't be in this mess, now would you" type talk. Ugh. Yeh, that's what a pregnant, scared, shunned teenager needs to hear.

 

Amen and a thousand times Amen!

But unfortunately, lot of modern religiosity that passes for Christianity is focused on “morality” as the highest aim of the Christian life instead of love, service, compassion and redemption. This false idol of “morality” causes people to hide sin instead of deal with it redemptively and enforces false notions of “separation” from sin and “sinners” - as if the problem is some sort of outside issue that “infects” Christians. (One of the problems the youth minister in my church is facing is that he can be effective drawing unchurched teens to the youth group and presenting them with the gospel, but too many parents of existing youth don’t want their children associated with the “bad kids” and therefore make unchurched kids feel very unwelcome. Instead they want our church to go after and ‘steal’ the “Christian” kids from other churches in order to grow the congregation. Of course this problem is not just with our churches youth program, but it is epidemic among entire churches throughout Baptist life. It is the antithesis of Jesus’ call to reach the lost and hurting.)

Yep. Kids are often sharper than adults in this area. They are sharp enough to see hypocrisy clearly and don’t have years of rationalization built up to blind themselves to the obvious.

Amen! Preach it sister!

If we are truly pro-life, we will act in ways that encourages the preservation of life. (I know that’s basic, but a surprising number of people claim to be pro-life, but all they are talking about it overturning Roe v. Wade, not doing anything constructive and inconvenient to actually make a difference and save and preserve life.)