Modern technology can create complexity for parents. If you know that a child will have severe disabilities, what’s the right thing to do? If you know they’ll likely create lifelong hardships for themselves and their parents, is abortion okay to consider?
These are very difficult situations. These days, we can look at unborn life. We know so much more about children in the womb than we used to. You can do genetic tests on your children and learn all sorts of things that weren’t possible to know in the past.
So is it right, when a child faces disabilities or certain dangerous conditions, to say, “Well, my child is going to be severely handicapped, so I need to end his or her life?”
No, I don’t think that’s the right thing to do.
When we think about the lives of the vulnerable, the lives of those who are sick or incapacitated, we need to recognize that all human life is a gift from God. Every person is a gift we should cherish. Life should be cultivated and cared for and nourished. But we see in our culture today a minimizing of life. For the sake of our own convenience, we often see children who we know will have disabilities as expendable.
God’s word shows us that life should be cherished, cultivated, and cared for. We lament and mourn the difficulty and complexity of these situations. It’s not always as simple as we sometimes make it sound. These can heartbreaking challenges. They’re complex issues at play here, but there’s also right and wrong. Life should be cherished and protected.
But for those facing these situations, or those grieving a past abortion, there is grace and mercy, forgiveness and healing, in Christ. Just come before the Lord. Each of us is desperately in need of his grace. And the hope that we have is that no matter how we’ve sinned, Christ’s blood can cleanse us from our sins. He removes all of our stains: “as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us” (Ps. 103:12).
So we should cherish life. But there’s healing and hope for all of us. There’s forgiveness in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we cling to that.
This article is part of our Frequently Asked Questions series. Listen to Pastor Adriel answer this question on Core Radio here.
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