tomorrow is orphan sunday

in honor of orphan sunday, i wanted to share a few thoughts about life. the word/concept of life gets thrown around a lot in our culture. mostly, people talk about being pro-life, which usually means they are against abortion. but i'm wondering if that definition is a bit narrow.

let me say first that i am totally and completely against abortion. i have grace for those who have had an abortion and for those considering it. i realize that it's probably very frustrating to have a bunch of people who have never experienced the terrifying situation of an unplanned pregnancy tell you that you're only option is to deliver your baby. but, in the end, i do not think abortion is the answer to anything. i think it is the taking of an innocent life, the cause of great emotional pain and regret for the mother, and our society's way of allowing people to not take responsibility for their own actions (obviously a woman who becomes pregnant from rape or incest does NOT bear responsibility for an unplanned pregnancy). all things considered, abortion is a great moral evil. but it is not the only life issue.

in the last election, i voted democrat. i'm not ashamed to admit that, though i'm sure some of you are gasping for air right about now. people asked me, "but don't you care about abortion?" and i told them i surely did but that it wasn't the only life issue that concerned me. in my opinion, abortions are always going to happen in this country whether they are government sanctioned or not. doesn't anyone remember all the stories involving coat hangers from the 1960s? perhaps we would see a decrease in abortions if they were not government sanctioned, but abortion is not going away. it is a sad and terrible reality. the reason i voted democrat and saw it as my own "vote for life" was because i thought democrats had at least a better plan for caring for the poor. for me, that's a life issue. not many people i know would agree that a child living on the streets without food or warm clothes because his parents can't make ends meet has much of a life. yes, he might have a beating heart and air in his lungs, but he does not have life. and i know a lot of people disagree with the government having so much control over welfare programs and taxpayer money, etc ...but i've always wondered why so many christians are willing to support the government's pro-life actions in the area of abortion (if the government were to ever outlaw abortion) but so reticent to support the government's pro-life actions in the area of caring for the poor.

if all that's too political for you, i want to bring this back to adoption and orphan sunday. there are currently half a million children living in foster care in this country. there are also many, many women who are probably considering abortion RIGHT NOW. i hear many christians say that a woman considering abortion should give up her baby for adoption. but doesn't that assume that there are families willing and ready to adopt? sure, there are many families who have adopted domestically. i know some of them. but if there are still half a million children in foster care and many more children still in their mother's wombs who will be given up when they are born, where are all those people who said the answer to abortion is adoption? we cannot tell women that they should not abort their babies if we are not willing to step up and take responsibility for the care of those children. living in foster care without a forever family is not a life for a child.

i want to say that this is all challenging to me as jamie and i continue to consider what our family will look like in the future. we felt called to africa for this first adoption, and we have a lot of reasons why international adoption was right for us. in my opinion, bringing any orphan into a forever family is a victory. but i know that i'm one of those people. i say the answer to abortion is adoption. i say that life is about more than just if your heart is beating. but i've hardly considered adopting a child from foster care. and so i hope you all will consider along with me what it'd be like if every christian who was against abortion prayerfully considered adopting domestically, or at least considered fostering a child. what a victory that would be for the cause of LIFE.

*this post isn't meant to pit domestic and international adoption against each other. in general, i believe that if you are pro-life, you must be pro-adoption/pro-orphan care. and i also believe that we must have a more broad definition of life. but i focused on domestic adoption in this post because being pro-life is such a part of christian culture in america, and i think we don't consider what being pro-life means as it relates to abortion in america and children in foster care, though you can obviously take what i have said here and apply to international adoption also.