By Marie Bowen, A Christian Manifesto.
Few things have wrenched my heart like the plight of the young women and girls abducted from their Nigerian school by Boko Haram and violently and repeatedly raped and impregnated by terrorists. I have not written about it because the horror these girls have experienced leaves me wordless, stunned, grieving. But, now many of those girls have returned, pregnant, and are once again facing victimization by those who would use them to further the cause of abortion rights.
Nigeria is one of the world’s countries where family and children are still treasured and pregnancy is a cause for joy. These abductions and rapes were clearly an act of war meant to strike at the heart of the people—their ethnicity, social structure with family at its heart, and to take their precious young women and ‘spoil’ them, break the hearts of their family and steal the treasure of their virginity from their future husbands.
Some would ‘offer’ abortion as a solution or remedy to the atrocity of repeated rapes that left these women devastated and pregnant. Yet, abortion is no solution or remedy. To offer abortion to girls raised in a country that values children as treasure is to steal the remnants of dignity and sense of self that is left to girls suffering emotional and psychological trauma and victimize them once again. To encourage them to abort the babies that God has created—for surely in the midst of horror it is only God who brings life—will not heal or restore. Out of a devastating experience God has given her a child—someone she can love. Abortion is no gift, but will further traumatize her, put her long term health at greater risk, and deny her the ability to love the child. The good that God in his love and grace has brought out of evil is replaced through the act by rejection and hatred. Abortion adds atrocity to atrocity by killing a tiny human being who is completely innocent. The final degradation of the woman will not be accomplished from without but from within as the loathing she feels for those who violated her is turned against herself for acting against her natural instinct to protect and nurture the life in her womb.
I am particularly disturbed by “Christian leaders”* who propose that the church should fund abortions for the victims of Boko Haram.