
Can A Moral Person Support Abortion?
In all the world, I loathe precious few things more than political discussions. Politics has a way of forcing us to pick a side, and in doing so, to blend ourselves so completely with the crowd that every nuance of our positions and our rationale for holding them are lost. Members of each side shout at those of the other, not really having any precise sense of what their opponents believe or why and often being uncertain even of their own allies’ convictions. Politics tends to obscure individuality, inducing us to measure and manage people by the shifting bounds of meaningless human categories, easily manipulated by the clever rhetorician for his own selfish ends. And when a man begins to locate his identity in these tentative categories, he will surely conform himself to the moods and wanderings of his compatriots, making him virtually impregnable as an individual to any competing ideology.
So then, if I have such a distaste for politics, why raise the politically charged issue of abortion? I do so for a few reasons. First, any political issue of real import must be a personal, moral issue long before politics can claim it and employ it to divide us. It is in this sense that I would like us to consider it, not as men who must either stand here or there and nowhere else, but as men whose consciences are scattered all about the terrain of this spiritually ruined world, men who came to their present stance through their own unique experience and whom God will judge by that very measure. Second, the practice of abortion in our modern day is one of the most pronounced reminders that we have of just how primitive and selfish our society still is. If abortion is what I and like-minded people believe it to be, then I believe that it qualifies as the greatest evil of our day—perhaps even in all of history, save the crucifixion of Christ. Surely this makes it worthy of regular deliberation, especially for those advocating for it. Third, the implications of abortion go well beyond the individual lives lost to and affected by this practice. To embrace abortion is to embrace a philosophy of humanity that affects how we approach virtually every other issue under the sun, and I would like to touch on this philosophy as we move forward.
Before venturing into the subject itself, I should first define what I mean by “support” of abortion. Clearly those who actively advocate or celebrate this practice as a pillar of women’s rights qualify as supporters and would eagerly announce themselves as such. But what of women who say that they would never personally seek an abortion but nonetheless support a woman’s right to choose? And what of men, who cheer on women from afar? In either case, I would suggest that we are morally implicated in every act of which we approve, whether we do so aloud or in silence and regardless of whether the act comes to fruition or not. For example, if I lend support to a thief’s plans to rob a bank, then in my heart I have embraced the ill intent inherent to those plans, regardless of whether or not he follows through with them. Even if I only quietly agree with him from a distance, I am no less guilty of approving the act, though perhaps somewhat better off for not having encouraged him in it. In the same way, those who support “a woman’s right to choose” are morally implicated in the act of which they have approved, regardless of whether any particular woman follows through with an abortion as a result of their reassurances or how vocal they have been in offering them.
Also, as we tenuously wade into the murky, emotionally-charged depths surrounding this subject, I cannot overemphasize the importance of our being honest and introspective regarding the intent of our hearts as we explore it, understanding that we have but one eternal judge with the authority to condemn us. God is far more concerned with who we actually are, as revealed by our motives, than with how we portray ourselves to others or even to ourselves, and it is upon this reality that I would like us all to fix our minds in preparation for what follows.
To begin with, I would like us to consider several theoretical scenarios that I believe will help to shed light upon the question at hand. These illustrations may seem unrelated at first, but they are not, so I pray your patience as we wade through them.
Let us begin by supposing that I have been forcefully detained in a small, windowless room and chained by the ankle to a nearby table, which is in turn bolted to the floor. On the table lies a small handgun and an open briefcase filled to the brim with hundred dollar bills. Before me, strapped firmly to a pole and completely immobilized, stands a respectable looking yet deeply distraught man. Then a voice comes over the intercom, informing me that I have a choice to make. I may use the gun to kill the man and exit with the money, or I may leave and forfeit it. What would a moral person do under such conditions?
I do not think that a single person would suggest that a virtuous individual would kill the man and take the money. Some would no doubt indicate a willingness to commit murder for such an attractive pile of paper, but I suspect that they would rationalize the act as a matter of personal necessity or in terms of some future good that they envision as a result of receiving the money or as justified based upon their dislike of the victim. Of those up to the task, none would be so blind as to think the act in itself to be good, but would instead count it a worthwhile evil for the good that might come of it. If even the most morally confused of us know not to call such a thing good, I think that we can all agree that such an act would not be that of a moral person.
But let us say that our would-be victim has been drugged and in his present state of unconsciousness is oblivious to the threat that I pose to his life. Or let us go a step further and suppose that he is in a coma from which he seems unlikely to recover. Would his unconscious state somehow make taking his life more moral? Of course not. The morality of my act is not a matter of another’s awareness of what I do, but of my own intent. In either case, should I choose to shoot him, I would be doing so for the love of money.
But what if the voice on the intercom informs me that the man is brain dead or that he has some terminal disease, which will surely kill him in the very near future. First of all, upon my hearing this news, I would need to consider whether or not this voice was trustworthy, and given that the speaker clearly has something to gain by offering me such an incredible sum to pull the trigger, I would have to be terribly foolish to believe his claims. Assuming though that he was telling the truth, still nothing has changed. In all cases, regardless of the man’s state of mind or physical health, were I to pull the trigger, I would be taking a life for monetary reward, and such is not the act of a moral person. Some may argue that a brain dead man no longer constitutes a living person, but on what authority can they claim such a thing? And how many, having received this prognosis, have since recovered to full health? Still others may argue that a life near to its end is not worth sustaining, but are not all of our lives near to their end in the span of eternity and thus equally worthless by such reasoning? Whatever the case, if I accept that I must take a life to claim my reward, then the condition of the life that I take is irrelevant to the morality of the act.
Let us then add an element of uncertainty to the equation. Suppose, rather than having a bound man directly before me, I instead see only a heavy, floor-to-ceiling curtain. I have no idea and no way of discovering what is behind the curtain and am given no outside assurances one way or the other, but the voice on the intercom insists that if I fire a single shot through the curtain, then I may claim my reward. Would a moral person fire the shot?
Were I around the age of two or three and not yet familiar with the destructive potential of guns, perhaps I could in good conscience take the shot. But even someone at the ripe old age of five or six has begun to understand what harm a gun can do and would have at least some faint notion that by firing the gun, he might actually kill someone. If a young child is capable of making these connections, then I, as a mature adult, should be expected to make them almost instantly. I know very well that by firing the gun I may be ending a life. Having this awareness, how can I fire it without having the same willingness to murder a man for money as in the very first scenario? I cannot. If I fire that shot, whether the man at whom I’m firing stands immediately before me or is only a phantom possibility waiting to reveal itself, then I prove myself a murderer at heart. The outward circumstance of these two scenarios may be different, but the inward reality is precisely the same.
Suppose we further embellish this last scenario with a mortal threat to my own life. Suppose that my life depends on taking the shot. If I fire the bullet, the voice on the intercom assures me that I will be allowed to leave, paid in full. But should I refuse, I will be exterminated. By firing the gun, I know that I may be ending another person’s life, but by failing to fire it, I will most certainly lose my own. Is this theoretical person’s life worth more than my own? Would a moral person fire the gun?
Allow me to first center us on the second to last question, as its answer says a great deal more about what we think of the value of our own lives than the lives of others. First of all, there are no “theoretical people.” The question here is whether I am willing to kill an actual person to spare my life. Whether an actual person waits behind the curtain is irrelevant to the reality of my heart’s intent. Second, if I judge my own life worth more than another’s, then I am forging the path for others to weigh mine in like manner, and who knows when I will find myself “behind the curtain” in one way or another or when someone else will be called upon to pull the trigger? Third, if I conclude that the life of the potential person behind the curtain is worth less than my own merely for being unseen or unknown or unproven, then how can I be sure that I have adequately proven my own worth to others or that I am sufficiently present to them to warrant the dignity that they ascribe to themselves? Fourth, if my worth is, in fact, a measure of perception and circumstance, on what basis are we to condemn the man who, for whatever reason, finds my existence inconvenient to the realization of his own full potential? By such a philosophy, one might even argue that he would be wrong to let me live, should my utility to him one day become exhausted. And last, if worth is in the eye of the beholder, then it is not the person beheld. Thus all men in the impersonal eyes of a sightless universe are equally worthless and are neither right nor wrong to dispatch one another at the slightest whim.
Ironically, the only way to preserve the value of my own life is to admit to the value of the life that I have neither seen nor known but that may yet be, for in one regard or another, I was, am, or will one day be the very life that I might think to extinguish. But if I esteem the life behind the curtain with the same dignity and worth as my own, on what basis would I pull the trigger? My life is worth no less or more than the one that I would end by doing so and is no less or more worth preserving. Thus, if I do choose to pull the trigger, I will not be doing so on the basis of some objective, justifiable measure, but simply out of preference for my own selfish gain of a few more moments of existence, bought with the blood of my fellow man.
And this brings me to the second question. Would a moral person pull the trigger? Knowing that I have no objective reason for claiming the act a positive good, perhaps I might try to justify it by appealing to the great good that might come of my own survival, particularly with the riches promised me upon its completion. But how do I know that I will do such good? And even if I do live a relatively good life, how do I know that the goodness achieved by the life that I take would not have been far more? Perhaps I am killing the man who would cure cancer or end world hunger or unify the nations or realize interstellar travel. I cannot justify such an act on the basis of some imagined, future good that my continued existence may bring. It may be difficult to acknowledge it, but the world may well be far better off if my life were to end sooner rather than later. That being so, all that is left for us to consider in this instance is the nature of the act itself, measured by the intent of my heart, and this has remained unchanged from the very first scenario. If I pull the trigger, then I prove myself willing to take the life of another for personal gain, whether in the form of money or moments, and this is not the act of a moral man.
So, what does all of this have to do with abortion? I suspect that most have probably already made the connections that I intended, but to be certain that we are on the same page, allow me to elaborate. In these illustrations, I represent the flustered mother, now faced with what may be a life and death decision. The man behind the curtain represents the newly conceived infant, and the chain around my ankle the mother’s inability to pull back the curtain to know with certainty the consequences of her actions. The briefcase represents the riches and ease of living that the world promises her, should she choose to abort her child, and the detaining room her inability to walk away from the situation without making an intentional choice. And finally, the voice on the intercom represents all the voices of the world, whispering into her ear, enticing her with uncertain wealth to put her hope in an unpromised future instead of considering the kind of person that choosing to abort her child will make of her in the moment.
Given these ties to the real world, let us briefly consider each of these scenarios in turn.
In the first scenario, we have a woman who understands that her child is a living human being and knows that any comforts that aborting her child may afford her must come at the expense of someone else’s life. For a woman of such convictions, to abort her child would be no different from any common murderer who justifies snuffing out another’s life for personal gain, for, regardless of the legality of her choice, in her heart she has consented to murder. And this is so, regardless of whether the child is asleep, aware, able to feel pain, or somehow disabled. Even if the authorities assure her that her child will die on his own from physical defect or disease in the very near future, his is no less a life than her own and no less dignified. As long as she can see her child for what he is—a human life—then her choice to abort him directly implicates her in his demise.
But what happens when we add the curtain? The curtain here represents uncertainty. We are now dealing with a woman who is genuinely unsure of what she ought to believe about what she carries inside her. For her entire life, she has been told that, up to some indeterminate point, it is only a lump of flesh and that removing it is not unlike clipping her nails or having her wisdom teeth removed. She has no idea when this developing mass becomes something more than an appendage of her own body, but she does know that she is not ready to be a mother and fears the financial ruin and loss of opportunity to which bringing a child into the world may lead. To say that such a woman, in aborting her child, must immediately be charged with murder goes too far, since murder involves motive, and her motives are likely unclear even to her amidst the rush of worries that her present circumstances have heaped upon her.
However, I do not mean to absolve her of all guilt simply because she is not fully aware of what she is doing. To the contrary, just as I am capable of realizing that firing a gun at a curtain may result in someone’s death, she too must realize, given her uncertainty about exactly what constitutes life and when it begins, that by aborting her child she at least may be ending a human life. And if, having come to this realization, she still chooses to abort her child, she proves in doing so that she is willing to end another person’s life to preserve and enrich her own, regardless of whether her abortion actually results in loss of life. Whether or not her abortion actually constitutes murder, she has nonetheless become a murderer in her heart. Perhaps we may escape this conclusion by saying that she never even once entertained the possibility that her child was alive, but this seems to me to assume such an extraordinary naivety on the mother’s part as to be unrealistic. Of course, my own judgment in the matter is of no consequence. What does matter is the reality of what has transpired within her, for it is this reality that will echo onward to every future moment of her life, testifying to her soul of who she really is.
Now some may be wondering how all of this applies to cases of rape or instances when the mother’s life is at risk. Recall that, in each of the scenarios above, I have been “forcefully detained”—I did not walk into the room of my own accord—and this is symbollicaly equivalent to a woman’s being forced into this difficult predicament through rape. But the moral question of how I ought to act has nothing to do with how I got into the room, but with what I do now that I’m there. The same is true for the woman who has conceived in rape. Wherever we are in life, all of us have been shaped either directly or indirectly by all kinds of evils. If we justify our doing evil because of the evil done to us, then we must likewise justify the evil done to us as just another inevitable link in the chain of human action, and we must count our offenders innocent. But if we hold the rapist to account for his actions, regardless of the evils done to him, then we must also hold his victim to account for her actions, regardless of the evils done to her. We must evaluate the choice before her without reference to the past or possible future and without regard for its perceived cost or reward, for it is always in the present moment that we men are made.
As for instances when the mother’s life is at risk, this phrasing is far too broad to be helpful, since a woman’s life is arguably always at risk to one degree or another, depending on where she is in her pregnancy. Instead, I will address the circumstance for which I have already prepared us by my final illustration. In this scenario, I am advised that if I do not pull the trigger, I will lose my life, so the question becomes, “Am I willing to take someone else’s life in order to preserve my own?” And this is the question that women in such fearful circumstances must ask themselves. Let us assume for the sake of argument that a woman will live if she aborts her child and will die if she does not, that these outcomes are guaranteed beyond all doubt, and let us also assume that, though she is uncertain of what constitutes life, she is aware of the possibility that by aborting her child she may be taking another’s life to save her own. What would a moral person do under these circumstances? Emotionally, I can identify with the woman who desires to live on for the sake of her husband and her other children and with the husband who cannot imagine living without his wife by his side, yet the question remains the same: Is she willing to take someone else’s life to preserve her own? Whatever she decides, she will one day enter into the presence of God. Is it better for her to enter today, trusting in God’s providence for her family and having given her life for the sake of her unborn child, or to enter many years later, having destroyed the life within her to gain a few more moments in this tragic world?
Jesus tells His disciples, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13 ⟴), and “Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Mat. 16:25 ⟴), and He says these things in view of that everlasting world which lies on the other side of death. In the end, the only way to face the issue of abortion and the question of its morality without devaluing all human life to the point of worthlessness is to view it in light of the life to come. If we have no immortal souls that continue beyond death, then all of our lives, no matter their stage or circumstance, are as worthless as they are pointless, for we are mere matter, nothing more than a happenstance shape to be dissolved by time. In such a case, all actions are equally permissible for us, for no soul exists to preserve or to hold accountable. But if we exist as immortal souls, then our every act is purposeful and has consequences that will bear themselves out forever in our and others’ lives. The woman considering abortion under any circumstances should do so in view of what that decision will make of her both in this life and in eternity, regardless of what fleeting things she believes it may presently buy her. In the end, she will either be the woman who took her child’s life for the sake of her own or the woman who gave her life, whether by her living or by her dying, for the sake of her child’s.
I have heard some say that the practice of abortion resembles the acient practice of child sacrifice, but I do not think this statement quite accurate. It does not resemble child sacrifice. It is child sacrifice. It is simply a more sophisticated, streamlined incarnation than that in which our ancestors engaged. Ancient societies offered their children to the gods to garner their favor, so that they would bless them with abundant harvests, heightened fertility, protection against wasting diseases, and victory over their enemies. These were not offerings made out of love for their gods, but out of love for themselves—divine bribes meant to secure selfish blessings. In our day, we have simply removed the middleman. Rather than turn to the gods for help, we now worship ourselves directly, serving ourselves at every turn, living for the increase of our own pleasures and fame, and pursuing our own pitiably shortsighted ambitions as the end of all things. And should a child stand in the way of our financial security or material comfort or educational goals or career plans or sexual escapades or any other endeavor that advances our personal interests, we sacrifice that child to the god of self for the glory of our names.
Ironically, we make these sacrifices knowing full well that in the end our names will be the only thing left of us, and even they will be forgotten in time. What then is the sense of sacrificing anything to the god of self, least of all the gift of our children? If any part of who we are in this world is capable of surviving beyond our lifetimes, will it not do so in our children? Yet we primitive moderns offer up our children with eagerness and abandon. We even boast of our sacrifices before a sea of dying faces, desperate to affirm our worth by the innocent lives that we have ended in our own service and to prove to all just how deep and passionate is our love for the god of self. Then, we die, and our god dies with us. But in truth we have been dying all along, for there is no life in the god of self and no love in serving it. Living for the self is a death sentence, but living for others is life (Mat. 22:37-40, 1 John 4:7-21 ⟴). Sacrificing to the god of self is an act of self-hatred that kills the very god it means to honor, but sacrificing for others is life to all, to the one who receives and even more so to the one who gives (Acts 20:35 ⟴). Loving the god of self yields rewards in this life, all of which come to an end the moment this god dies, but loving the God who gave us His Son by giving ourselves for Him and for our neighbors yields rewards for as long He lives. And the God who gives His life for His children lives forever (Heb. 7:24-25, Rev. 1:17-18 ⟴).
If Jesus laid down His life for us and yet lives, then we can and should lay down our lives for others, that we may become like Him and, even beyond the veil of death, find life through the love of God (1 John 3:16, 4:15-19 ⟴). If you are an expectant mother, who has received a death sentence, should you choose to bring your child to term, take courage and follow Christ, for not a single one of us has received anything less. All of us will die. The only question is whether or not we will do so with the self-sacrificial love of God living in our hearts. If you are an expectant father, whose wife has received this prognosis, lean on Jesus and encourage her to do what is right, regardless of the consequences. Do not make her a murderer merely for the pleasure of a few more years of her company, but fulfill your charge to God by presenting her before Him holy and blameless, inasmuch as it is in your power to do so (Eph. 5:25-30 ⟴). Concern yourself more with the quality of her heart than the quantity of her years. Whether you are a mother or a father, I implore you, be willing to lose your life for Christ’s sake, for only then will you discover what it truly means to live.
But what if you do not believe in God? What then? If God does not exist to serve as the foundation of right, then wrong, which is simply a departure from right, becomes impossible to measure, the label “moral” ceases to be a meaningful term, and the question of this chapter is truly nonsensical. That is the academic answer and one with which I’m sure any thoughtful atheist would agree. But I doubt that it will do much to persuade anyone, as I do not believe that anyone in all of history has ever turned to God merely to shore up the logical inconsistencies of his thought. To the contrary, men are more than willing to embrace the most fantastic paradoxes in hopes of shielding themselves from God’s watchful eye, so that they may live as they please amid the shadow of their delusion. Even so, all of us have an intuitive sense of right and wrong, and it is to this shared sense that I would make my final appeal.
If we can agree on anything, we can agree that a great many things about this world remain a mystery to us, and among these things is the nature of life. Though we may have many a personally persuasive rationale for clinging to our present view, none of us can say with absolute certainty when life begins or even what constitutes organic life. One might then wonder, “If we cannot know for certain what constitutes life, then who has any right to condemn us for doing as we please until we can reasonably acknowledge the life of another?” This is not the question of a moral person, but of a tyrant, who, though he is unable to justify his own life to his neighbors, is perfectly willing to demand that they justify their lives to him. And if at any time he finds their existence unwarranted, according to his own personal sense of worth, he feels at liberty to bring it to an end. A moral person, on the other hand, would reason, “If I am not entirely certain of what constitutes life or when it begins, then far be it from me to act in a way that, if someone is alive and I am unaware, would result in that person’s death.” A moral person, who is not absolutely certain of when life begins, would always err on the side of preserving life rather than extinguishing it. And because none of us possess such certainty, we ought in our ignorance to act as if life begins at conception—even if we are quite convinced that it does not—for we could be wrong, and God forbid that we look back one day and find ourselves guilty of taking a life in its most innocent and vulnerable form.
Yet we sinful people are masters of rationalization. Were I to find myself in the difficult position of having to justify a past abortion or affirm my plans for a future one, I would likely reply to what I have said above with something like the following:
If I am to be considered a murderer at heart because I might be killing someone by having an abortion, shouldn’t I also be considered one every time I drive to work, since I am aware that in so doing, I might inadvertently kill someone in a car accident? Shouldn’t I err on the side of life and resist driving at all? In fact, shouldn’t I resist any form of behavior that might potentially result in the loss of life? And if not, why should I refrain from aborting my child just on the chance that he might be alive?
Clever as this objection may be, you will notice that it does not actually address the morality of abortion at all. It simply attempts to justify it on the basis that other, seemingly similar acts, from which none of us have any intent of desisting, are equally immoral. My response, then, would be that if these other acts are indeed immoral, then we should refrain from them as well and for the same reason, no matter the cost, for we cannot make one act less evil merely by surrounding it with other acts that we consider good.
But these acts are not, in fact, comparable to that of abortion. In all cases, abortion invovles the intentional destruction of what will eventually become a living person, if it is not already. This is not an unforeseen accident, such as might occur on one’s commute to work, but the stated aim of the procedure. And where in the one case the possibility of taking a life depends upon how so many unknown moments and circumstances unfold on the road, the only uncertainty involved in an abortion lies in whether or not a living person has just been exterminated. To eliminate all possibility of killing someone by some poor choice that I might make in one area or another, I would have to be prevented from action altogether, since even the most innocent, innocuous acts have the potential to do great harm to others in the proper context, whereas eliminating all possibility of killing someone from abortion is a simple matter of cancelling an appointment. To act as if the might of human action in general as expressed in this objection is the same as that of abortion is simply dishonest.
Furthermore, the morality of our actions has to do with our hearts’ intents in performing them, not merely with their outcomes. For example, if a woman slips while descending icy steps and accidentally drops the child she is carrying, so that he hits his head and dies, does this make her a murderer for having risked the descent? Certainly not! To the contrary, assuming that she was aware of the danger posed by the steps and was carrying her child to protect him, then whatever the nature of her failure, it is not a moral one. On the other hand, the woman who is considering an abortion is herself the very danger that threatens her child’s life. While the risk posed to the former woman’s child is external in nature and inherent to the living of life, that posed to the latter’s is entirely of her own creation and within her power to avert. And while the former woman is acting selflessly in an attempt to keep her child alive, the latter is actively seeking to convince herself that her child is less than human, so that she need only consider her own welfare. Their respective motives and circumstances could not be more opposite of one another. To suggest that there exists any moral equivalence whatsoever between these scenarios seems to me disingenuous at best.
As alluring as this objection may sound upon first hearing, in the end it serves only to create confusion, so that those who wish to blind themselves to what they are about to do can pretend that reason and nobility are on their side. It does nothing to answer the question of how a moral person can support abortion when in doing so she may well be advocating for the extermination of another human being. Again, our individual morality is not first and foremost a matter of what transpires in any particular woman’s womb, but of what is presently transpiring in our own hearts. It is a matter of who we are, regardless of how the course of life spirals recklessly around us. For this reason, if we are to call ourselves moral people, we cannot support abortion in any form or under any circumstances. If we do support it, we should have the courage and honesty to look ourselves squarely in the mirror and confess the kind of people we really are—men and women who are willing to end a life in exchange for the pomp and pleasures of this world.
If after all of this, you are still intent on pursuing an abortion yourself or encouraging someone you love to do so, I want to assure you that I do not condemn you, for I in myself have no such authority and am no man’s judge (Deu. 32:35, Mat. 7:1-2, James 4:12 ⟴). Yet I do mourn you. I also mourn your child, but you far more, for, where your child is innocent, you are not. And in either case, God is just. He will ensure that we reap what we have sown, whether in this life or the next (Gal. 6:7-8 ⟴). But God is also good and merciful. When we do evil in this life, He is gracious to give us a foretaste of the judgment to come within our own persons, making us sensitive to the wound that our sin has inflicted upon our souls. If you have had an abortion and have subsequently experienced the deep brokenness and regret that comes with having taken another’s life, then you are truly blessed, for this is the mercy of God working within you to produce a godly grief, leading to repentance (2 Cor. 7:9-11 ⟴). You gave up your child for yourself, but the God of love gave up His Son for you. Yours was a sacrifice of hate, meant to end a life that might have been, but His was a sacrifice of love, meant to begin a life that could not otherwise come to be. And this life is yours for the taking. “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9 ⟴). Your sins will be washed white as snow (Isa. 1:18 ⟴), and you will be born again by the Spirit of God into the eternal life and love of Jesus (John 3:3-7, 3:16, 1 Pet. 1:23-25 ⟴).
I cannot tell you that Jesus will cure all of your pains, for such is only the promise of faith for the life to come (James 1:2-4, 1 Pet. 1:6-9, Rev. 21:3-4 ⟴), but I can tell you that He will redeem your every hurt for His glory and for the good of all. He will prove your wounds worthwhile and make you a more whole and humble person for having received them. And in your weakness, He will be your light and strength for whatever challenges lie ahead (Micah 7:7-8, 2 Cor. 12:7-10 ⟴). So then, I would invite you to taste and see that the Lord is good and to discover just how blessed are those who take refuge in Him (Ps. 34:8 ⟴). At the very worst, you will lose your life and your future, but in truth these are already lost, betrothed to that unique moment in time reserved for your death and awaiting your arrival. If you must lose these things anyway, then I pray that you will lose them for something worthwhile and meet that moment well. And what could be more worthwhile than the life of your own child?