My ex-friend and Aunt. (almost gone)

[pure_angel]

I lost my friend the other day because of my religious beliefs. She got pregnant by her boyfriend (not intentionally, but they’ve fornicated before). After knowing that she got pregnant, I sent her some helpful websites in order to encourage her not to terminate her pregnancy. After that I didn’t contact her for awhile. Then finally yesterday I asked what her decision was and she and her boyfriend decided for…abortion. I didn’t know what to think. I cried when I got back to my dorm. We had an argument through text messages. I told her she had the choice of adoption but she didn’t really seem to care at all; she just said that it was for the best of her situation. She said she is going to therapy. But honestly, I think she is consumed by the media when they say it is okay to rid of your responsibility that you created. I hope she realizes what she has done to herself soon.

I lost a cousin, some long time ago, because my Aunt was scared to death and did not care. My aunt and my uncle wanted to have another baby and after trying for many months they were blessed with a child that had Down Syndrome. That was the reason why they terminated it. When I talk to my aunt I never bring it up because our relationship will get worse (I haven’t talked to her in a while though). They do have a daughter who was born without a disability. She is the type of child who would not have cared what the disability was and would have taken care of her little brother or sister with Down Syndrome 24/7. I don’t know why my aunt and uncle didn’t think this through.

I lost a friend for standing up for what I believe in and I lost a (future) cousin that my aunt was scared of. Maybe it was a good thing that I lost that friend. I don’t know.

There I finally got that out of my system!

 

[Luvtosew]

I’m sorry for your friend and Aunt, but do remember you are not the judge and jury, I would remain friends as she will most likely really need your friendship one day.

 

[pure_angel]

I’m sorry for your friend and Aunt, but do remember you are not the judge and jury, I would remain friends as she will most likely really need your friendship one day.

Yeah, I guess all I can do is pray for them right now.

 

[jdoggin]

The power of prayer can never be underestimated. Pray for the souls of the children! Pray for your friend and your aunt and uncle. I will too. After that, just love on them.

 

[pure_angel]

The power of prayer can never be underestimated. Pray for the souls of the children! Pray for your friend and your aunt and uncle. I will too. After that, just love on them.

Thank you for your inspiration. I have been doing so. We are now friends again (have been for a while) and I havn’t talked about the subject to my aunt (and probably never will). Like you said, just pray.

 

[EasterJoy]

I had a friend who made a similar decision. It was an extremely sad situation. I also tried to convince my friend to have her baby, but even though she had an abortion I tried to support her. Obviously, I had nothing to do with helping her get it; I mean that I did not put a distance between us. She went through something harder than I ever had, and I knew it, and I let her know I didn’t think less of her for handling something I couldn’t know how I myself would handle in exactly her place. She and her boyfriend drifted apart, and did not marry. Years later, however, she converted to the Catholic Church, married a very devout man, and had a large family with him. Her boyfriend married a young woman he met who had been abandoned by her boyfriend when she decided to keep her baby, and he raised that child as the apple of his eye. You never know.

It sounds arrogant to say that someone who made an objectively immoral decision “did not think it through” or “did not care”. You cannot read hearts, and ought not talk about the choices of others in a way that someone might believe indicates that you think you can. Instead, you ought to say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I”. We have to all pray that we will not be put to the test, because we do not know if we will have the courage to say that difficult “yes” to God’s ways, as we ought to, as we pray that we always will.

Pray for your friend and support her. If the subject of your aunt’s first pregnancy ever comes up, all you ought to say is “that must have been unspeakably hard for you.” You will not be implying that what they did was right. You will be implying that no sin can put them outside the love of God.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

I agree with EJ; you cannot judge how well they “thought it through”.

Your aunt and uncle may have agonized over their decision. You say that they didn’t think about their other child helping as a caretaker. But what if they thought about it quite a bit and came to the conclusion that their child shouldn’t have to devote their life to that? You’re being really flippant about these women’s lives and choices.

Frankly, if I had and abortion and a friend put distance between us because of it it would only reinforce that I did the right thing. If someone who was so close to me proved me right, that you never know just how conditional the relationships that you have in life are I would be grateful that I wasn’t going to face that and a pregnancy.

 

[crystal_waters]

I’m sorry for your friend and Aunt, but do remember you are not the judge and jury, I would remain friends as she will most likely really need your friendship one day.

This is good advice…you dont have to lose your friend and aunt over their abortions, be there for them, deep down they will be hurting

 

[pure_angel]

I had a friend who made a similar decision. It was an extremely sad situation. I also tried to convince my friend to have her baby, but even though she had an abortion I tried to support her. Obviously, I had nothing to do with helping her get it; I mean that I did not put a distance between us. She went through something harder than I ever had, and I knew it, and I let her know I didn’t think less of her for handling something I couldn’t know how I myself would handle in exactly her place. She and her boyfriend drifted apart, and did not marry. Years later, however, she converted to the Catholic Church, married a very devout man, and had a large family with him. Her boyfriend married a young woman he met who had been abandoned by her boyfriend when she decided to keep her baby, and he raised that child as the apple of his eye. You never know.

It sounds arrogant to say that someone who made an objectively immoral decision “did not think it through” or “did not care”. You cannot read hearts, and ought not talk about the choices of others in a way that someone might believe indicates that you think you can. Instead, you ought to say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I”. We have to all pray that we will not be put to the test, because we do not know if we will have the courage to say that difficult “yes” to God’s ways, as we ought to, as we pray that we always will.

Pray for your friend and support her. If the subject of your aunt’s first pregnancy ever comes up, all you ought to say is “that must have been unspeakably hard for you.” You will not be implying that what they did was right. You will be implying that no sin can put them outside the love of God.

Thank you very much for your advice. I will definitely use it. Oh, and it’s my aunt’s second pregnancy. Her daughter is 8 now.

 

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[EasterJoy]

Thank you very much for your advice. I will definitely use it. Oh, and it’s my aunt’s second pregnancy. Her daughter is 8 now.

You cannot ever force this, I’d wait until the person indicates they are ready for it, but if a person you know expresses something that implies they are struggling with guilt and other feelings over a past decision to procure an abortion, I’d recommend that you gently let them know about Rachel’s Vineyard retreats. I have heard nothing but good things about them. If you want to know more, they have a web site.

 

[Serap]

I lost my friend the other day because of my religious beliefs. She got pregnant by her boyfriend (not intentionally, but they’ve fornicated before). After knowing that she got pregnant, I sent her some helpful websites in order to encourage her not to terminate her pregnancy. After that I didn’t contact her for awhile. Then finally yesterday I asked what her decision was and she and her boyfriend decided for…abortion. I didn’t know what to think. I cried when I got back to my dorm. We had an argument through text messages. I told her she had the choice of adoption but she didn’t really seem to care at all; she just said that it was for the best of her situation. She said she is going to therapy. But honestly, I think she is consumed by the media when they say it is okay to rid of your responsibility that you created. I hope she realizes what she has done to herself soon.

I lost a cousin, some long time ago, because my Aunt was scared to death and did not care. My aunt and my uncle wanted to have another baby and after trying for many months they were blessed with a child that had Down Syndrome. That was the reason why they terminated it. When I talk to my aunt I never bring it up because our relationship will get worse (I haven’t talked to her in a while though). They do have a daughter who was born without a disability. She is the type of child who would not have cared what the disability was and would have taken care of her little brother or sister with Down Syndrome 24/7. I don’t know why my aunt and uncle didn’t think this through.

I lost a friend for standing up for what I believe in and I lost a (future) cousin that my aunt was scared of. Maybe it was a good thing that I lost that friend. I don’t know.

There I finally got that out of my system!

I once had an abortion and the guilt was horrible. Your friend is probably riddled with guilt and pain. Don’t make it worse for her by judging.

 

[manualman]

There is a fine line here that needs to be walked. We absolutely need to offer the love and forgiveness of Christ to a broken world. But a hard part of that is not play acting along with people’s rationalizations. I find that in emotion-charged issues it makes it easier to change the issue to something morally similar, but without the emotional attachment.

Imagine this. The year is 1854 and you live in the south. Your uncle owns a small cotton plantation and a dozen slaves. He generally treats them well for the most part, but there is one particular slave that is sullen, angry about his lot in life and generally makes a lot of trouble. One day, the problem escalates to outright defiance and your uncle beats the slave to death because he feared that if he didn’t the entire group of slaves might have risen up and killed the whole family in rebellion.

It’s the SAME moral situation. The uncle is unable to see the horror of his own actions because of the distorted culture in which he grew up. He genuinely fails to comprehend the actual humanity of “his” slaves and the injustice he commits in enslaving them. He’s morally bothered by the “need” to kill the one to keep order, but can’t quite make the leap to understanding the real issue. What’s your moral duty there?

Just like today, he’s NOT going to respond to “another moralizing abolitionist.” And just like today, shunning him in horror isn’t going to bring him to repentence. But neither is pretending that nothing happened. I’m honestly not sure of the right line to walk, but it’s somewhere in between those two mistakes. Pray about it and ask God for help figuring out how to respond and interact with them.

 

[EasterJoy]

There is a fine line here that needs to be walked. We absolutely need to offer the love and forgiveness of Christ to a broken world. But a hard part of that is not play acting along with people’s rationalizations. I find that in emotion-charged issues it makes it easier to change the issue to something morally similar, but without the emotional attachment.

Imagine this. The year is 1854 and you live in the south. Your uncle owns a small cotton plantation and a dozen slaves. He generally treats them well for the most part, but there is one particular slave that is sullen, angry about his lot in life and generally makes a lot of trouble. One day, the problem escalates to outright defiance and your uncle beats the slave to death because he feared that if he didn’t the entire group of slaves might have risen up and killed the whole family in rebellion.

It’s the SAME moral situation. The uncle is unable to see the horror of his own actions because of the distorted culture in which he grew up. He genuinely fails to comprehend the actual humanity of “his” slaves and the injustice he commits in enslaving them. He’s morally bothered by the “need” to kill the one to keep order, but can’t quite make the leap to understanding the real issue. What’s your moral duty there?

Just like today, he’s NOT going to respond to “another moralizing abolitionist.” And just like today, shunning him in horror isn’t going to bring him to repentence. But neither is pretending that nothing happened. I’m honestly not sure of the right line to walk, but it’s somewhere in between those two mistakes. Pray about it and ask God for help figuring out how to respond and interact with them.

No, it is not the same situation. A woman who talks about her abortion as if it were a hernia operation is only roughly the same situation as you describe, because it cannot be known how much she really believes her own “press”. Otherwise, it is not the same situation at all.

Mothers can tell you, including those who are mothers via adoption. It isn’t the same, not the same at all.

 

[manualman]

EasterJoy,

I’m open to correction, I really am. But I need convincing, not just assertion.

One of the most important and rarely learned lessons of the American slavery era is that most of those who supported the legality of slavery were NOT monsters in most other areas of their lives, just like many/most women today who have abortions are perfectly ordinary, even wonderful human beings in the rest of their lives. Only in Hollywood are characters totally good or evil. In your words, those slave owners mostly really did “believe their own press” and convinced themselves that black people were an inferior subspecies of humanity incapable of the same sorts of reasoning and civilization as white people were, so that they needed a “strong and benevolent master” to bring order to their lives.

That’s apalling and nauseating to us today, but it’s how they reconciled their slave ownership with the rest of their values. Without consciously intending to, the slavery establishment took elaborate precautions to prevent blacks from becoming literate, learning the arts, etc so that they could CONTINUE to believe their own press. This IS just like abortion today where people consider it nearly criminal for one person to confront another with a photograph of what abortion really is.

Mind you, I’m not saying that’s what the OP should do to her friend or her aunt. But I am convinced that we DO need to do more than to sweep things other the couch witha vague notion of being “loving” towards them. Love isn’t necessarily “nice.” Love is wanting the BEST for the person loved. I don’t have an easy answer for how to lovingly witness to the truth here, but I am convinced that it is NOT to pretend that all is well and nothing horrific happened.

 

[EasterJoy]

EasterJoy,

I’m open to correction, I really am. But I need convincing, not just assertion.

One of the most important and rarely learned lessons of the American slavery era is that most of those who supported the legality of slavery were NOT monsters in most other areas of their lives, just like many/most women today who have abortions are perfectly ordinary, even wonderful human beings in the rest of their lives. Only in Hollywood are characters totally good or evil. In your words, those slave owners mostly really did “believe their own press” and convinced themselves that black people were an inferior subspecies of humanity incapable of the same sorts of reasoning and civilization as white people were, so that they needed a “strong and benevolent master” to bring order to their lives.

That’s apalling and nauseating to us today, but it’s how they reconciled their slave ownership with the rest of their values. Without consciously intending to, the slavery establishment took elaborate precautions to prevent blacks from becoming literate, learning the arts, etc so that they could CONTINUE to believe their own press. This IS just like abortion today where people consider it nearly criminal for one person to confront another with a photograph of what abortion really is.

Mind you, I’m not saying that’s what the OP should do to her friend or her aunt. But I am convinced that we DO need to do more than to sweep things other the couch witha vague notion of being “loving” towards them. Love isn’t necessarily “nice.” Love is wanting the BEST for the person loved. I don’t have an easy answer for how to lovingly witness to the truth here, but I am convinced that it is NOT to pretend that all is well and nothing horrific happened.

You misunderstand me. I am not saying that it is wrong to say, “Don’t get an abortion, it is wrong. Your child deserves to live.” I have been in that situation, and I said that. I wouldn’t have anything to do with the abortion, and my friend knew where I stood and why.

I am saying that in the case of an abortion, you do not know what kind of interior damage she has suffered afterward from doing what she did. You can let a slave go free, but you can’t undo an abortion. Once it is done, you have to live with what you did for the rest of your life. A woman also has an emotional connection with her babies from the time she realizes she is capable of *having *babies. This is even more intense, however, after her first live birth or after she becomes a mother through adoption. So no, it is not like slavery. Both are terrible crimes, but one is not only irreversible but also much more serious and much closer to home on an deeply visceral emotional level. The mother who procures an abortion does not just commit a crime against her child. She commits a crime against herself, and in a way that she is likely to come to realize in this life in a way that a slaveholder is unlikely to do. (I say this knowing who it was who wrote “Amazing Grace”, mind you…it was a former slave trafficker!)

The Lord does not crush the broken-hearted, nor stand on necks of the contrite. We cannot read hearts, so we have to be careful where we stomp, lest we add bruises to what is already laid low. That is all I am saying. If this aunt’s heart does not bleed every time she sees a happy person and their family who has but who is not “suffering” from their Downs Syndrome, I’d be very much surprised.

 

[manualman]

Thanks for the food for thought!