Innocent blood

A supporter shared with us this week a truly heart-breaking and horrific story of the abortion she underwent some years ago.  There follows the account in her own (slightly edited) words:
 
“Whilst I was a backslidden Christian, I was in active addiction to heroin and I became pregnant.
 
From the time I realised that I was carrying a baby I felt that I couldn’t take care of myself never mind a new born baby.
 
I was on a methadone programme during the months that I was pregnant and I was told that unless I had an abortion I would be [removed from the programme].
 
I was feeling unwell and was sick throughout the time I was pregnant. I thought that having an abortion was the best for me and my husband.
 
I had the abortion and felt well for the first time in months.
 
Two days later I felt something cold in my underwear. I rushed home and went to the toilet.  To my surprise, an eight inch fully formed baby was laying there. I looked intently at the closed eyes and the white filled nose. The arms and legs were perfectly formed and included every digit. The area where the naval would have been was exposed, and the ribs looked like toothpicks. I immediately understood that I (had been) … carrying identical twins. One had been taken from my womb and the other left.
 
I didn’t understand why a whole baby would be left inside me.
 
As the reality of what I had done … killed two babies … sank in, I started screaming hysterically.  My husband came to the bathroom, took the baby out of my hands and flushed it down the toilet.
 
It affected me psychologically in a profound way …  Since returning to the Lord, I have repented of what I now know to be murder.
 
I haven’t had a heroin habit since 2003 and I pray often for the women who think there’s no other way out, and for the Lord to forgive us for shedding innocent blood.”
 
Peggy, not her real name, repented for the sin she now acknowledges she committed, but clearly at the time there were what appeared to be very strong ‘reasons’ for not going ahead with the pregnancy, and without doubt she was put under pressure to abort what was thought to be just one baby.  But the full horror of what she had done hit her when she was confronted with the perfectly formed body of one of her dead babies.  It is the same reality for every child whose life is ended in the womb.  
 
By the Lord’s grace, Peggy has been forgiven and healed, but that was only possible once she understood the enormity of what she had done.   God reaches out to us in love, but abortion is the licensed murder of babies who cannot speak up for or defend themselves.   As part of a society that sanctions such practices, we all share in the guilt.
 
So far this year, worldwide, there have been upward of 3 million abortions (https://www.worldometers.info/abortions/).  In the time it has taken you to read this article, two babies in the UK will have been aborted (1 every two and a half minutes), which makes about 570 a day.  To put this in some kind of perspective, since 1967, when abortion was legalized in the UK in specified circumstances, we have aborted the equivalent of the combined populations of Wales and Scotland, or the entire population of Austria.
 
Every one of these aborted children was created by, and special to, God.  Every child was unique.  
 
We can tell ourselves ‘it’s the wrong time to have a baby’, but the truth is that taking innocent life is, in God’s eyes, murder and a sin.  There is no ‘wrong time’ to let someone live.  And there can be no justification for killing the unborn – as so many desperately hurting women, seduced by the lie of convenience, will tell you.  
 
For this indiscriminate sacrifice of the unborn on the altar of self-interest, we are a people under judgment.   Small wonder we are surrounded by social and cultural disintegration, widespread perversion and exploitation, rising levels of violence, and growing tension between the nations.   Covid has been, and is, a warning from God – a wake-up call to recognise the evil we not just do, but actively celebrate.   God alone holds the key for our deliverance.  If we are to have any hope of avoiding worse to come, it is urgent that we repent.