The Three Letters in the Middle...

 You may have picked up on a new social media hashtag being celebrated amongst pro-choicers: #shoutyourabortion 

Just typing the words out makes my stomach turn. It is difficult for me to understand how anyone can ever justify the act of abortion, but the thought that people find it celebratory is just sickening. In response to this hashtag, a friend of mine posted a precious picture of her son and my son together. Both were adopted from the same agency, and both are truly such a gift to our families! For her hashtag, she chose to say #shoutyourADOPTION ! I found this new caption positively brilliant and posted this comment with the picture of Knox and Gabriel: 

"THIS is what I choose to celebrate: two beautiful lives that are able to LIVE their life to its fullest because two beautiful birth mothers chose to GIVE them that life. THAT is something worth shouting out and celebrating!"

After posting it, I received a text from a concerned friend. She had not yet heard of the pro choice hashtag, and she thought I had mistakenly written the words 

#shoutyourABORTION instead of 

#shoutYourADOPTION. I was able to fill her in on this horrible new trend, but in doing so I realized how close the two words are: abort and adopt. The two words may look very similar at a quick glance, but their meanings are far from similar. One word (adopt) means to accept or to take as one's own, while the other (abort) means to terminate or bring to a premature end. Both words start the same, both in appearance and in meaning: adoption begins because of a life, and abortion is chosen because of a life. However, it's those three letters in the middle that make all the difference--and in a sense, it's those three people in the middle of these circumstances that make all of the difference, too. In adoption, there is a baby with a life to live, a birth mother with a choice to make, and a family with eager hearts and open arms to welcome this baby AND their birth mother into their forever family. With abortion, there is still a baby with a life to live and a birth mother with a choice to make, but the third party holds anything but eager hearts and open arms--it holds the ability to end not just the life of the baby, but a part of life that the birth mother would also have had the opportunity to live. Aborting a baby doesn't just hurt the precious life of that baby, but it also hurts the life of that baby's mother. Many women have been lied to about the truth of abortion, and many people even encourage the celebration of such a choice. This is nothing but a horrible coverup for a horrific tragedy though. Many women are told that their life will be over if they birth a baby they didn't want, but in all reality, abortion is doing the same thing: ending a life. The life of that baby will be over, and the life that the birth mother would have experienced will also be over. Many may see this as a positive thing, but I refuse to buy into that lie. After all, there is certainly no proof of that, because that opportunity has never been able to present itself. 

The fact that our society has come to the point of celebrating murder...I just am without words in how it grieves my heart. I grieve over these little lives that were never given a chance, I grieve over the families that so desperately wanted to parent them, and I grieve deeply over these mothers that are so very deceived. Truly, every life is BEAUTIFUL! So, this day, I celebrate the beautiful life I see in my son, and I celebrate the life his birth mother has given to our family. This day, I want to shout it out that every life is truly beautiful. Please don't be silent in this fight for life. Find a way to support the prolife cause, and if you can...

#shoutyouradoption!