Ten
Live Options to Abortion
Philip G. Ney, MD, FRCP (C)
January 02, 2005
Introduction
Every pregnancy is a crisis for everyone involved. It is particularly
a crisis of choice-making. The most critical choice is to welcome
or to reject preborn babies. Sadly, women are supposed to make
a choice between what they often consider the only options, abortion,
adoption, or raising a child they won’t welcome.
All our lives long we must make choices. God constantly inundates
us with difficult decisions in order to help us mature. He wants
to spend eternity with interesting friends, not babies. At the
same time, he provides clear guidelines. Some choices he absolutely
prohibits, “Thou shalt not…,” and makes it clear
there are dire consequences if we disobey. We are to make wise
choices so we become wise. However it is not possible to make
wise choices if we don’t clearly see all the options and
understand the consequences. In medicine this is called ‘informed
consent.’
To me it is so sad that some crisis pregnancy centres don’t
provide the mother and father with all the options that are available
to them, not do they provide sufficient information regarding
all the consequences so that women can make wise decisions. Here
is a list of ten possibilities. I’m sure there are more.
It is followed by a short statement on other ways in which sidewalk
counselors can inform people and influence their decision in a
life-giving manner.
Ten Live Options to Abortion
a) Continue pregnancy to term and keep child.
i) Full term pregnancy and keep both baby and
father of baby.
ii) Full term pregnancy and change partners. We can provide
a dating service.
iii) Sell your baby to us for the duration of the pregnancy.
Then we can protect our “property” and you have
financial support. We pay for the obstetric and paediatric care.
iv) Mother and child are fostered together.
v) Mother and child are adopted together.
vi) A long-term house of refuge for child and mother.
Mother can carry on with her education or work until she finds
a suitable mate and makes a home. Then she and the child can
leave together. While she is at work the child is cared for
by good and faithful elderly people or nuns. When she returns
from work or school she is given some parent training and lots
of nurture. The child is cared for if she wants to go out at
night, but most of the responsibility is hers. The father is
encouraged to participate.
b) Continue pregnancy to term but the mother separates from her
child.
i) Closed adoption – mother and child are
separated and do not know where each other are, until of course
some day in the future, mother wants to reconnect with the child.
She can do this by many different means.
ii) Open adoption – mother is able to pick the
parents of her child. She can participate in a beautiful ceremony
where she places her little one in the arms of the adopting
parents and says something like, “God loaned this little
one to me. I’m sorry I cannot care for him/her, and so
I loan him to you. Please care for him, and bring him to know
Jesus.” The father or grandparents of the child may wish
to adopt him/her.
iii) Fostering the child with friends or relatives. This
can be for a short or long periods.
iv) Fostering service provided by the government.
Tips for Sidewalk Counseling In the USA:
While counseling people who appear to be determined to terminate
the life of their preborn baby, there are these additional possibilities:.
- Offer coffee, juice and a doughnut in a van parked close to
the clinic. “Please come in for five minutes, have a coffee
and a doughnut. We won’t interfere, but you need to take
it easy. You look under such stress.”.
- “Come into our van and let’s discuss things. There
are ten live options to abortion you may never have thought
of.”.
- Come into our van (or fifth wheel, or whatever it is), and
look at the ultrasound picture of your baby. Yes, this is your
baby, can you see him move? Looks like a little boy to me. What
would you like to name him or her?
- Counsel the fathers who are then in a better situation to
counsel their partners. God made families, mother, father and
child. It’s more effective to talk to the men, who can
then talk to their wives or girlfriends.
- A line-up of potential adopting parents (parents without progeny
- PWP). They can stand nearby with sheets of information about
themselves, held out for mothers coming by to look at and pick
a potential parent.
- Hand out sheets of potential adoptive parents that the mothers
may just take with them into the clinic. At least it gets them
thinking.
- Have an ex-abortionist stand by, ready to offer free obstetric
care as part of their compensation for hurting women.
