Today I read a few articles about abortion in an issue of the Pentecostal Evangel (http://pentecostalevangel.ag.org/Coverpages2007/4837_Dicianni_cvrpg.cfm). Here is a “testimony” of how I became pro-life, which I posted in my MySpace blog last month.

How I went from Pro-Choice to Pro-Life

Well, now that the House approved funding for more embryonic stem cell research, the 44th Anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling is little more than a week away, and a lot of people who I haven’t seen in three to seven years are now on my friends list, I’m going to try something different. Rather than going on a ranting editorial on what I believe I’m going to give a testimony of how I came to believe what I believe.

I entered high school as a bleeding heart liberal and an environmentalist. I was pro-choice for many of the same reasons most people are pro-choice. The government has no business dictating family planning; children are the reason why so many of our intercity residents are poor; there are just too many people on this planet screwing up the ecosystem — abortion is an effective form of population control. My dad thought it was murder, but I didn’t. My dad was the Rush Limbaugh-Dave Lonsberry libertarian conservative, so anything he believed in politically I automatically opposed.

So senior year of high school we have a public policy debate on abortion. For a few weeks the class was divided into three camps, the pro-life group, the pro-choice group, and the “committee.” The pro-life and pro-choice groups would come up with arguments – legal, moral, ethical, economical, constitutional, etc. – for and against abortion. We on the committee had to draft a bill afterwards. Well, the day they divided the class up I was absent. It was a tossup in their mind on which group I belonged in, so they put me on the pro-life side.

I was on that side for maybe two days looking at the constitutional argument against abortion, because that was the only angle I felt comfortable taking a side on. Later I asked to be reassigned to a committee and one of my friends was moved from the committee to pro-life, and then he ended up in the same predicament as I was in. I don’t remember how it was resolved.

Well, anyway, the day of the debate came and we heard statements form both sides. I remember posing a question the pro-choice side based Jehovah Witness theology of life (that life = soul). Their leader gave me a counter question that just left me silent. Anyway, the committee met in private and we actually drafted a pretty restrictive anti-abortion bill. I took the extra step of mailing it to my New York State Senator and Assembly man and they basically gave me a nice pat on the head and said “thanks for sharing, but Roe v. Wade doesn’t let us do anything.”

However, while our public policy teacher was showing us videos about abortion and describing abortion to us, he would keep on saying that as soon as the child took his first breath it was murder. I was if the line between something legal and something illegal was, what, the few centimeters of the cervix and the vagina. That sounded a little fishy to me, but it had little impact on my political opinions at the time.

That’s when my soul — as in my mind and emotions — really started struggling with the issue of abortion, and I was slowly moving to the pro-life side. By the end of high school I had decided that while I was for unrestricted legal abortion up to fetal viability I never wanted to be involved in one or put a woman in a situation where she had to make that choice.

Then on Sunday, September 5, 1999 I became a Christian. I gave my heart to Christ on that day in a little church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio named NewSong Assembly of God. I had been reading the Bible daily thought out high school, seeking, searching for answers. Now the Scriptures had a whole new level of meaning for me.

That’s when the internal debate started to hit high gear. I was constantly debating the issue in my mind. Does the fetus have a right to life? Does the woman have a right to terminate her pregnancy? Is abortion a sin? I remember my first college physics exam half the time I was debating abortion rather than thinking how to solve the problems. I guess as a consequence that’s why I barley passed the test.

During Fall break my first semester I decided based on what I had known about God He seemed like a God that was not in favor of abortion. “I come to give life and give it more abundantly…” “I am the way, the truth, and the life…” “God is not God of the dead but the living…” If God, in His nature, wasn’t “cool” with abortion then it was sin.

Okay, but should it still be legal? Gambling is a sin, and that’s legal. So is smoking, swearing, and stripping. Just because something’s “wrong” shouldn’t make it “illegal.”

And this is the point where most Americans stop. Most Americans think it’s “murder,” but not enough to take that “right” away from a from a pregnant woman. How often have you heard Catholic politicians say “I’m opposed to abortion, but I don’t want to impose my morals on anyone else?” So we pass laws making it a crime to kill a baby in the uterus unless the mother actually wants the child killed.

However, I kept going. As I was doing more and more research on Christian theology through the internet I was hard-pressed to find anyone in favor of abortion. Even the theologian that had the biggest impact on shaping my Christian beliefs, R.C. Sproul (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._C._Sproul, http://www.ligonier.org/) was strongly against abortion on demand. I was actually a bit surprised and a bit disheartened that a theologian that I respected so much would take such a hard-line conservative stance.

Then the summer between my sophomore and junior year I was the Wayne County (NY) Fair and walked by the booth pro-life group working in association with a Baptist church in the area. Well, I politely told the lady there that I was a Christian but pro-choice and then she showed me this picture of an aborted child. It was a small, decapitated head held by forceps above a glass jar. It almost made me cringe, and even later that image would come back to haunt me. Since I was a Christian and always open to opinions from other people who identify themselves as Born-Again Christians I grabbed a copy of each brochure and flyer they had and walked away.

A few weeks later back at college during orientation week I started to read these brochures, and that’s when the “conversion” took place. The first thing that got me was how big of an *industry* abortion is. A couple thousand clinics, 24 procedures a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, $400 or more a procedure. That’s some serious dough. The next thing that got me was the surgical methods abortions use to remove and dispose of the “product of conception.” Suction aspiration machines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vacuum_aspiration), curettes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curette), salt poisoning, heavy duty garbage disposers…it was like I was reading the script from some B-rated 1950’s mad scientist horror movie. And in most cases the child is developed enough to feel every part of his or her dismemberment. Finally, it was the Word of God:

Yet you brought me out of the womb;
you made me trust in you
even at my mother’s breast.
From birth I was cast upon you;
from my mother’s womb you have been my God.
* Psalm 22:9-10

Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me
* Psalm 51:5

The word of the LORD came to me, saying,
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew [a] you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
* Jeremiah 1:4-5

That was just a fraction of the verses that I read which by the end I saw abortion as not something that “good people just don’t do,” but a crime against God and humanity. The issue is not the pregant woman who will be “unpregnant” in a matter of months, the issue is the unique person in her womb, with unique DNA, a unique destiny, and a unique purpose appointed for this time in history. It’s murder in perhaps its worst form, happening 3,500 times a day, unchecked, unseen by most Americans. This was real. This was not some horror movie or war film where people just pretend to die; this was done against my peers. How many friends, how many coworkers, how many classmates, how many dating relationships, how many fraternity brothers, and how many peers that could have impacted my life that I missed out on because somebody made a “choice,” under duress, misinformed, not knowing the consequences of their actions? It was the of Sword of Damocles hangin over the head of every American born after January 22, 1973, including me. Anyone I knew 28 or younger could have been gone — never even existed — if their mom made the choice. Even me. I got down on my knees and my face and repented. Then I wrote a “thank you” e-mail to my mom.

From then on I was a pro-life activist. I’ve walked two pro-life marches in Washington, DC. I attended a twelve hour prayer and fasting event in Dallas praying for many things including an end to abortion. I became a supporter of the American Life League and read their publications to stay informed on the issues. I have taken time to write to my Congressman and Senators when life-related issues come up.

Everyone, Enjoy life to the fullest,

Joel