Seeing Is the End of ‘Choice’

I looked over at my wife, who was reclined on the nurse’s table but still close enough to hold my hand. Her eyes were filled with tears, the tears of the sweetest kind of joy and relief and thankfulness. The nurse had a club-looking instrument on my wife’s belly, and right in front of me, on a screen not much bigger than an iPad, a bean-shaped figure appeared in a hazy monochrome.

“There’s your baby,” the nurse announced. “It’s got a beautiful heartbeat.”

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For Emily and me, nothing the nurse could say could ring happier in our ears. We walked into the hospital that afternoon, knowing she was pregnant but apprehensive about all the things you’re supposed to be apprehensive about. Was the baby healthy? How could we tell, since we didn’t know the difference between a body’s reaction to a healthy or unhealthy infant? Would our baby have a heartbeat, or would we miscarry at about eight weeks, the time frame that seems most common for miscarriages, at least for dozens of our friends and family?

A Blip, a Baby

But no. The slightly curved image, white like a tiny flash of light in a sea of cavernous black—that was our baby, and he or she (we’ll find that out later) was doing just fine. A child, our child, resting and nourished inside my beautiful bride. Our child, knowing nothing of marriage, tight finances, global terrorism, Donald Trump, Star Wars, or anything else—just a particle of God-breathed life, with a strong and healthy heartbeat. Our only glimpse of our child was that tiny smudge of contrasted white on the screen.

Oh, how we rejoiced! Not since returning from that hospital have we stopped talking about our child, and praying and hoping and dreaming for the months and years and decades ahead. Not for a moment have we stopped treasuring that little blip of white on that computer screen.

We have the first printed pictures and put one in a frame for Emily’s grandmother. You can’t see a face, you can’t hear a voice, and you can’t watch our child do anything. You can only look at that tiny, thumbprint-looking smudge. You can only look at a ultrasound image, showing nothing about our child, and yet at the same, showing everything.

I Saw Life

I will always remember looking at that ultrasound. I know I will, because I remember thinking, “I see life. My wife sees life. The nurse sees life. Anyone with eyes to see sees life. It’s right there!” I’m not a doctor, I’m not a professional biologist, and I don’t have a PhD in ethics. But I do know what I saw: life.

I’ve heard a lot of good arguments against abortion. Many of them are powerful, rigorously logical and deeply humane. But that day in the nurse’s office, grasping my wife’s hand and looking at a shape only discernible by science in the past 50 years, I encountered the most overwhelming case against abortion choice in the world.

Don’t say that you can’t see life. Say instead that you choose not to. Don’t say it’s not there. Say instead that you won’t look.

Seeing is the end of abortion. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Seeing is the end of choice.

Editors’ note: The Gospel Coalition proudly supports the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and Focus on the Family as hosts of Evangelicals for Life, a first-ever major pro-life conference for evangelicals in conjunction with the March for Life. For more information on the event visit the Evangelicals for Life website.