The Way I Talk About Abortion

Last week on social media, I made the following post:

All women who have had abortions are mothers—they’re mothers of the children they have murdered. Repent of your sin before Jesus Christ, and He will have mercy on you. He will forgive you, and He will restore you. Lest you perish before God in judgment.

An hour later, a woman sent me the following e-mail:

I was following you on Facebook, but no longer. Your tactic to women who have had abortions is the most unkind, unloving, typical male approach to this delicate situation. I am sick to my stomach—literally. These women need the gospel. The Holy Spirit will surely bring conviction. You have no clue what unsaved women who are put sometimes in hopeless situations will do, what they have done haunts more women and the guilt, shame and condemnation are already eating them up! They need the gospel!!!!! Not you wagging your self righteous finger, threatening. And of some have compassion, making a difference: Jude 22.

An evil spirit of has been teaching this present age that men are beasts and women are victims, and this woman has been taken by that spirit. What does she think the gospel is? My post shared the actual gospel. In fact, I rarely tweet about abortion without reserving some of my 280 characters to also share the gospel.

When I speak about this issue, I will tell you exactly what abortion is—the violent slaughter of innocent children, murdering and sacrificing them to the sex gods worshiped by our depraved culture.

I will tell you exactly what you deserve for your sexual immorality that resulted in the murder of an unborn child—the wrath of God and an eternity in hell.

And I will tell you exactly how to be saved from judgment, cleansed in your conscience, and forgiven your sins—by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who died on the cross as atoning sacrifice and rose again from the grave, whose blood will cover even evils as grotesque as baby murder.

This is the way I’ve always approached this subject for as long as I’ve been doing WWUTT. The first video I did six years ago equated abortion with child sacrifice to the pagan god Moloch. I also composed the soundtrack to the video. After I published it, a friend had me on his podcast where I shared that upon completing the video, I collapsed on the floor and wept.

A year later, I did a video about Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders’ comments that a child in the womb is a “person” who “doesn’t have constitutional rights.” I included images of aborted babies. It was the first video I did with a “disturbing images” disclaimer at the beginning. At some point while I was editing the video, I began sobbing. My wife came into the room and held me as I cried.

About two years ago, on the 46th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the New York state senate passed a bill expanding abortion. I watched the session in real time as the votes were being counted. A congresswoman gave a somber speech about how emotionally difficult it was for everyone who worked on that bill. She did not fool me. The cheers that erupted in that chamber were bloodcurdling. Governor Andrew Cuomo had the One World Trade Center lit pink in celebration—the celebration of child murder. I posted my video the next day.

Why do I call out the sin and call to repentance? First, because I love children. It’s why I have five of my own (the fifth will be born in September), one of whom is adopted. Second, because I don’t want men and women to go to hell. I love them too much to let them hide their guilt after killing their children, lest they perish in their sin on the day of judgment. So I tell them exactly what they’ve done, and exactly how to be saved.

God is so good, so just, and so holy, He will not allow the murder of children made in His image to go unpunished. But He is also so loving, so kind, and so merciful, He has made the way of salvation through His Son, who drank the wrath of God meant for us when He died on the cross for our sin. Those who believe in Him have life, but those who do not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on them (John 3:36).

Why won’t a woman like the one who contacted me tell other women who have had abortions that they have murdered their children? Because she loves herself and not those women, and because she doesn’t really believe that what they’ve done is all that bad. I doubt she’s sharing the gospel with them because it doesn’t seem like she even knows what the gospel is. My heart breaks for her. She’s “deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13).

Jude 22, which she referenced but didn’t properly quote, says, “Have mercy on those who doubt.” The verses before and after say, “Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy n those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.”

That’s what I’m doing, not what this woman is doing. This is not a “typical male approach,” as she said. The typical approach is her response. The way you show mercy to mothers who have murdered their babies is by telling them what the Bible says that they may turn from their sin and to the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. I do not condemn—Jesus said they’re already condemned (John 3:18), just as I was condemned before I came to Christ. If they will repent and believe in Jesus, they will be snatched out of the fire of judgment they are headed for.

The woman told me she is sick to her stomach because of what I said. Father, forgive her, for she does not know what she’s doing. O, the gall of being sick over someone telling the truth rather than being sick over the truth itself—that thousands of unborn baby boys and girls are being burned alive, dismembered, or decapitated in America every single day. Let that ruminate in your stomach.

And when you’re done being sick, you’ve cleaned up your face and wiped the vomit from your mouth, ask for God’s forgiveness and that He would grant repentance. Speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), and correct opponents with gentleness, as the Scripture says to do (2 Timothy 2:25, 1 Peter 3:15). That means you tell the truth, not hold it back. If it is God’s will, the Holy Spirit will convict—because they heard about their sin according to God’s law (Romans 3:20).

If you do not tell them about their sin, according to what God’s word says, they will not be convicted. I have threatened no one. The Bible says that “murderers [and] the sexually immoral” will be cast “in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur” (Revelation 21:8). Only those who believe in Jesus will drink “from the spring of the water of life without payment” (v.6).

Yes, the truth will hurt, and it should. The word of God is “sharper than any two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12). A person should grieve over their sin. David wrote an entire Psalm in grief over his sin (Psalm 51). A godly grief that leads to repentance (2 Corinthians 7:10). Worldly grief does not lead to repentance but to more death and destruction.

I do not want that to happen to the mother of a child she murdered. I want her to grieve over her sin, turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, and be saved—she and the man who got her pregnant and became an accomplice to the sacrifice she made to the gods of this age. “On account of these, the wrath of God is coming” (Colossians 3:6).