I first met Grace, my wife and the mother of our five children, over 25 years ago in high school. I was pro-abortion. She was pro-life. We argued over the issue. I pretty much always won. I was wrong, but I was tough to debate with.
She came from an evangelical home. I came from a Catholic home. Both of our homes were pro-life. But I was not only pro-choice, I was pro-abortion. I agreed with the underlying principles of Thomas Robert Malthus, which greatly influenced Nazi Germany, and Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood. I read up on the issue quite a bit, and won debates in high school and my freshman year of college defending population control and abortion.
I would have said I was a Christian, but I was not. Grace was a Christian. She bought me a Bible once she understood I had very little biblical knowledge. I started reading it my freshman year of college and Jesus saved me. My heart changed, and my mind changed on many things—including the sanctity of human life made in God’s image, and the fact that abortion is murder.
I recently asked Grace if she would have continued dating me and married me had I not converted and become pro-life. She said that she would not have married me if I had not become earnestly pro-life. She was right.
It’s the same counsel I’d give my children. When you are single, you may not think a lot about raising kids with someone, but I assure you one pro-life parent and one pro-choice parent will create an irreconcilable conflict. For the pro-life singles who follow my teaching, there are nine reasons why I would encourage you to not marry someone who is pro-choice:
- You submit to the authority of Scripture, and they do not.
- You believe all that the Bible says about human life: that it is superior to animal life, endowed with a soul, and imprinted with God’s image. They do not.
- They do not value children the same way that you do. You cannot bring a child into this world with someone who does not value the child as God does and as you do.
- If your future unborn child is suspected to have some sort of complication or “birth defect,” the conclusions you and your spouse will arrive at could very easily be life versus death.
- If a future pregnancy comes at a tough time (job loss, inconvenience, hard season of life), you may find yourself under pressure to murder the child—a massive, stressful, possibly irreconcilable conflict.
- If they do not think biblically about having children, it’s probably safe to assume that they won’t think biblically about raising children either.
- Division is literally two visions, and you have division about issues that are exceedingly deep and important. This will cause a rift in your marital relationship that is supposed to be “one flesh.”
- They disagree with God, and you cannot spend your life supporting someone who disagrees with God on a matter as vital as human life.
- They are wrong.
Many marital conflicts can be resolved with some sort of compromise, but when the options are life or death there is no third option that works for both parities.
