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About Engage

Engage exists to provide perspective on culture through the eyes of a Biblical worldview, showing how that worldview intersects with culture and engages it.

We are a team of 20-somethings brought together by a common faith in Jesus Christ and employment in our parent organization American Family Association.

Mercy In Spite of Abortion

01/28/2019

Scripture tells us, "...if a man is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, watching yourselves, lest you also be tempted" (Galatians 6:1).

Mario Cuomo, governor of New York, recently celebrated and signed into law the radical "Reproductive Health Act" he promoted with Hillary Clinton. This allows full-term, unborn babies to be aborted by even non-doctors for any reason up until the moment of birth. Totally viable, developed children in the birth canal face the death penalty, although New York prohibits it for criminals, while doctors and nurses who refuse to do abortions now find their jobs in jeopardy.

Cuomo, who identifies as a Catholic, lives with a woman outside of marriage and is endorsing sinful, barbaric behavior contrary to Biblical teaching and upheld by authentic Christians and people of other religions worldwide, in addition to being expressly prohibited by the Roman Catholic Church. Regardless of motivation or manipulation, he’s involved in grievous transgression, needs prayer and someone to restore him to moral sanity. To think that baby boys and girls seven, eight, and nine pounds delivered early, cooing and crying can be exterminated or simply abandoned on a table to die is an incomprehensible injustice.

My wife and I have had a very dear friend of decades who was manipulated and caught in this same area of serious deception. Because the time of passive Christianity must end, I asked Corrine if we could share her story to help educate and awaken multitudes. What follows is her experience in her own words.

Corrine’s story

I was raised in a large, church-attending family but at an early age, I began resisting parental and church guidance. Being raped at age twelve preceded three years of teenage rape by my employer. These sad events coupled with my promiscuous lifestyle resulted in my having five abortions, three performed illegally at what I was told were women’s "health care clinics."

I was taught that abortion was wrong, but I rationalized that "If abortion is legal, then it must be okay." The abortions resulted in depression and a feeble suicide attempt as my conscience bothered me, but not enough to avoid the widely available procedure. Many girls I knew or met in the clinics, like me, were using abortion as a form of birth control.

The counseling and procedures were the same in each abortion clinic; girls who had had prior abortions talked about them as insignificant. We were given birth control pills after the procedure that promoted more promiscuity. While demonstrating the procedure on a plastic model of an empty uterus, the preborn baby was described as "tissue" or like a "blood clot being removed."

Before the fifth abortion at eleven weeks, in an attempt to quell my nagging conscience, I asked if I could see the "tissue" when finished. The personnel looked at each other quizzically and then complied with my request.

After the abortion, the nurse approached me with gauze in her hand. "See, it's only tissue!" Lifting my head, I peered into her palm and underneath the small blood clots, I noticed what looked like tiny fish bones. Pointing to them I asked her what they were, and she quickly folded the gauze, saying abruptly, "Oh, probably just an early formation of a rib cage," before pitching the blood-spattered gauze into the trashcan. 

My soon-to-be husband Rick and I met each other in the waiting room where I tearfully lamented, "I saw ribs! I saw our baby's ribs!" I withdrew emotionally for hours that turned into days. The image of our child's tiny rib cage confronted me with the truth about what we had done, and it haunted me perpetually.
 
Thank God for people who faithfully share the gospel! A few months later, Rick and I responded to the good news, repented of our sins and accepted God's merciful gift of forgiveness to start a new life in Christ. There still were residual effects of what I had done and when people mentioned abortion, the pain resurfaced.

Rick and I were married. Pregnancy eluded us, which was a painful reality. My doctor expressed serious doubt that I could conceive and stated that if I did, I would most likely miscarry due to the scar tissue and other related issues.

Then one day while reading my Bible I came upon the story of Abraham's wife, Sarah, who at age ninety miraculously conceived Isaac. After a church service, I asked my pastor to pray that I would be healed of infertility from the abortions. He compassionately inquired of how many abortions, and I painfully admitted, "Five". 

This pastor counseled me regarding God's mercy and we prayed together that God would heal me and free me from ongoing guilt and pain. Thanks to God because on that same evening, Rick and I conceived our first son.

Still struggling with remorse at times, I wondered what my aborted children would've looked like and what they could've become. Guarding my thoughts, meditating on Scriptures and studying factual pro-life literature provided to me, God guided me in the healing process.  

The truth would come out about the clinics that lied to me and to scores of naïve and desperate girls and women. The deception, prior to seeing these truths, preceded a second time of my near death, if it had it not been for God's miraculous intervention.

Once while driving, blinded by tears and a cloudy mind, thoughts of despair and hopelessness brought me to a point of considering plowing into a large trash dumpster on the road. Just before it happened, I sensed a still small voice say to me, "Are you going to kill another one?" I knew this was the Lord's voice reminding me that I was pregnant with my third child.

On our journey, Rick and I have experienced the ongoing revelation of God's love, mercy, and grace. We've also been blessed beyond measure with seven children as gifts from God after experiencing the loss of our little ones prior to our growing family.

As our longtime friend and pastoral guide Larry Tomczak says, "The most repeated verse in all the Bible, stated twenty-six times in Psalm 136 alone, is ‘His mercy endures forever.’”

We’ve experienced His grace in a phenomenal way and encourage everyone to believe it and join with millions awakening to the abomination of abortion-on-demand that must once and for all be stopped in our generation. 

Countering the lies, deception, and manipulation

Abortion is a moneymaking enterprise for Planned Parenthood and those involved. The tragic reality that our taxpayer money is channeled to them in subterfuge is a national disgrace and abomination before God.

We should all be grateful to God and support with our prayers and finances crisis pregnancy centers, adoption and those raising money to adopt; along with voting only for politicians who uphold the sanctity of human life. No matter how clever abortion marketing and deceptive terminology, the abortion industry continues to foster the genocide of generations.

May we be intentional in looking for and steering those pondering abortion to crisis pregnancy centers with compassionate servants spreading Christ's message and Corrine's to rescue multitudes.

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