RICHARD MAFFEO
A lingering sadness

I stared at her in disbelief when she broke the news to me. Surely she was joking. I was 17. Judith was 19. Both of us, I convinced myself, were much too young to be tied to a baby.

“What do you mean, you’re pregnant?” I asked quietly. Meanwhile, my mind whirled with a thousand fears. What would I tell my parents? What would we tell hers? Do I want to marry her? This all must be a mistake.

“What do you mean, you’re pregnant?” I asked quietly.

But there was no mistake. She had just come from the doctor’s office. As she awaited my reaction, I knew she expected me to propose marriage.

Instead, I talked her into having an abortion.

It was easy to suggest that alternative. I chose to believe the lie that our baby was only a “glob of cells” growing in her womb. I chose to believe it because, in so believing, I was freed of my responsibilities to my girlfriend and to our child. A few months after the abortion, my girlfriend and I went our separate ways.

Today, my son or daughter would be 32 years old. Perhaps he or she would be a missionary, or a teacher, or a business person, or. . . . Perhaps I would be a grandfather. Perhaps. . . . But there is no “perhaps”. Time doesn’t turn backwards.

Abortion is not simply a rights issue. It has deep and enduring spiritual implications for those of us who, too late, have awakened to the truth that abortion kills a baby . . . my baby. And rhetoric doesn’t purge the lingering sadness 32 years later.

Although the sad memories remained, I knew God had forgiven me for everything I had ever done.

However, I have found something which can ease that sorrow.

In 1972, four years after the abortion, a friend gave me a Bible and told me about the new life I could have in Jesus Christ. As I leafed through its pages, one verse in particular grabbed my attention: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). That I was a sinner came as no surprise to me. Having lived a life of rebellion, drug abuse and sexual immorality, no one needed to tell me my life was a mess. But the Bible also promised I could be forgiven. “Come now, let us reason together,” God urged through the prophet Isaiah. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18). The apostle John wrote in another part of the Bible, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (I John 1:9).

As the weeks passed and I continued studying the Bible, I began to understand what I needed to do. One evening, dropping to my knees at the foot of my bed, I confessed to God as many of my sins as I could remember. When I stood, I did so as a new person. Although the sad memories remained, I knew God had forgiven me for everything I had ever done. . . . even for delivering my baby to an abortionist.

Whatever you have done, the same God who forgave me will also forgive you. Everyone who turns to Him will find His great, far-reaching love.