Sorry, No Hat Tip Here [Serge]

Compassion towards those who are experiencing an unplanned pregnancy is essential and an important aspect of our strategy. It also happens to be the correct Christ-like response to any woman in that situation. Furthermore, since no one is responsible for the circumstances of their own conception, and every child is an intrinsically valuable human being made in the image of God, we need to welcome each child into the world with loving and open arms. We need to help in any way we can to families in need. We also have to humbly recognize sin in our own lives to avoid the self-righteous judging of others. We should celebrate a decision made for life. These things are all true.

However...

In our efforts at compassion, we have to resist the urge to cloud over sinfulness and glorify wrong behavior. This can be challenging, for as we celebrate a woman's decision not to intentionally kill her child, we must not celebrate her choices that placed her in that situation. If we cannot resist this urge, we stand to perpetuate the culture's view that about reproduction that has created the abortion minded culture in the first place. This would be terribly unfortunate.

Here is an example. At Jill Stanek's website, she gives a tip of the hat to war correspondent Lara Logan for her decision not to intentionally kill her child. Both her and the father of her child are in the middle of divorces, and he has a three year old child form his marriage. Logan stated that her pregnancy was an unplanned one, and Stanek praises her for her "heroic" choice.

I understand the sentiment, and am very glad that Logan is not going to kill her child. However, I prefer to tip my hat to the many, many other women in a similar situation that choose not to place themselves at the risk of an unplanned pregnancy. A heroic decision is one made every day by so many individuals who decide to go against the culture's notion that extra-marital sexual activity is inevitable and unavoidable. Those are the real heroes, and their actions go unnoticed by the same media outlets that Logan works for.

I can celebrate the fact that a woman in a tough situation made a life-affirming choice. However, not killing your child is not exactly a high standard for heroism.