"To know what would have happened, child? No. Nobody is ever told that. But anyone can find out what will happen.”

I received this email from one of my friends who received it from her boss.  I have heard this argument before, and I don't agree with it.  We can't live our life or argue our viewpoints based on what might or might not have happened.  


How many Steve Jobs have been aborted over the last 30 years?  :(  

Just a little background on Steve Jobs. Something you may not know about his life and about a woman named Joanne Schiebel. In 1954, Joanne was a young unmarried college student who discovered that she was pregnant. In the 1950s, her options were limited. She could have had an abortion – but the procedure was both dangerous and illegal. She could have gotten married, but she wasn’t ready and didn’t want to interrupt her education. Joanne opted, instead, to give birth to the baby and place that baby for adoption.

And so it was that in 1955, a California couple named Paul and Clara Jobs adopted a baby boy, born out of wedlock, that they named Steven.

We know him today…as Steve Jobs.

It would not be overstating things to say that Steve Jobs is my generation’s Thomas Edison. As one observer put it, he knew what the world wanted before the world knew that it wanted it.

If you have a computer or an iPhone or an iPad or an iPod, or anything remotely resembling them, you can thank Steve Jobs.

If your world has been transformed by the ability to digitally hear a symphony, send a letter, pay a bill, deposit a check, read a book and then buy theater tickets on something smaller than a cigarette case…you can thank Steve Jobs.

And: you can thank Joanne Schiebel.

If you want to know how much one life can matter, there is just one example.

But: imagine if that life had never happened.

Imagine if an unmarried pregnant college student 56 years ago had made a different choice.

Now, imagine all the unmarried pregnant college students who make that different choice today.

There are valid pro-life arguments, but I don't think this is one of them.  A newly born human life is just that. It should be protected because it is a human life.  New parents enjoy dreaming of all the things their children will grow into, but in reality they have no idea.  Sure, that child could someday become "the next Steve Jobs" or "the next Mother Theresa"... but they are human and therefore also have the potential to become "the next Adolf Hitler" or "the next Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold."  And if we had technology to know better which side of morality that child would end up living his/her life on, it would still be wrong to abort the pregnancy since every human life is redeemable.  The thing about arguing that one should not abort a pregnancy in case that child is destined to do wonderful things is that there is a flipside: one should abort a pregnancy lest that child grow up to do terrible things.  

Each human soul brings both more brokenness AND more hope into the world.  We are the great contradiction.  

One of the great beauties of creating human life is that parents are creating a being who also has the ability to create - life, art, sadness, hope, confusion, chaos, friendship, love, their own story.  That is why creating human life is also one of the greatest risks in life.  

We should not be against ending a human life for what it might have been but for what it already is.