Finding comfort in numbers

It's pretty unexpected when the abortion debate lands solidly in your own lap after giving birth to four healthy children and having a tubal to prevent more. Just to clarify, Aaron and I chose the tubal sterilization surgery because I had such complications with Caleb's pregnancy. We felt further pregnancies may risk my life, and didn't feel that was a route God intended us to take at the time. However, any "mistakes" that might happen in the future would be gladly welcomed with much rejoicing! I know countless Christians who have made similar decisions about limiting family size...and wait, regardless, for another "mistake" to come their way.

So here is the "mistake". I still can't wrap my head around why God would allow a pregnancy, a miraculous one that defies medical logic, only to allow it also to be ectopic, and involve all these heartbreaking decisions for us. Especially in the midst of Amelia's medical crisis. I expect I won't really understand all of this until I sit at His feet in heaven. I finally found a few websites that compile some statistical evidence for a more conservative, non-abortive approach (see the Life in a Shoe blog); as well as cases of babies who survived tubal rupture and/or abdominal pregnancy (see RealChoice here and here).

As I ponder all things pre-birth, I feel thankful for the fortuitous winning of this book from a friend of a friend's blog; I also recently re-read Mark Driscoll's exposition on birth control at the behest of a friend's questions, and am comforted by the clarity of Scripture on the topic of unborn life:

Some will argue that there is a difference between a child in a mother’s womb and one outside, yet the early church saw both as equally living people and the taking of life in either state as equally murderous. Their convictions were based on Scripture, which uses the same word (brephos) for Elizabeth’s unborn child John the Baptizer in Luke 1:41, 44, as is used for the unborn baby Jesus in Mary’s womb in Luke 2:12, and also for the children brought to Jesus in Luke 18:15. Simply, in the divinely inspired pages of Scripture, God reveals to us that a child in the womb and a child singing and dancing around Jesus in worship are equally human beings who bear the image of God and thankfully Mary did not abort the “tissue” in her womb because He was God (see Charles H. H. Scobie, Ways of Our God: An Approach to Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 834).