"For the first time in my life."

“When you said you were going to show the video of aborted babies, I was surprised. But I felt I needed to look—to know once and for all what I did.”

Aubrie, the kids, and I had just finished a jaunt to Scranton, PA—where I had been invited to deliver the keynote speech at the annual prayer breakfast hosted by Pennsylvanians for Human Life—when I had received a call from Andrea, who was present at the event.

Andrea told me about her abortion 30 years prior. She said in mid-2018 she had finally begun to pursue healing and that the prayer breakfast was the first major pro-life event she had ever attended.

When, in the middle of my presentation, I transitioned to the video of abortion victims, Andrea became uncertain of whether she wanted to watch. But by the time I finished prefacing the disturbing video with the beauty of the Gospel—explaining God does not merely overlook sin but that His Son became our sin—she had made her decision.

“I felt I needed to look,” Andrea told me, “so that I could finally release it to God, to see the results of what I did. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But after the video, I finally felt God’s forgiveness deep into my toes—for the first time in my life.”

We are often told showing abortion victims to those who have had abortions will only do them harm. While my experience is by no means exhaustive, I often find the opposite to be true. Andrea explained, “I would compare it to a wound that festers if left alone. It needs to be lanced, opened up so that it can be healed.”

As she said this, I was reminded of Dr. King’s famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail, in which he writes, “Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”

King’s emphasis was ending injustice, whereas Andrea’s is healing afterward. But both agree that to cover it up is counterproductive. When we expose injustice, there will be pain—but thank God that He is ready and willing to forgive those who believe in His Son.