By Bud Shaver (This post originally appeared at standforlife.net)
As women leave the late-term abortion clinic, Southwestern Women’s Options, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I ask them to tell the driver of a van that transports the women back and forth from their hotel to stop so they can receive a gift bag (or “Grace in a Bag”). The bag contains information for the women to consider both before and after their abortion and it also contains a gift for them (manicure kit, tissues, and cozy socks for her). This particular day, the driver did stop, but not to take information per the woman’s request, but to curse me out and yell at me. It struck me that abortion has a butterfly effect which impacts far more people than simply the child and the mother.
“In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions, where a small change at one place in a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state. The name of the effect, coined by Edward Lorenz, is derived from the theoretical example of a hurricane’s formation being contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks before.”
The chaos that is created when a woman makes the choice to have an abortion leaves many destroyed lives in the wake. If you consider that since the “Roe vs. Wade” ruling in 1973 there have been an estimated 55,000,000 children’s lives forever destroyed. Let’s add 55,000,000 mothers, 55,000,000 fathers, 55,000,000 grandmothers, 55,000,000 grandfathers, 55,000,000 siblings, aunts, uncles, and as it struck me today drivers and friends…these individuals alone total 550,000,000! Abortion is the hurricane that is ravaging not just children and women, but our entire nation!
The butterfly effect of abortion may be impossible to quantify. However, if you step out in faith and compassionately strive to end even just one abortion, there is hope for the alternative best articulated by the following Jewish saying, “When you save one life it is as if you saved the entire world.” We all have the ability and the responsibility to put a stop to all this chaos! That is why it is so vitally important to take a stand for life today.
We often simply think about the woman and her choice to have an abortion. However, we all have a choice to make as we are confronted with and impacted by abortion. That driver of the van made a choice and contributed to the chaos. My prayer is that more people will choose to allow God to use them to calm this raging storm and end abortion one child, one woman, one day at a time!
