Luke 17:32...it's the second shortest verse in the Bible. It's succinct, but it's message looms large. Jesus is speaking the apostles about his second coming to prepare them. It's consequential; failure to heed its warning could result in the loss of one's soul. No other explanation was needed for the apostles because they were very aware of the story; they knew it well. That may not be true of us today, however.

We don't know Lot's wife's name, but we know that she disobeyed God's command to not look back when fleeing Sodom. For her disobedience she is turned into a pillar of salt. So what are we to gather from Lot's wife. My pastor, Robert Wauhop, gave us 4 reminders about her:

1. Her spiritual privileges: She was related to Abraham so she knew the way of righteousness through faith. Thus, she was associated with God's covenant people. Her husband, Lot, was a righteous man, but none of that mattered because she did not believe.

2. Her sinful preoccupation: Her disobedience revealed her sinful attraction to the world. She longed for the very thing that God hates--the world. The looked back at what she loved and what she was going to miss. We cannot love God and the world at the same time.

3. Her Sinful Autonomy: She became her own arbiter of truth. She refused to listen to God. Instead, she set herself up as the judge of truth and, looking back, revealed her sinful loyalty to the world.

4. Her severe punishment: Her punishment was instant and intense. She went straight to hell. The punishment was instructive. God holds her up as a beacon for everyone to see as a lesson to us all. Remember Lot's wife! This could be you!

So, after this sermon on Sunday, I began to wonder about the potential for punishment for the most grievous sin of this nation--abortion. There is nothing more evil and it is something that has directly affected my life. I have not had an abortion (because I wouldn't), but I was born of rape. I am becoming actively involved in this movement to stop the rape and incest exceptions to abortion, because these exceptions would have had me murdered had they existed when I was born, and my brother as well.

I was born in Mobile, Alabama, in October 1967, to a teenage girl who had an IQ of less than 70. She had been molested for several years by her non-biological grandfather who she and her sister had been residing with along with his wife, their biological grandmother. He never denied what he had done. Unfortunately, her grandmother blamed her granddaughter rather than her husband for the situation and she kicked the child out of the home, sending her to a foster home. My biological mother never waivered in her plans to place me for adoption, although she fled the hospital prior to completing the paperwork which left me in foster care for five years. Take this situation and place it in 1973. I have no doubt that it would have been completely different outcome. Because of my mother's diminished capacity, I believe that her step-grandfather would have convinced her to go with him and to have a medical procedure, not telling her that she would be having an abortion to hide what he had done. It would have been so easy because she believed anything he told her. But, because abortion was illegal in 1967, he couldn't do it, and he got away with what he did. Even the DA in Mobile chose not to prosecute him for the rape saying that because of his age it wouldn't do any good. I don't believe that my grandfather put forth much effort to have him prosecuted because of his mother who would have struggled financially without his step-father. He sacrificed his daughter for his mother.

Five years later, she was in the same predicament again, this time take advantage of by an employer--an older man with control over her livelihood. He was married with children. It was September 1972, just four months before Roe v. Wade. Four months and it could have been a completely different result. He took her to Birmingham, an hour from where they lived to place the baby boy for adoption, away from the eyes of his community and his family. Her family was disinterested in advocating for her. They had all but abandoned her to her situation. 

Remember, my mother had no ability to consent to sex. She had an IQ less than 70, making her mentally disabled. I am told that her mental abilities were that of a 12-year old, and a 12-year old cannot consent to sex. This is the very sort of person that Plan Parenthood and other abortion rights advocates want exceptions for, but I will tell you that my mother never waivered in her belief that my brother and I deserved to live. She never blamed us for what these men did to her. She anguished over what was done to her, but she never connected those acts to us. She loved us and she wanted what was best for us. Certainly, she hurt for losing us, but she also understood that she could not be a mother. She understood her limitations. She had no one in her family to help her. In fact, her family was more of a hinderance than a help.

I am angered everyday when I hear people claim that children of rape and incest should be aborted. I cannot tell you how many times I have been told that I was a leech on my mother's body. I cannot imagine saying this to someone because I believe that all life has value. Why is my life less valuable than those conceived in loving relationships? Why does the crime lessen my value? The crime had nothing to do with me. The crime that my biological father committed was his sin and his sin alone. It was not reflective of anyone else in his family, so why would it be reflective on me? I am also the victim of rape. Thankfully I did not become pregnant by my rapist, but had I, I would not have sought out an abortion. The child conceived in rape can be the most healing thing to come out of something violent. My brother and I are the greatest things to come out of what happened to our mother. We have value. No doubt if our mother was alive today, she would love to see the families my brother and I have and what we have accomplished in our lives. She would never regret the choices she made. However, having an abortion can never be undone. It is a permanent resolution to a temporary, emotional state. Adoption is always the best option to an unwanted pregnancy, and as a former foster kid, I'd choose that every time over being dead.

In the preamble to the Declaration of Independence it reads: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The Founding Fathers believed, as they stated here, that our rights came from a Creator, not from man. This would, therefore, also mean that those rights cannot be taken away from man by man, but from that same Creator. Man has no right to take LIFE from man, only the Creator can do that. I am a child of God...a child created by God in His image with a purpose chosen by Him and no man has the right to circumvent God's plans. There should be no exceptions to abortion. The value of life must not be determined by how one is conceived, by location, by gestational age, or any other arbitrary condition. Life begins at conception and that is where value begins. Every child deserves the right to life. Life is the fundamental right of all people, without it there are no rights at all.