Opinion
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September 13, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Brittany sat in the courtroom weeping, her face hidden in her hands. How had it come to this?

She looked up as the bailiff took her boyfriend, Harold, away to serve a life sentence in prison. For murder. She was only 17; he was 19.

“Please send me to jail, too!” she pleaded with the judge. After all, what they had done, they had done together.

The tragic story of Brittany and Harold (not their real names) shows how our culture has lost its sense of right and wrong, good and evil.

Like many teens, they had believed they were in love. As time passed, they grew closer, first emotionally and then physically. Eventually, they began having sex, believing that, since they were in love, everything was OK.

Then Brittany got pregnant, and she and Harold decided they didn't want to have the baby. They didn't want the responsibility or the embarrassment.

The best plan of action, they decided, was to have Harold apply pressure to Brittany's stomach to induce premature labor. After several days, the inevitable happened. In the middle of the night, at 21 weeks pregnant, Brittany started having contractions and delivered not one baby, but two – into the toilet. Harold was charged with double homicide.

Brittany faced no charges; state law did not allow a pregnant woman to be prosecuted for causing the deaths of her own fetuses.

Brittany testified in Harold's defense. But the law that protected Brittany did not protect Harold, and it treated the babies as what they were: human beings. Harold was convicted on two counts of homicide.

We have lost our sense of sin. The apostle Peter tells us that “the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). He begins by influencing us in small choices, but he doesn't stop there. Little mistakes lead to bigger ones, gradually enticing us to be more and more under his influence.

No one grows up wanting to get pregnant out of wedlock or have an abortion. If these things happen, they originate in the small steps we don't realize are leading us in the wrong direction.

When this story hit the media, a Planned Parenthood official said the case was evidence of the government trying to give fetuses the same status as adult human beings, ignoring the tragedy of the two babies losing their lives. He also complained, “Abortion is getting less accessible.”

His comments reveal the cold and insensitive mindset required to justify abortion rights. A mentality that doesn't want to recognize this “choice” for what it is or treat the root of the problem. A mentality that mentions “abortion getting less accessible” after twins have died at home. A mentality that doesn't want to right the wrong – that just wants to call it by a different name. A mentality that wants to keep the wrong but make it sound better.

A Fox News reporter asked Harold's attorney, “Why didn't she just go for an abortion? Why do this grisly thing?” The reporter's question implies that abortion is not grisly. The worst part of this tragedy is not that it was grisly, or even that it was illegal, but that two babies lost their lives. It's as if we have learned to approve of evil as long as it seems clean or professional or is portrayed as a right.

Yet nothing escapes our deepest human nature. When Brittany saw what she had done, she was heartbroken. She was reminded, in a very difficult way, that those twins weren't problems that needed a solution – they were her children.

She still visits their graves today. Abortion doesn't go away, no matter how grisly or clean we are told it is. Brittany will carry the pain of this tragedy forever.

This is adapted from The Beginning of the End of Abortion: 40 Inspiring Stories of God Changing Hearts and Saving Lives by Shawn Carney, the president and CEO of 40 Days for Life.