Why Women Seek Abortions: Listening Before Speaking

Today's Scripture

Isaiah 42:1, 3 — "Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations... a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice."

Matthew 12:20 — "a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory."

James 1:19 — "Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger."

The Big Idea

For three days we have heard Scripture's witness about the unborn. Today we turn to someone the debate usually talks about but rarely talks to: the woman herself. If we are going to speak about abortion the way Jesus would, we must first do what Jesus does with bruised people — come close, listen, and refuse to crush what is already breaking. Listening is not the opposite of conviction. It is the first act of love.

Reflection

The reed he will not break

Isaiah paints a portrait of God's chosen Servant, and Matthew tells us plainly who it is: Jesus (Matthew 12:20). Look at how this Servant carries justice into the world. He does not shout in the street. He does not march over the wounded to get to the winning. "A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench" (Isaiah 42:3). A bruised reed is a stalk already bent and split — one careless grip finishes it. A faintly burning wick is a candle down to its last thread of smoke. Jesus handles both like treasure. And notice: his gentleness does not cancel his justice. He is gentle and "he will faithfully bring forth justice." In God's economy, those are one mission, not two.

Now picture a bruised reed in modern dress. A woman sits in her car in a drugstore parking lot, a pregnancy test in her bag, scrolling through the contacts in her phone. Who can she tell? The boyfriend who said he'd leave. The boss who barely tolerates her schedule. The parents who will explode. Somewhere far down that list — or not on it at all — is anyone from a church.

Here is what researchers consistently find when they ask women why they sought abortions — even researchers at the Guttmacher Institute, which supports legal abortion. The leading answers are not slogans about freedom. They are practical and frightened: I cannot afford a baby. I would be alone. I would lose my job or my schooling. I am already stretched too thin caring for the children I have. Most women who seek abortions are already mothers. Many live near or below the poverty line. Many say they felt they had no real choice at all. Whatever we believe about the unborn — and this plan has not softened that conviction by an inch — these women are not cartoon villains. They are bruised reeds.

Quick to hear, slow to speak

So what does Scripture command first? Not a statement. An ear. "Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger" (James 1:19). The book of Proverbs is even sharper: "If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame" (Proverbs 18:13). By that standard, much of what our culture calls "the abortion debate" — on both sides — is folly and shame: answers fired before anyone has heard.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer told his students that listening is not a warm-up for ministry. It is ministry:

"The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Later, from a prison cell, he went further — and this sentence could retrain the way we see every woman in a clinic waiting room:

"We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

That is not moral surrender. Bonhoeffer never stopped calling things by their right names — we read his words about the embryo yesterday. It is a change of posture: before you weigh what she did, learn what she carried. Paul gives the church the same posture in four words: "weep with those who weep" (Romans 12:15). Not lecture those who weep. Weep first. Lectures from people who have never wept with you weigh nothing.

Test this against your own life. Think of a time you were in real trouble — failing, afraid, ashamed. Who actually helped you? Almost certainly it was not the person with the best argument. It was the person who sat with you long enough to understand. The church owes women in crisis that same patience, multiplied.

A spoke in the wheel

Listening, though, is only the beginning. If what we hear is that poverty, abandonment, and fear are driving women toward clinics, then love has to do more than feel sad about it. In 1933, as Nazi injustice gathered, Bonhoeffer told the church that aiding victims was not enough:

"The third possibility is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Church and the Jewish Question

The wheel is the machine that keeps crushing people. Bandages are good; jamming the wheel is better. Applied here: a church can hand out pamphlets against abortion forever, but if a woman's real reasons are an empty bank account, an absent man, and a community that will whisper about her, then the pamphlet changes nothing. The wheel keeps turning. Putting a spoke in it looks like money, housing, childcare, adoption, employers who don't punish motherhood, men held to their responsibilities, and a congregation where an unmarried pregnant woman is met at the door with help instead of raised eyebrows.

This is an old Christian instinct, not a new one. We saw it on day two: the same early church that flatly refused abortion also became the ancient world's rescue service — taking in abandoned infants and standing beside their mothers. Their no and their yes arrived together, and both cost them dearly. A no that costs the church nothing should embarrass us.

Tim Keller argues that this is not extra credit for unusually nice churches. It is simply what the Bible means by justice:

"God loves and defends those with the least economic and social power, and so should we. That is what it means to 'do justice.'" — Tim Keller, Generous Justice

And who has less economic and social power than a poor woman in crisis — except the unborn child she carries? This is the place where the political slogans of both sides fall apart. One side says: protect the child. The other says: support the woman. Scripture looks at the slogans and asks, why on earth would we choose? They are not two causes. They are one bruised reed, doubled.

The God who sees her

The Bible has already given us a picture of all this — one of the oldest stories in Genesis. Hagar is a servant girl, pregnant, used by the powerful, mistreated, and finally fleeing into the wilderness alone. She is exactly the kind of woman history forgets. But God comes looking for her, speaks with her, makes her promises — and she gives God a name no one in Scripture had used before: "You are a God of seeing... Truly here I have seen him who looks after me" (Genesis 16:13). The pregnant runaway is the first person in the Bible to name God. And the name she chooses is the One who sees me.

Jesus carried that same gaze through Galilee. When a woman was dragged before him to be made an example of, the crowd held stones and quoted Scripture. Jesus emptied the courtyard, then spoke to her like a person: "'Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?' She said, 'No one, Lord.' And Jesus said, 'Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more'" (John 8:10-11). Mercy first, then a new direction. Never one without the other.

Some reading this are not observers of today's topic. You carry an abortion in your own story, or you walked with someone who does, and pages like these reopen it. Hear the gospel addressed to you. Corrie ten Boom, who survived a concentration camp and lost her sister there, learned this in the deepest dark:

"There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still." — Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

John Newton was a slave trader before grace found him — a man with real blood on his ledger — and he became a pastor and wrote "Amazing Grace." Late in life he measured himself like this:

"I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am." — John Newton

This is why we can be honest about sin without being cruel about sinners: "we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses" (Hebrews 4:15), so we can "draw near to the throne of grace" and "receive mercy" (Hebrews 4:16). And for everyone hiding in Christ, the verdict is already in: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). Keller states the whole gospel in one breath:

"The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope." — Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage

A church that believes that sentence can finally talk about abortion the way Jesus talks to bruised reeds — with the truth fully lit, and not one reed broken.

Going Deeper

This week, do the listening before the speaking. Find one firsthand account from a woman who faced an unplanned pregnancy — a testimony, an interview, or, if she offers it, a conversation with someone you know and trust. Listen or read all the way through without composing your response. Then pray for her by name (or by story), and ask God one honest question: "What would she have needed from a church like mine — and could she have found it?"