Hard Cases and Honest Wrestling

Today's Reading

Read Romans 14:5: "Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind."

Then read 2 Corinthians 1:3-4: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God."

Reflection

Today we face the questions that slogans cannot answer. What about rape? What about incest? What about a pregnancy that threatens the mother's life? What about a prenatal diagnosis of a condition incompatible with life?

These cases represent a small percentage of all abortions — but they are not small to the women who face them. And how we respond to these cases reveals whether our convictions are rooted in genuine moral reasoning or in bumper-sticker theology.

We must begin by being honest about what we are dealing with. A pregnancy resulting from rape is the most violent collision of innocence imaginable: an innocent woman and an innocent unborn child, bound together by an act of evil that neither chose. There is no outcome that undoes the wrong. Any path forward involves suffering. To pretend otherwise — to offer glib assurances that everything will be fine if she just carries the baby — is to add cruelty to cruelty.

Tim Keller was right that simplistic answers to hard questions are not answers at all: "Simplistic answers to hard questions are not actually answers. They are ways of refusing to think." Christians who refuse to wrestle honestly with these cases forfeit the right to be taken seriously in the broader conversation.

The majority of the Christian tradition has held that even in cases of rape, the unborn child retains moral status. The child did not commit the crime, and his or her life should not be forfeit for the father's evil. This is a conviction that deserves respect, and many women who have carried pregnancies resulting from rape have testified to finding healing and meaning — though it is not our place to demand that testimony from anyone.

At the same time, we must acknowledge what the tradition has sometimes been reluctant to say: the toll of carrying such a pregnancy is enormous, and no one who has not faced it should speak about it with casual certainty. The God of 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 is the "Father of mercies and God of all comfort." He does not comfort by minimizing pain. He comforts by entering it.

When the mother's life is genuinely at risk, the vast majority of Christian ethicists — including staunchly pro-life ones — have recognized that medical intervention to save the mother's life is morally permissible, even when it tragically results in the death of the child. This is not because the child's life matters less, but because the situation is one of genuine moral tragedy where two lives are at stake and a choice must be made.

Cases of severe fetal anomaly — conditions incompatible with life outside the womb — present yet another kind of anguish. Parents who receive such diagnoses face a grief that defies description. The church's role in such moments is not to lecture but to weep, to hold, and to point to the God who is near to the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18).

Romans 14:5 may seem like an odd text for today, but Paul's counsel that "each one should be fully convinced in his own mind" recognizes that on some questions, faithful Christians will reach different conclusions after honest wrestling. This is not relativism. It is the humility of recognizing that moral complexity is real and that God alone sees all things clearly.

Going Deeper

If you hold a firm position on these hard cases, ask yourself: have I arrived at my conviction through genuine engagement with the suffering involved, or have I simply adopted the position of my political tribe? And regardless of where you land, commit to this: you will never use another person's tragedy as a debating point.