Archive: I Changed My Mind About Abortion

By Beverly A. McMillan, M.D., Former Abortion Clinic Director

Abortion – right or wrong?

The question has been tossed around by everyone from the high-school debate team to the network news commentator. But for those millions of Americans who face the decision of whether or not to end an unwanted pregnancy, abortion is much more than a topic for discussion. It is, literally, a matter of life and death. As an obstetrician-gynecologist I had my own personal struggle. My first encounter with the problem occurred in 1969. I was spending six months at Cook County Hospital in Chicago as part of my Mayo Clinic residency. I spent six weeks of this time on a ward for infected obstetric patients. My first night on call I naively thought my patients would come from the surgical wards where infection problems sometimes occur following Caesarian deliveries. I soon found out differently.

That night and every night I was on call, from 15 to 25 women were admitted to my ward with fever, bleeding, and tender, enlarged uteruses. Many of these patients were desperately ill. All night long my intern and I would admit them, start them on I.V. fluids and antibiotics, and try to keep them alive until morning. If they made it, we would take them to a treatment room and do a D&C, without anesthesia, to clean out the infected tissue. These women were the victims of Chicago’s back-alley abortionists.

Welcoming abortion

By the time my six-week stint was finished, I had become an abortionist by conviction. I concluded that if women could be so desperate about an unwanted pregnancy that they were willing to risk a bungled illegal abortion, and if orthodox medicine had the technology to perform safe abortions, then my profession should face its social responsibilities. We should offer safe abortions to such women.

When the 1973 Supreme Court decision (Roe vs. Wade) which legalized abortion was announced, I welcomed it. I was in private practice in Richmond, Kentucky, by that time. And since abortions were now legal, my partner and I bought a suction machine and began discreetly to perform first trimester abortions in our office.

In the fall of 1974 my family and I moved to Jackson, Mississippi. This was a difficult move for me since I had no family or friends in the area. I opened my office for private practice in January of 1975 and began a rather bleak year.

One bright spot came when I met a group of concerned citizens and clergy who wanted to organize a clinic offering safe abortions on an out-patient basis to the Jackson area. In fact the clinic was ready to open, except for one thing. The organizers had not found a physician willing to face the social stigma of being labeled an abortionist. Exercising the courage of my convictions, I volunteered and opened the first legal abortion clinic in the state.

I had come a long way since my girlhood days. I had been brought up a Roman Catholic and attended parochial schools through the eighth grade. I had certainly been exposed to a pro-life view during those formative years. But during my sophomore year in premedical studies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, I confronted the conflict between my Catholic values and the lifestyle of the world.

I made a decision to leave behind Christianity and the claims of the Catholic Church on my life. I then went through medical school and my postgraduate training as an agnostic, believing in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and in myself as the only one to whom I was ultimately accountable.

I had come to Jackson still an agnostic. In January of 1976, as I reviewed the year, I could see my new practice was going to be successful. In fact, as I reflected on my life I felt I had accomplished everything I had ever set out to attain: an apparently stable marriage, three healthy children, a growing medical practice, a nice house, a new car, and all the clothes I could wear. With all this in my favor, I was alarmed to find myself depressed and even contemplating suicide.

In desperation I sought out something to read to help change my attitude. By chance I happened on The Power of Positive Thinking by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale in a local bookstore.

The book was interesting and encouraging to me until I reached the end of the first chapter. There Dr. Peale listed 20 things to do to develop a positive attitude. I had no problem with any of these suggestions except for number seven which asked me to affirm ten times daily, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” I felt betrayed and frustrated because I could not repeat the verse, nor could I finish the book.

A strange relief

Finally, after struggling over a week with that verse, as I was driving to work one morning I just gave up and said out loud, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

At that time I had no vocabulary to describe what happened, but I suddenly felt a presence that was so real I burst into tears. I felt my heart almost crack inside me with a strange relief and joy. I must have repeated the verse over a hundred times that day.

I was able to finish reading Dr. Peale’s book and then, as it recommended, I bought a Bible and for the first time read the New Testament from beginning to end. As I read the Bible over the following months, I felt more and more uncomfortable about performing abortions. I think I was like many Christians in that I felt somehow God did not approve of abortion, but I knew of no hard facts or Scriptures to back up my feelings. Nevertheless, I stopped performing abortions personally in 1977, although I would continue as Medical Director of the clinic until 1978.

I began to attend church for the first time in the spring of 1977, and by December of that year I knew God was leading me to be baptized and to identify with His Church. Yet I felt a certain incongruity about a Christian calling herself Medical Director of an abortion clinic. I felt I must go one way or the other. When I was baptized and joined the church I resigned my position at the clinic. I’ve never regretted that decision.

As I grew in my understanding of God and His Word, I discovered why I had felt uncomfortable with my pro-abortion stand. For the past three-and-a-half years I have been actively involved in speaking to churches, civic organizations, and schools about the abortion situation in the United States. I speak from the perspective of the pro-life position, because I believe Scripture shows us that God considers unborn human life to be valuable and worthy of our efforts to protect it.

Personal accountability

Of the 1.5 to 2 million abortions performed annually in the United States, at least 95 percent of them are performed for reasons of convenience, usually as an attempt to hide or remove the consequences of sexual sin. This matter of personal accountability is one that the Church needs to be addressing today as the fundamental cause of the abortion problem.

The remaining five percent of abortions are performed for other reasons such as rape, incest, medical illness in the mother, and to prevent the births of “imperfect children.” Such cases are more difficult for people who want ethical answers to the abortion problem. But God’s Word is not silent in these areas either.

In His image

I believe the basic principle which underlies God’s pro-life position is contained in Genesis 9:6, “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man.” Our basic worth sterns from the fundamental fact of our creation in God’s image, and this creation I believe starts from conception.

In Psalm 139, which I like to call the Pregnant Woman’s Psalm, God voices His care and concern for the unborn: “For Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are Thy works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from Thee, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them” (vv. 13-16).

Not only does God know and care about human life in the womb, but such life has a definite spiritual dimension. In the first chapter of Jeremiah, when the prophet receives his call, God says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations” (v. 5). So the Bible indicates that a person can have a spiritual call on his life before he is born.

For Methodists, whose heritage includes the Wesleyan doctrine of sanctification, Luke 1:13-15 is a significant pro-life passage. Here Zacharias he is to be the father of John the Baptist. “But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your petition has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will give him the name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth. For he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and he will drink no wine or liquor; and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, while yet in his mother’s womb.'” So in at least one instance, the spiritual blessing of being filled with the Holy Spirit occurred to an unborn human being.

But what strikes me the hardest on this point is the Incarnation itself. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit. “Behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for that which has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit’ ” (Matthew 1:20).

Unjust punishment

I remember meditating on this verse and asking myself, What does conceived by the Holy Spirit mean? As an obstetrician-gynecologist I certainly knew how every other human being in the world was conceived—a sperm and an egg united and a new cell was formed which contained all that would become the developed human being. One day it occurred to me that what may have happened in the Incarnation was that the Holy Spirit took on the form of a human sperm and fertilized the egg in Mary’s body. From this fertilization the God-man was conceived. If Jesus Christ Himself would sanctify human life by identifying with it from its beginnings at conception, what then should our attitude be toward unborn human life?

The problem of rape and incest is a difficult area, for many people view continuing the pregnancy as an unjust form of punishment of a woman who has already been abused. However, the circumstance of the conception in such a case does not make the resulting child any less a person made in God’s image. The loving thing to do in this circumstance is to offer the woman love and support, both physically and emotionally, helping her through the difficult pregnancy and the decisions about whether to keep the child or place it for adoption. Such a solution is not an easy one, but I believe it is the right one.

In the case of medical disease where the mother’s health may be worsened by pregnancy, I would state from a physician’s point of view that these cases are very few. The correct moral decision in this dilemma reflects respect for both the life of the mother and the child, both of whom are created in God’s image.

“Imperfect” children

As the pregnancy progresses, the child’s chance for survival outside the womb increases. When the mother’s condition has reached the point where continuation of the pregnancy is truly dangerous to her health, such as in heart disease or when treatment that is going to be harmful to the baby is necessary, then an early delivery should be accomplished. The premature baby should then be given every benefit of medical science. In this way respect is shown for both lives.

In the case of so-called “imperfect” children, we are dealing with the ability of medical science to search out and destroy infants who have medical or genetic problems that may leave them mentally retarded or physically handicapped for life. The ethical question of what to do with these imperfect children is certainly addressed in the Bible. After all, we are all God’s imperfect children. We are marred by sin. We are not the kind of children God wanted. We hurt Him and disappoint Him. God in fact has a perfect right to destroy us.

But God’s response to His imperfect children was to love us, to send His own Son to suffer and die on the cross for us, and through His blood to adopt us back into His family. The Scriptures challenge us to treat our own imperfect children in a similar, loving way.

If abortion on demand were done away with tomorrow, how would I as a Christian confront the problem of women wounded in the illegal abortion mills? I know I would again be saddened by their plight, but I would not be outraged. I think the entire Christian community must be prepared to respond to the needs of these women with unwanted pregnancy, not by ostracizing them, but by going to their side to help them through the pregnancy and through the medical expenses and social problems engendered by the pregnancy. The alternative to abortion is an expensive one, but a morally correct one.

Dealing with guilt

Finally, what of those who must deal with the guilt of abortion? The good news that makes the Gospel so relevant today is that God forgives. I know from personal experience that the blood of Jesus can cover the sin of abortion.

In my own life I once thought abortion was a good thing, the answer to many social and medical problems I saw around me. Now I know that “there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12). When I understood the sanctity of unborn human life, I changed my mind about abortion.

Dr. Beverly Smith McMillan has a private practice of obstetrics and gynecology in Jackson, Mississippi. She is married and has three sons and a stepdaughter.