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Dawn McAvoy: Pro-Life and Pro-Woman || SLP504 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you ask most Christians who do they think of or what do they think of when you say incarnation, they nearly all go to the manger.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, the incarnation started pre-birth.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Your concern to position both lives just helpfully wakes people up to yes, this can be and is a pro-woman cause.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: The God who created all, the word who spoke all into being became voiceless, became invisible in the womb.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus, including the status of the unborn.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's a topic that we've spoken of many times on this channel.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: I've spoken about it to people like Mary Harrington, I've spoken about it to people like Louise Perry.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: When I spoke to Louise, uh, she gave the example of Romania as uh the example of a country that uh brought in abortion bans and there was carnage as a result.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I didn't really buy the way that Louise was talking about the Romanian example, and as she spoke about the Romanian example, it seems to me that there is an example that is much closer to home.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: The example of Northern Ireland.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Northern Ireland did not adopt the Abortion Act that the rest of the UK adopted in 1967.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: And between 1967 and 2019, it had a different set of laws.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: But it meant that a hundred thousand more children were born in Northern Ireland who otherwise wouldn't have if the Abortion Act was applied to them.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: We have an example of what it looks like to have a more pro-life culture in our midst.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, since twenty nineteen the law has changed in Northern Ireland, but somebody who has been in that culture and speaking for the unborn is Dawn McAvoy.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: She is the co-founder of Both Lives, together with the Evangelical Alliance, and she joins me on the line.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Hello there, Dawn.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Hi Glenn.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Lovely to be with you.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now you founded Both Lives, and it was called Both Lives Matter in in the beginning.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um tell us some of the reasons why you thought it was it was necessary, really, to start this initiative.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was working for the Evangelical Alliance in Northern Ireland, and in about 2015-16 there was a specific legislative challenge.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: So a bill was being brought to the Assembly to change the law on abortion and to permit abortion solely for reasons of um what they were terming a fatal fetal abnormality and in cases of sexual and sexual crime.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So for goodness, decades, really, abortion law in Northern Ireland had been settled.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't being discussed at a policy level.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it was the first time in a long time that really people were getting engaged with the issue.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I was meeting with uh our members of the Legislative Assembly as the EA and was meeting church leaders, and we realized there was a lot of good work being done with pro-life work at with other groups in Northern Ireland.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I remember coming back to our boss and saying, I think there's a need for a different voice, and there's a bit of a gap.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: We need a voice that is overtly pro-woman and pro-both lives in pregnancy, so it can't be put into the nasty anti-woman box or the forced birther box, and a voice that creates a space, opens a door for people of all faiths and none.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we speak with religious language and we defend our position with scripture, uh, but it's contextualized.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we we did, we we launched both Lives Matter, we co-founded it with the EA and with Christian Action Research Education.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a crisis pregnancy service provider at that time, so this is 2017, and we created then the campaign to be pro-woman, pro-life, um, and to create a space that was collaborative for people of all faiths in them.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: So in the Northern Ireland space, I think that was probably one of the most encouraging things.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: We had people sitting around the table from a Republican background, um, a unionist, loyalist background, we had Catholic, Protestant, um, male and female, and it it actually showed that as an issue it was a bridge builder.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: It um created a space, a really unifying, hopeful space.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that was 2017, 2019, the law was changed from Westminster.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: We took a couple of years of the COVID hit, and we thought about where the campaign was going.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And in the context of the difference in the law, the significant difference that liberalized abortion, uh, to the degree that it was we went from being the most protective space on these islands to the least protective space for unborn lives.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um in recognition of that, we sort of we had a vision of Nehemiah, I think, and the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem, and we recognized that we'd had a sword in our hand that was raised, that was the primary tool, and for this new season, the sword was being lowered, but we had a tool in our hand that was maybe going to take priority, and we refocused our message, really reweighting it towards the church specifically, so still being mindful for outside the church, but really thinking the church has the story.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I know maybe the phrase the better story is becoming so overused people don't listen anymore, but um, really believing that God has a better story for both lives, and the church is the means by which both lives and pregnancy can be empowered, enabled, and if the church isn't doing that, that question remained well, who who is?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: So both lives is now yes, the within the EA more centrally and focused across the UK, not just in Northern Ireland.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have experience of um messaging and advertising and publicity and and marketing and that that that sort of skill set?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think the messaging around both lives is phenomenal.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think your concern to position both lives as uh a pro-woman organization is exactly right.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think um so much of uh the messaging and so much of the framing that you give to that issue, I think just helpfully wakes people up to um yes, this this can be and is a pro-woman cause as well.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: So what kind of experience uh do you have in this area?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: None.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think an instinct An instinct.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And also I think as as a woman, um sitting in rooms now, I don't I don't want anybody to mishear me.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Men need to be part of the conversation here.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a man and a woman to make a baby, and too many men don't step up to their responsibilities, and that then leads, you know, in the context of the GB stats, so the UK stats, 83% um are women whose marital status is given as single.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: So men are absolutely part of the picture, their voices matter and they need to be held to a higher bar.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but as a woman, I was sitting in rooms and I think you see things differently because you're coming to the table, you're seeing it through the eyes of a woman who has been pregnant or has is a mother.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I can remember, for example, coming back and speaking to colleagues and saying, we need to be talking about childcare, because I'd been talking with uh legislators in Northern Ireland about their experience of pregnancy and motherhood.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the men in the room said, Oh, childcare's like got nothing to do with the abortion conversation.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Well, honestly, a man would say that, but every woman that I'm talking to is talking about we need to talk about childcare.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think women bring a different experience.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's a level of just authenticity in the messaging, it's not being crafted by PR people in a room.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's it's what women feel and experience as much as anything else.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: You yourself have experienced a crisis pregnancy.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: What is that like?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was at university uh um across the water, so I wasn't in Northern Ireland, um, and that's relevant because obviously abortion was available.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a vague understanding of abortion being a legal option across the water from from where I grew up in Northern Ireland.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: But when I was at university and um found out that I was pregnant, uh I went to you had to go to a GP then to have the pregnancy confirmed.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: So the the GP that I went to was lovely, asked me what I was going to do, and I said I was I was leaving to get married, and I could remember I can remember she said you don't have to do that, you have other options or other choices.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, What would that be?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, You can have an abortion, and I remember being shocked at how how easily it was said and offered, and it wasn't even on the table for me.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um my husband and I, my now husband had grown up together, we were talking about getting married when I graduated anyway, so so an abortion just wasn't just no, that was just not going to be on the table for me at all.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then a flatmate that I was sharing with um I had never met her mum.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Her mum was a GP in England, and I can remember my flatmate saying to me, Oh, my mum's on the phone, can she speak with you?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I said yes.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And her mum again, very compassionate, I think out of a place of of genuine concern, said, Don't throw your life away.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think both of those conversations stuck with me for years.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't think I didn't think about them much until I was in this space with the Evangelical Alliance, talking about abortion, meeting legislators, and those two sentences kept coming up in my mind, and I was thinking, you know, we're now 20 years later.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: What choices do students, for example, have?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, do are we any further on?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: We we just keep offering more and more and more access to abortion.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: But for example, in Northern Ireland we have five university campuses, one offers childcare.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: So with more abortion, but we don't have more real options for women, and and that student age, 20 to 23, um, is the primary age of risk of from abortion for women.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: So choice really only means abortion.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other comment that had been made, don't throw your life away.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was then looking at my grown daughter and thinking, okay, my life took a different turn.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't do what I thought I was going to do.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I would have been throwing her life away.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So those two conversations based with professional women who genuinely were acting, I've no doubt, out of a sense of compassion and concern, but it was misplaced compassion.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't really offering choice to continue in that line of study and career.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: What they were saying, you can either do that or have your baby.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I just remember thinking we both deserve better than that.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so much of the language um masks different agendas that goes beneath it.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: So the langu the language of choice, as as you rightly say, is really it's the choice to kill the unborn child.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's not actually an abstract love of choice and opening up options for the woman.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: If it was, then there'd be all sorts of support that would be, you know, given to you in in order to to raise the child.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then the yeah, the throwing your life away thing is is well what what is life?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like um you okay, so you stopped doing your degree.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Is that throwing your life away um when yeah, you just become a mother?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, this is this is quite a meaningful um part of of life for you to pursue.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um it just it just it feels to me in in so much of the conversation around abortion that a lot of the language that's used is language that is instantly aimed at giving us a sense.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it's health care and who could be against health care?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's choice and who could be against choice.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's about bodily autonomy and who could be against bodily autonomy.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's um shown as a as a pro-woman thing, and and you don't want to be anti-woman, do you?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And yet when you press beneath so many of these things, um you find that there's a there's a whole different world view.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh how as as as you try to like talk about this issue, how how do you get beneath the the the language and get to the substance of things?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: There are four things we say.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: We want to reframe the conversation.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like so often you're playing uh a game based on the rules of people that actually they're you're playing rugby and they're playing soccer or something.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they have a different agenda.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um so we need to reframe the conversation, we need to reclaim the language.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: So what does justice look like if one life is being ended?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what does pregnancy mean?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Scientifically, medically, another life has begun, so we need to reclaim truth and facts because they all matter.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: We need to rehumanize the people involved.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Abortion laws and policies that that the UK have had for nearly 60 years have dehumanized increasingly the unborn child, but also I would say they dehumanize women.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, women are uniquely designed to conceive, to bear children, to nurture children internally, and then very often they're the primary caregiver post-birth.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and whenever we deny that reality and remove the valid choices that women deserve, we're dehumanizing women as well.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we need to redeem the story uh because we can imagine better.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: So in that way, we try to challenge and dig behind the language that we hear and the questions that are being asked of us or what we're being charged with.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think where so many people in the context of what's seen as modern and progressive, they'll align with a choice label.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you force them to choose, you know, are you pro-choice or pro-life?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't doubt the polling that says many people on the street will align with a pro-choice label because it's seen as compassionate.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I also think when you dig behind the language, most people are much closer to our position than they realize.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, tell me more about that.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because for most people, most people draw a line on the choice that they're saying they support.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: So when you said before, you know, choice in healthcare is referring to abortion in this context.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: For people on the street, if they say they're pro-choice, polling would suggest, and certainly anecdotally, very few people mean abortion up to birth.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: They all draw a line somewhere.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Do you agree with abortion for disability?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Do you agree with abortion past the point of viability?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, do you think a girl baby can be aborted because she's just a girl?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: But but they're pro choice.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know so so that in in that way we try and we don't concede the conversation based on someone's alignment with a label.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we actually call ourselves pro both.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: We try not to get put in a pro-life box because then it can close down a conversation.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um and similarly, we don't want to put anybody else in a box.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't get hung up on labels that people give themselves.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we try and just dig under, challenge the understanding of justice, the concept of compassion, um, people's understanding of human rights.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's no human right to end a human life, and the Declaration on the Rights of the Child talks about the child before birth deserving legal protections.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so to remind people of that.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess one of the areas that we're kind of orbiting around is is the question of when life begins, because um yeah, the person who says that they are pro-choice, as you rightly say, most of them when they're asked, d does that mean right up until the point of birth, most people would would uh draw a line somewhere before that.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then Christians are asked, well, why why do you believe that life begins at conception?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess there's there's certain scriptures that you can go to, you can go to you know, Psalms and and and talk about uh, you know, from the time that my mother conceived me.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um David talks about that in in Psalm 51, and you can go to Psalm 139 in different places, and you can go you can go to scriptures to talk about sort of life from conception.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you are zeroing in in in your new campaign called God Unborn on I think a very powerful argument for why Christians think that that life begins right from conception.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh how how would you frame that question?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how would I frame the question?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: So when we're in churches talking about pregnancy crisis and abortion, it can very often seem quite um ideological.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you're talking about theology, you're talking about philosophies, um and even though everybody goes straight to the Psalms or or whatever, you know, knitted together in my mother's womb.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um but there's something really challenging for the church in being able to disconnect that idea from the reality of abortion in a way that has created, I think, a breach in the wall of truth.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: So then those lies that mean that people can be ideologically pro-life in the church, but situationally pro-choice, you know, so when it comes to their door, they can justify it in their heads that God doesn't really care about unborn lives, they can sort of flip-flop.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we were in a church talking, uh it was coming up to Christmas, and we had a picture on one of our PowerPoint slides was a picture of Mary um with a glowing baby bump, and we were talking in line with our our name, both lives.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: We were talking about both lives in pregnancy, and we were always saying God cares for both lives.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we had this picture of Mary, and I then asked the room, you know, who's in the picture?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, everybody said Mary, and I asked, Well, who else is in the picture?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: And a couple of people sort of said as if, oh, is it Jesus?
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: you know, and there was a bit of giggling.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I then said God chose to come as an embryo, and it was a bit of a light bulb moment.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: We hadn't really in our church talks, we were doing sort of stats around abortion.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: We were talking about legislative challenges, we were looking at gestational development, and then we talked about scripture, but actually we weren't connecting at all with God's story, God's human story.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the more we thought about that and thought about the incarnation, um, and if you ask most Christians, you know, who do they think or what do they think of, who do they think of, or what do they think of when you say incarnation, they nearly all go to the manger.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or some very evangelical people will go straight to the cross, skip the whole life in between.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and then we were like, well, actually the incarnation started pre-birth in the womb, because if we believe scripture, um Mary conceived, and then the more we thought about that, it was just mind-blowing that the God who created all, the word who spoke all into being, became voiceless, became invisible in the womb.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the conversation around abortion, which really pivots so much around power and independence and an unwillingness to submit or suffer, you think well.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, God the Son submitted to being invisible, voiceless, waiting nine months in the womb to develop, to be born of a woman, to still be vulnerable.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he genuinely, in every sense of the word, joined us in all of our humanity.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that then speaks to who is made in the image of God.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, Jesus, we are made in his image from conception.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and for us, the the depth of that then really speaks to whether or not we can, in all credibility, any credibility as Christians, dehumanize the unborn human being because in the language of today, was the unborn Jesus Mary's body and Mary's choice.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, he wasn't.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: So as a Christian, you have to, I think it forced you to think again about the value God gives to unborn life, but also to the woman who is carrying that baby.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: So when we were preparing for this year's um message around God Unborn, Mary said yes.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um it had never struck me before thinking about when Jesus was kneeling and doing something in the sand, writing something in the sand when the religious leaders asked him about the woman caught in adultery.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because we were looking at Mary and Mary's journey this year, it was like it was one of those light bulb moments again.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know Jesus would have been told stories of the angel, you know, visiting his mother and the journey to Bethlehem and the birth and fleeing to Egypt?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he would have grown up hearing those stories.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and when he looked at the woman who they wanted to stone, and did he see his mum and remember that if Joseph hadn't been a righteous man, she could have been publicly shamed, accused of adultery.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Did he see his mother in that woman?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously it's a it was a different context, you know, but it's that personal connection.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: So again, the people around the circumstances of God's pre-birth incarnation really give a depth to the value of pre-born life.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: And when you think that most abortions, 98% are physically healthy babies and physically healthy women, that as I said already, over 80% are women whose marital status is single, and you're three times as likely to, up to three times more likely to terminate your pregnancy if you live in the most deprived areas than the least.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: The two biggest drivers of abortion are poverty and fatherlessness.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: And when you look at Mary and Joseph, Mary could have, she could have been shamed, stigmatized, Joseph could have walked away, divorced her.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: They fled, they were refugees, they were poor when they took him to the temple, they couldn't afford the full sacrifice.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they grew up in very humble circumstances in a backwater community that was really subcategorized by, you know, the powerful and the elite.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um the circumstances of mo the vast majority of abortions are the circumstances that God chose to enter the world into.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that just is so powerful.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so yeah, God has chosen a s a human story that embraces all those things.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: And like whenever I'm asked, you know, why am I pro-life, I I say, well, it's because of Christmas and Easter.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because at Christmas we learn when did God the Son join the human race?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like we don't have to guess.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Luke chapter one tells us that at the Annunciation, there is Gabriel saying to Mary, What is conceived is you in you is from the Holy Spirit.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um so when did Jesus begin his human journey?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: When when did God the Son take humanity to himself?
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right from the beginning.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: When is the beginning?
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: Conception.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's absolutely vital to our gospel that actually he takes he doesn't take a pre-existing humanity, and he's not in Mary's womb as a pre-human, just as God the Son.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: We know that it is God the Son as God our brother in Mary's womb at conception.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: It is airtight, waterproof, um hundred percent proof, um that life begins at conception.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and then I'm pro-life because of Easter, because Easter tea teaches you how should you treat the weakest and the least and the last and the lost, and the despised things, and the things that the culture says uh are nothing.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the the cross would teach you, uh, 1 Corinthians chapter 1, that that we are to lift up the things that that you know that God has chosen and that the world despises.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: So our weak uh human brothers and sisters in the womb uh deserve all provision and protection in in the ways that you're you're kind of talking about.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that idea of Mary said yes.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um we we did um we did a Christmas outreach of of four films called Meet The Nativity, in which a 21st century character, or four different 21st century characters, meet different characters from the first century nativity, and there's there's one scene in which there's a an unplanned pregnancy, a crisis pregnancy happens, and the girlfriend gets to meet Mary through the magic of time travel.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and as she's having a conversation with with Mary, she says to Mary, you know, I got a present that I wasn't expecting.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: And Mary says, Well, presents are like that, and she said, No, but I really wasn't expecting this one.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: And what we had Mary say in that scenario is We make our plans, but in the end life is life is what we're given.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds terrifying.
• 28:14
  unknown: It is.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: We make our plans, but life is what's given to us.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: And in that film, you know, the the girlfriend ends up, you know, keeping the keeping the baby, and and I think at that point, what we're in touch with as we like emb as as we look to Mary saying yes, what we're in touch with is what life is really about.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not about your plans, actually.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you might be in the middle of uh of a degree, but you you have a child and and there is this sort of bolt from the blue, but that is where life is found.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: And as you receive the gift of life, not something that you earn or work for or plan for, but something that is a pure gift, actually embracing that from beyond is is what life is kind of all about.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so as we talk about like pro-life issues or the unborn, we're talking about the gospel, and we're talking about the heart of what it means to live a a human life, you know, in in in all its richness.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I I I find that I you know, pe people might wonder, you know, why why is Speak Life an evangelistic ministry, you know, talking about pro-life issues.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: I actually think it's it's an area in which the culture has a certain narrative and the gospel has a certain narrative.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: And as we live into that gospel narrative of God unborn and of Mary saying yes, you're you're suddenly you're able to see the culture in its true light, and you're able to see to see the goodness of the good news.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um tell Tell us about how people are reacting to you know this teaching as as you're bringing them, you know, messages of God unborn of and of Mary saying yes.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think it it's interesting, depending on a person's church background, whether they have some degree of um understanding or information about the the concept, even.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um so whenever we're talking to people from an Anglican or a Catholic background, they maybe are a bit more familiar with the idea of the Feast of the Incarnation or the Feast of the Annunciation, um, and they'll talk more about the pre-born Jesus.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um for other denominations, um it's completely new.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we don't talk about Mary, we're very nervous about talking about Mary, um, we don't like to think about uh the possibility of not talking about Jesus, you know.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: So there's nervousness, there are questions.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: What um why why are we talking about Mary?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Why are we talking about it in March?
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like we've just had Christmas, and and then you're saying, yes, but do you know why we celebrate Jesus' birth on the 25th of December?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's because church tradition says he was conceived in the 25th of March, and actually the new the financial year started with the new birth and the new year.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: And do you know it just it's like there's a whole church history there that you can you're saying this isn't we didn't we're not geniuses, you know, we didn't imagine this or create this, um but actually it's just it's a truth that has been forgotten or has never been heard by very many.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I think we're going softly with it, uh depending on people's church backgrounds, we we get that they don't get why we're talking about Mary, why we're talking about it in March, because Easter's coming.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um so you're trying to say, just you know, take a breath, slow down.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and what we generally romp through in three weeks at Christmas, um, actually, if we are prepared to journey those nine months in our heads, there's a lot more that God can say to us that's not wrapped up in tinsel and presents and um and all the the rest that Christmas brings that maybe we miss the theological depth that is there.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it's a real opportunity to press into the theology of incarnation and and yeah, and not simply uh get our turkey roasts on.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: But um yeah.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: So tell me what is it what does it call forth from us as Christians and as the the Church of Jesus Christ to take this position?
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's it's it's certainly it's one thing to have you know a doctrine that life begins at conception and that's uh all pre-born lives matter.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's one thing to to believe those things.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very different thing to uh put it into practice and to become the kinds of communities where that truth really sings.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: So so what is what is called for from churches if we're going to be properly pro-life?
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: I if I reflect on my own story again.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um whenever I find out that I was pregnant, um, it was like a really bad time for me, for my now husband.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: He was at a really crucial point in training.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um and if he hadn't believed in the value of unborn life, and so then supported me, when we then told our parents, if they hadn't believed in the value of unborn life, they wouldn't have supported us in our decision making.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then we were enabled to become parents and a family at a time when financially we weren't ready, emotionally maybe we weren't ready.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I think whenever Christians really grasp that God cares for both lives and pregnancy, that God says both lives matter, he joined us pre-birth, which is evidence that we are made from conception in his image, it gives a dignity, a value, and a worth that maybe we haven't really grasped before.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Our starting point determines where we finish.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: So then it means regardless of circumstances, regardless of it being unplanned, less than perfect, we have to, if abortion is taken off the table, we have to create the support systems and structures to enable both lives to be chosen to live and to thrive together.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not a matter of forcing a woman to not have an abortion by removing that legal ability.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's about enabling her to choose life and then living life with her as communities.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: So she's not shamed, she's not stigmatized, um, she's not alone.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: She has a community around her.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we have an amazing story on our on our website of a girl who uh got pregnant.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she didn't know Jesus, she had just done her A levels, and by the time she found out she was pregnant, she was past the point of a legal termination in England and Wales.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: She was sort of past 24 weeks.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um her family were not impressed, to say the least.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't a church-going family, they were very critical.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: If she'd known earlier, they could have got over to England for an abortion, you know, her life was ruined.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um she said the first person to say congratulations was a Christian young woman that she'd known from school.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And to hear the word congratulations redeemed who she was.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: She wasn't like a this picture of like a teenage mum on benefits, and her life was over, and everybody else was so critical.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: She then found Jesus, uh, came to know him as her Lord and Savior, went to university to study theology, and then when we met her, she was at university studying, and she had this posse, we called them her posse, um, young men and women who followed Jesus, so they had the truth of the value of both lives.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: They had the way of Jesus that enabled them to genuinely, they weren't anti-abortion, obviously.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: She had she had her baby by then, but their value of life wasn't just saying no to abortion, it enabled them to give her the way to do her studies.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: They were surrogate aunts and uncles, they babysat, they helped her meet deadlines.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she then graduated with her first class honours, she became a church worker.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they lived the way truth that brings life because of their love for Jesus.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: And when we really grasp the pro-life message, then it means we are welcoming every life and all life, and we're part of this solution, and every every woman's story is unique, you know, there's no one size fits all, but it may it means that we don't just sit back and say, Oh, the government, you know, consort it.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, churches can play a huge part in being that welcoming intergenerational support network, um, parachurch organizations that you know maybe have more of a policy directive and can speak at more of a statutory level as well.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: For most women, it's their friends and family.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually who they need most.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, again, the the women who've given us their stories whose families, you know, were good church-going families, but the secret sin of sex outside of marriage in their words or in their eyes, or the secret sin of abortion was better than the public shame or the mummy that said, No, well I'm pro-life, but I wouldn't want my daughter's life ruined.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so I think if Christians really grasp the value of both lives, then they know they need to create this scenario where both lives can live and thrive.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: And at that stage, our plans have to go out the window.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we we make our plans, but it's yeah, life is what's given to us, and as we just embrace the gift of God, just it and it's like the gospel in that sense, isn't it?
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like we make our plans in life, and then the Father gives us Christ.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that completely torpedoes our pl our plans too.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: And there's something like really parallel about receiving the new life of an um uh of an unborn child and receiving Christ.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: And didn't he actually do something very similar in the gospels, you know, a number of times?
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: He kind of pointed to a child and put a child in the midst and said said, you know, if you receive this child, you receive me.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, for those who have received Christ who upends all our plans and means that we me need to make a home for him, well, in the same way we are to uh yeah, receive the least and the last and the last, and we can receive Christ in them, and we can receive Christ in little children as we receive them, and we have to totally reorient our lives, and it really it really messes with our plans.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: But that's where life is, and that that's where the rich life that that the world is looking for actually is.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it's not denying the the difficulty in that, you know, and and it took I mean I struggled with I struggled with that for a long time, thinking, you know, so as much as I would never have not wanted the my then three girls, you know, trying to wrestle with the the path that my life might have taken, and did I did I then not fulfill God's will for my life?
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it sort of it took a long time to think actually, you know, this is the the the master who knits everything together and you know creates a beautiful story, you know, where maybe you've accepted that messaging that, oh yeah, you sort of mucked up, and you know, you just then you you do your best, you're like, well, God knew all along, and and there's you know, so those plans, those human plans that we lay, God has and will do much better if we let him.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: Are you noticing there are some voices in the culture um that have come from some perhaps surprising places that are saying more pro-life things?
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: So we've had Mary Harrington on the channel um who's written the book Feminism Against Progress.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: I w I was at the book launch of her um uh of her American edition, and we were there in New York, and she had kind of thirty minutes to speak as she was launching her book to a a a packed room, and she spent about twenty minutes of that talking about abortion and how it was kind of a bellwether of our inhumane society, and how the interests of men had yet again been privileged over women, and yet women were were told that it was a pro-woman issue.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: To to be pro-abortion is to be pro-woman, and she was absolutely cutting the legs out from under that argument, and she's she's said some um some very pro-life things.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: Louise Perry is somebody else we've had on on the channel.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: Again, a feminist who's written the a feminist who's written the case against the sexual revolution, and she wrote an article last year called We Are Repaganizing about how abortion is is kind of a pagan thing, and to stand up for the unborn is a profoundly Christian thing, and what a shame it would be if we walked away from our Christianity into a very pagan view.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: I are you noticing that there are there are voices around who might not necessarily be Christians who are saying things that that we absolutely resonate with.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: I am, and it it's unbelievably encouraging.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually also a real challenge because these women are talking about really what are Christian values, and too much of the church has forsaken them or hasn't thought through that they have forsaken them, you know.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and whether it is the conversation about abortion or the connected conversations about marriage and family, the role of women, responsibilities, the other the other she is coming from a Christian perspective, but Erica Bacchiocchi, the American, the legal scholar as well.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: She talking about the virtues and reclaiming, really setting a higher bar for men and women.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: So there are some amazing women coming from a church or a non-church background who really are triumphantly celebrating life and the role of women in a way that many in the church have um given up on.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or we accept the other type of feminism, and I'm not great on all the labels, I'm not sure which label of feminism it is, but the feminism that maybe I would say no, I'm not a feminist because they hate men.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: They have created a scenario where actually I think women we we hate our own bodies, we're at war with our bodies, we're at war with our children, we're at war with our biology, we're at war with men.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: So that sort of feminism that really says you have to be a womeless man, back to that.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: But there is this of course that's not the roots of feminism.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: So looking back to the the first wave of feminists, we have these amazing women now, Mary and Louise, and as I said.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Erica, who are really challenging the culture that we're in, looking at the reality of abortion laws and what they've created for women that hasn't been progressive for women.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's not compassionate for women.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, for Mary to sort of speak so strongly on that in New York, goodness, in a state where abortion is available up to birth, that's really powerful.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: And she can't be put in that God nut box, you know.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's wonderful, it's so encouraging for us, but it's also it's also a challenge.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: We need to do better.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if if we're not articulating it in a way as church that women in the church can respond to, then we need to think again about what we're saying and how we're saying it.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and and listen to these women who are speaking such a beautiful life-affirming message and and really reclaim the truth that we have.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's a it's a a rich and profound and good vision for life that we are lifting up.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: And there are people who are hungry for it when, as you say, uh a modern culture that uh has uh just different views of like work and the body, and male and female, and biology, and all sorts of and and freedom and what the good life actually is.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um we have been sold such an anemic vision.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um and actually to to do what Mary did and say yes to life in all its messiness will involve smashing a whole bunch of those idols, and it will involve reorienting our lives in uh sacrificial ways.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: But um but that's where life is found, and I and I think I think uh we're starting to wake up to the fact of the the inhumanity of the vision that's been sold to us, and the profound humanity of God the human, and what it would what it would mean to to say yes in the way that Mary did.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: So tell us Dawn about the the nuts and bolts of this uh new initiative called God Unborn.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a project that sits within both lives.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll keep talking, um, looking at abortion stats and policies and um sharing women's stories, but as part of that we have this project which is designed specifically for the church, to invite the church to go back to a tradition that celebrated the incarnation on March 25th, nine months before the birth being celebrated on December 25th.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: And every year we're going to, for a few years anyway, we're going to present a different aspect of that project.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: So last year we started with nine months between the angel and the manger, really encouraging people to dwell in this story and think about the time that God, the son, was prepared to wait to be born.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um and this year we're looking through the eyes of Mary and her yes to what for her was unplanned and unexpected, and all that that meant, but that actually it's rooted back to a promise that was given right at the point of the fall in Genesis 13, 15.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so Adam and Eve fell, and straight away God said, But you know what?
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the way out, and the seed of the woman will strike uh Satan's heel or Satan's head, and and it's not new, but it's saying to the church it was foretold right from Genesis, right through Scripture, this thread runs that God incarnate began in the womb, and and we hope that the church in exploring and letting the Spirit speak to them through what we're bringing in a resource, that it will start to really build a better understanding for the value that God gives to both lives, and then the outworking of that will speak into the lives that women and families are living, so it will impact um every aspect of our lives.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh connecting it to the story with Mary and Louise, you know, more and more young women, not from a faith perspective, are thinking about family planning in a natural sense.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um how can we connect the scriptural truths with the reality of our daily lives as women and as families?
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, God on Born, I think, just provides a framework that we're hoping the church can make use of, and it will contribute to the sanctification, salvation gospel, and discipleship message that the church can bring into the space where there are so many broken and hurting women who previously have experienced pregnancy crisis and or are experiencing pregnancy crisis and they can't see the way, the truth, and the life that would come through Jesus.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, how can people get a hold of this material?
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: They can go on to both lives.co.uk and it sits within the Evangelical Alliance website.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um they can download, there's a video to be used in churches if appropriate, and the booklet can be downloaded.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they can also have printed copies if they contact us, we'll happily send some out.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and yeah, we just hope that as churches, as individuals, people can take a few days in March.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's a week's worth of Lectio Divina devotions uh based on the script uh and and using scriptural passages just to help people really grasp um and listen to what God is saying through his own unborn story.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I hope people get a hold of that and are really blessed by it.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Dawn McAvoy, thank you so much for joining us on Speak Life.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.