Customer Reviews

Abortion--My Choice, God's Grace: Christian Women Tell Their Stories

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is a much needed book! The author has my Thanks because it helped me to better understand this very difficult and important issue. I think the women's stories in the book needed to be told as there is very little written detailing the experiences from Christian women who have been through an abortion. I'm sure many women are grateful! Also the book has resources of groups from both sides of the issues who are working together on how to lower abortion rates. Ms.Eggebroten is a courageous author to give the women in the book a voice of their very intensly personal and painful experience!

I read this book several years ago. I recall thinking how refreshing and helpful this information is & needed by so many women today. It is a relevant book. Initailly, I was put off by the title and some parts, which discussed God. I remember thinking how brave and lucky these women are. We all trials & tribulations to reveal about our life. I, too, had a pregnancy to deal with when I was 20 years old. I decided to be a single mom. It would have been much easier to make & face my decision after speaking to other women in a similar situation.

While reading this book, I recall thinking how painful & agoninzing it must have been for some of these women to make their final choices.

I had the library order this book for me. It was a relief to find out that their are pro-choice Christians. I actually have mixed feelings about abortion because I am a birth mom. My son Levi is in Open Adoption and I feel that it was the right choice. But I got pregnant a 2end time and realized that my life was endangered. I terminated the pregnancy to save my life. I couldn't believe the people who told me that it was still wrong and selfish save my life. It's like they think I should of just let myself die. This was traumatizing. I've lost some respect for the pro-life movement after the experience. But I still have some respect for it because I love my son Levi whose in open adoption. This book was a good support to me, to help me recover from the verbal abuse people gave me over my abortion.

I would like to say that this book should be read by everyone. However, I would have to add "everyone with an open mind." This book "spoke to me" because it also examined the lives of those who did not choose abortion. One particular story was especially noteworthy: The woman asserted that she'd rather stick a needle in her eye than have the baby and give it up for adoption.
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In good conscience, therefore, I recommend this book to others. I salute the women in the book for having the courage to tell their stories. I salute the publisher (a Christian publisher) for having the courage to publish this book.

The only reason that I put one star is because it would not let me enter a review without it. I atually give this book NO STARS!!!!


I would like to start out by saying the reason that I got an abortion was because I have a condition called Neurofibromatosis, NF for short (Neuro-fi-bro-ma-tosis). It is a condition that leads tumors to grow on nerve endings anywhere in the body and on the surface of the body. It is a very painful condition to live with. I myself have had 25 surgeries because of it. I have a 50% chance of passing on this disease to my child and he/she could have it much worse than I do, including deafness, blindness, retardation and severe deformity. My being pregnant with this disease is very dangerous for me as well. Because the hormones would make my current tumors grow larger or new tumors to form. I have two brain tumors from this disease that may have grown as a result of continuing the pregnancy. Of course my only concern was for my child. Living a life with this disease, my fiancée's concerns were of course for me, he was terrified at the possibility of my brain tumors growing. So we made the hardest decision that either one of us has ever been faced with. I was eight weeks pregnant when I went in on October 17, 2007. The whole time I was hysterical and everyone in the waiting room was looking at me as if I was some type of crazy person.

When I read the title of the book, it seemed has if it would be a good book to somewhat help me cope with my grief. IT DID NOTHING OF THE SORT!!! I was so angered with this book, the women in this book I feel "ended there pregnancy" for petty reasons. I kept reading and it seemed as if every story ended as if they were happy with the decision that they made because, "now they can get on with there lives." I wanted my baby so badly, but I was terrified that both baby and I could both die, than were would that leave my poor fiancée'? I believe that God put this life force inside of me for a reason, and I feel that I made the decision much too soon and did not think things all the way through like I should have. Why would God put this life force inside of me despite my condition and what may happen to my child if there was not a purpose for us both? I cry everyday for what I have done, every single day!!!! I even have my calendar marked each week that tells me where I would be in my pregnancy if I have not killed my baby.

What angered me even more is that the author herself only considered and abortion, but in the end decided to have her child. So, considering an abortion suddenly makes her and expert on how it actually is to have an abortion? I DON'T THINK SO!!!! She has her baby, she made the choice to continue her pregnancy and now she thinks that she knows how I feel about actually having one just because she considered it. I am so angry myself for doing what I did and regret it every minute of every day. I ended my pregnancy at the time thinking that I would be protecting by LIVING BABY that was inside of me!!

I look on the internet and at eight weeks, my baby already had eyes and fingers that were clearly developing. How can something like that be just, a "bundle of cells" which some women in this book considered there child to be when they had there abortion? If that makes them feel better about what they did than so be it. But I know that is not true for me. It was not just a bundle of cells, it was by baby.

This book is awful!! It angered me to no end. But if you are the type of person who needs a book to read to tell you that what you did is OK just because it will make your life better and easier by not having to care for another human being that God placed inside of you than so be it, you will love this book. But if you are like me and regret everyday the decision you made and do not want to hear the "scapegoat" stories than I am sure that you will feel the same as I do about this book. I would rather have 1000 more operations than do what I did again, because at least I know that I would someday heal from surgery.

I will never heal from this, NEVER !!! Because every pregnant woman that I see hurts me, every week that goes by that would put me closer to my due date infuriates me. I can't imagine how I am going to feel on the day (or around the day) when my baby would be due. Every Birthday, Christmas, Easter that goes by after that is going to by a constant reminder that I could have had my baby right there with me, celebrating LIFE!!!! I am sorry baby that I did not give you the chance at life. What gives me the right to choose for my baby, my baby should have had a choice, a choice to live, even if it meant living with Neurofibromatosis.

As a pro-lifer, I read this book cover to cover about a year after it was published. The most striking element in the book is the deficient Biblical hermeneutics. I noticed that the editor changed John 3:16, for example to make Jesus less than the "Son" of God. I was so concerned about it, that I met with the editor and asked her about this and other things in the book. We talked for over an hour. It came to light that the editor gave up believing that God is our "Father" a number of years ago. She stated that the Bible was corrupted by male chauvinists who engendered God as a male. When I asked her to tell me who perpetrated this, when they did it, and what is the evidence for it, she was unable to provide anything, but got up and left our meeting abruptly. Given what she said about the Bible, how could anyone trust anything in the Bible, much less the words of the Psalmist (139) that within our mothers wombs we were "fearfully and wonderfully designed" by our creator God.

We need to examine "My Choice, God's Grace" in the light of the doctrinal abyss out of which it was birthed. Without a proper Biblical foundation, it devolves into the mere expression of feelings, pain, betrayal, hurt, and finally alleged joy that abortion brought to women who were and are separated from God by their unrepented and unremitted sin (not only abortion). What's most needed is for the knees of these women to bow, as they find their way (back) to the Father. He's not so far away as they think.

The first few pages of this book are a very thinly disguised pro-choice advertisement. I did not read any further and returned it immediately. If you are a believer who is hurting from having an abortion, I would recommend Forgiven and Set Free or Her Choice to Heal.

Those who contend about abortion need to recognize key distinctions that have existed in jurisprudence for a long time.

1. In Exodus 21, there is a criminal penalty of death for someone who intentionally kills another. If he accidentally kills, he can seek sanctuary. If he seriously injures another, lex talionis applies, either literally or as a standard of compensation for civil claims. Now apply this to the case where in the course of a brawl, a man accidently strikes a pregnant woman so she either miscarries or gives birth prematurely. Here there is no malice aforethought, so no criminal homicide; but there is a civil claim on the part of the husband and wife. There is no similarity with abortion, because it was unintentional.

2. The Biblical law that does apply is Leviticus 18:21 "Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech [lit. be passed through the fire], for you must not profane the name of your God." It makes no distinction between children of tender years, infants, or unborn infants. On the contrary, it says "any of your children".

3. The law, apparently unlike the Catholic Church, does not judge people according to whether they follow their conscience. It applies an objective standard based on facts and intents. The Bible does the same, because conscience is only a reflection, not the original, of the law of nature and revelation (the will of the Creator, according to Wm. Blackstone).

4. No risk of unhappiness justifies the commission of a known wrong to another. This applies both to choice between adoption and abortion, and any other choice. See Regina v. Dudley and Stephens (1884) http://www.justis.com/titles/iclr_bqb14040.html

"It would be a very easy and cheap display of commonplace learning to quote from Greek and Latin authors, from Horace, from Juvenal, from Cicero, from Euripides, passage after passage, in which the duty of dying for others has been laid down in glowing and emphatic language as resulting from the principles of heathen ethics; it is enough in a Christian country to remind ourselves of the Great Example whom we profess to follow. It is not needful to point out the awful danger of admitting the principle which has been contended for. Who is to be the judge of this sort of necessity? By what measure is the comparative value of lives to be measured? Is it to be strength, or intellect, or what? It is plain that the principle leaves to him who is to profit by it to determine the necessity which will justify him in deliberately taking another's life to save his own. In this case the weakest, the youngest, the most unresisting, was chosen. Was it more necessary to kill him than one of the grown men? The answer must be "No"-

"So spake the Fiend, and with necessity,
The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds.""

5. As Lord Coleridge quoth above, how can one judge that his life is so valuable as to forfeit another's life? In truth, all men are created equal, endowed with unalienable rights. Thus the infant's life and happiness is as valuable as the mother's.

6. Again, as Coleridge says, what better to point to in such a matter, especially from a perspective of God's grace, than self-sacrifice after Christ's example?