Does A Fetus Go To Heaven?

John Butch Preston

johnhprestonauthor.com

My name is Ted. About life there are many opinions, some say life is sweet, some say they need more money. The great poet Cicero described life as a mediocre play with a poorly written third act. What brilliant use of amusing understatement to call it poorly, the fact that we all have to die in the third act.

     But there is still the question of what happens after the curtain falls. Do you float up to heaven like a cloud, or sink like a stone down to hell? This, of course, depends on how clear or how guilty your conscience is at the end of the third act. A clear conscience (whether obtained by forgiveness or not) is lighter, allowing it to float while a bad conscience is heavily laden and destined to drop into the pit of fire.

     But suppose you don’t have a conscience to begin with; suppose you were never born, that you were miscarried, stillborn, or your mother was forced to get an abortion? Then what? According to Cicero’s somewhat pessimistic view you should consider yourself lucky to have opted out early (life was extremely difficult and dangerous back in his day).

     Now whether a fetus is automatically taken up to heaven is the question. Will it then be united with its mother there? Of course—God provides for everyone.

     While I was still a senior in college, I took a girl to Louisville to get an illegal abortion. She and her roommate, also college students, were my next-door neighbors. They had come to me in desperation for help because I had a car. At first I hesitated but they had no one else to turn to or trust.

     The girl had been impregnated by a local coal operator’s son. For sure, she hadn’t the $300 dollars for the abortion (one semester’s tuition at the time), nor any idea of how to contact an abortionist. So obviously it was the boy’s father who had to have made all the arrangements including supplying the money.

      It wasn’t that she would have had to drop out of college otherwise; it was fear for her very life that she sought the abortion. Her father, she continually repeated, would literally strangle her with his bare hands for getting pregnant. He was a preacher in a small country church.

     The motel was dark and gloomy looking, and the noise and lights of the Louisville airport were just a short distance away. Her roommate and I let her out at the designated room and were told to return in a couple of hours. Upon returning we helped her to the car and put her in the backseat to lie down. As we headed back I wondered if the abortionist had used a coat hanger to dislodge the fetus, but an occasional whimper from the backseat made it seem inappropriate for me to ask about any of the details.

     The girl went on to graduate college, but years later I encountered her on the street carrying a baby and leading a toddler by the hand; she turned into a store to avoid me. Was that the thanks I got for helping her? I think I even paid for the gas down there and back to boot. But who could blame her for avoiding someone who knew her secret.

     Abortion is legal now but it’s still a matter of conscience—not that of a tyrannical collective conscience, but solely the conscience of the individual. Let it be….