Richard Dawkins inspired, yet again, a firestorm of controversy with his twitter account. Responding to a women asking for ethical guidance after discovering her unborn child has Down Syndrome (DS), Dawkins offered the following advice, “Abort it and try again, it would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.”

Admittedly, while Dawkins' line of reasoning could be shot-thru by my second grade son, here are some reflections worth noting on the low-hanging fruit:

1    1.  Dawkins is a refreshingly honest atheist. In contrast to the number of other atheists I have spent time with who refuse, against all odds, to head down this line of thinking, Dawkins is, to say nothing else, (fairly) consistent in his beliefs. If life has emerged from seeds planted on our planets by aliens (as Dawkins actually explained at the close of the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed: skip to the 1:30:45 mark), than why would he, or anyone else, feel the slightest tinge of doubt about taking a life.

2    2. I said “fairly consistent” because his belief system makes it absolutely ludicrous for Dawkins to also suggest something is “immoral.” For Dawkins to use this very term there needs to be a standard by which he measures the action he is evaluating. Keeping the child is “immoral” on what grounds? Morality, by definition, is a code of conduct, a set of expected behaviors, or law(s) that call humanity to certain actions or demand that they refrain from others. Hence, as the argument goes, if there is a law, there needs to be a lawgiver. When Dawkins suggests something is “immoral” it begs the question, whose law would I be breaking? Certainly not any law of nature. If there is no measuring rod, Dawkins cannot suggest that any action (or inaction) is ever immoral. 

3    3. Dawkins responded later in the day to the backlash by suggesting that since abortion is what happens to the “great majority” of DS fetuses, his tweet cannot be construed to be either illogical or heartless. The majority argument is a particularly embarrassing one if you are an atheists and your view of the world is in stark disagreement with over 90% of the rest of us who are religious. Apparently, the fact that the overwhelming majority of the human race throughout history have held to some form of religious belief is not enough evidence for Dawkins to change his worldview. Nor can it let him off the hook for bad behavior.    

4    4. Finally, Dawkins apologized this morning in his personal blog. The act of saying "I am sorry," experiencing remorse, grappling with one’s own conscious, and concern for human relationships opens a Pandora’s box full of questions and comments related to the metaphysical world of the inner life, as well as the exploration of the origins and existence of guilt. Added to this is the above-mentioned analysis of how an atheist might determine what is moral or immoral in the first place, and Dawkins’ simple 140 tweet looks more and more like a window in the morally bankrupt world of atheism.

But far more important than these philosophical arguments is the fact that there are many parents around the world today who are finding out this week that the tiny fetus growing in their womb also has DS. While I think Dawkins would like us all to pretend that we are brains disconnected from hearts, choosing logic over emotion, I prefer to live more holistically. Our emotions are not an aspect of our humanity that simply "gets in the way" of making wise choices, they are always the means. Every decision we make is emotional. In regards to abortion, those effected by our decision are voiceless, we are left to make the decision for them. 

No life is a mistake, every person is unique gift to the world. Dawkins is emphatically wrong to suggest that there is ever an opportunity to simply "try again."No human being is merely replaceable, especially the child you have created. Let them live, let them show you.        

I grew up in a small town near the seacoast of New Hampshire. It was the kind of town you might expect to see on a postcard bursting with fall colors, dry-staked stone walls and one room schoolhouses; the stuff of Robert Frost poems and Martha Stewart magazines. My home life in that town, however, was not always a like a postcard. My parents divorced when I was young and I grew up with a distant stepfather and a biological father who was often too busy battling his own demons to make sufficient time for his two sons. Years later I can say with certainty that my parents loved me, and that they, truly, did the best that they could. I am, after all, exactly who I am today because of them, and I wouldn’t change a thing about my past. But that is not to say that I don’t have very intentional plans to change my future.

When I married a beautiful Southern Belle named Carrie, our college pastor once shared with me that he sensed God was calling me to “break the sin cycles” of my family history. His words touched me in a place that had been barren for years; the place of dreaming, the place of vision, the place of hope.

And so it was when God gave us our first son, Luke,  that I remember a very specific sense of awe and confirmation that maybe God actually intended to accomplish through me what I had considered the impossible, the reversal of history and the redemption of a messy storyline.   

When God blessed us with our second son, Andrew, the feeling of grace and responsibility was overwhelming. Again, God whispered hope and blessing into our lives and an eternal sense of purpose to raise the next generation of Woodworths to be a generation of men who loved the Lord, and stayed with their wives.

Then, for a third time, my wife became pregnant. This one was not planned, not for this time in life anyway, when work, and children, and marriage, and graduate school seemed to be pushing in on every side. So it was that one morning I found myself on a long walk in the woods praying to God for guidance, and wisdom, and protection for the little one now growing in the womb of my bride. And as I rested on a nearby log the spirit of God spoke to my own spirit saying, “it will be a boy, and his name will be Zachary.” Such divine conversations were far from the norm for me.   

I shared the experience with my wife and we both agreed that in true “better-safe-than-sorry” fashion we should simply call him Zachary if he is indeed a boy.

We visited the doctor on the day of our scheduled appointment after my wife had consumed an extra measure of caffeine to ensure the little bean would move enough to give us a clear view. The ultrasound technician moved the electronics over her smooth tummy until the screen of static before us slowly cleared to reveal to us, for the first time, our child.  “It is a boy.”

The words echoed in my mind as my wife and I embraced with the clarity of God’s redemptive purposes for us, for all of us, for the magnificent way in which he graciously offered us not just one, or even two chances, but now even three times as many opportunities to bless the future of our family name, His family name.

I met each of my sons for the very first time at 20 weeks. And in that moment I heard their heartbeat for the first time, I watched them suck their fingers, and caught them responding to the sound of our voices. They had eyes, noses, feet, legs, arms, lungs and all the potential necessary to utterly transform the pictures in the family photo album of my mind.

20 weeks. That is when I met them for the first time. And while I do not wish to politicize this story, their story, I will say that to suggest that in that moment it was my wife’s “right” to have a “choice” to end their story is, arguably, one of the greatest injustices that our world has ever known.