Pregnancy, Prayer, and Abortion

I recently learned I am to be a grandfather for the first time.  I have started praying for the baby God's blessing.  Not long after starting to do that the thought came to my mind that that is one thing those who contemplate having an abortion and those who believe in abortion cannot do.  I had never thought about that.

How does one pray for a baby they plan to abort or kill?  How do those who believe in abortion pray for what they consider to be just a mass of blood and biological tissue, non-human?  One might pray for his/her heart if they had health problems with the physical heart but that would be because one wanted life and health.  In the case of those desiring abortion, they want death.  Does one pray “kill this thing?”

If those who believe in abortion respond by saying we can pray for a pregnancy where no abortion is planned then I say how is there any consistency in that?  Is that which is within the womb human if we plan on keeping it but just tissue and blood, non-human, if we desire to rid ourselves of it? 

"Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, The fruit of the womb is his reward." (Psalms 127:3 NKJV)  Obviously, not everyone is willing to accept that.

What if the child is born out of wedlock?  What if it is?  Jephthah, the son of a prostitute (Judges 11:1), is listed in what we often call God's hall of fame of the faithful in Hebrews 11:32.  Based on the way his half-brothers cast him out it seems very likely his father was never married to the prostitute mother.  Lange's Commentary reads as follows:

"If he had been the son of one who was properly a wife, his brothers would doubtless have been obliged to admit him to a share in the inheritance … But they maintained that his mother had not been a wife of their father at all, not even one of secondary rank,—that she was nothing but a harlot."

No matter how a child is conceived God is responsible for giving the life.  In the womb, God is in the process of making us.  "Did not he who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same one fashion us in the womb?" (Job 31:15 NKJV)  Jeremiah says the word of the Lord came to him saying, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." (Jer. 1:5 NKJV)  Would it have been okay to abort Jeremiah while he was still in the womb?  How about the apostle Paul?  How about Jesus himself?

One never knows how a child will turn out but we must remember the child is God's creation, not our own.  Man should not interfere with God's work.  God opens and closes wombs (Gen. 29:31, 30:22, 1 Sam. 1:5-6) and it is he who fashions us in the womb.

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