Imagine this. You're plowing along, leading your basically normal, uneventful life. Then one day a good friend of yours pulls you aside and asks if you could discuss something with her... privately. You've been close friends all through college, so this doesn't strike you as strange — it's probably just boyfriend trouble, or maybe a death in the family at worst. But once the two of you are tucked away in a corner of her room with steaming mugs of coffee, she tells you the kind of news that rips through heaven: she's pregnant, and she's planning on getting an abortion.

As your heart leaps into your throat and your stomach splashes towards your knees, your mind races with ways to talk her out of it. You appeal to the standard reasons. It's wrong. It won't erase the fact of the pregnancy, and she'll most likely be haunted with guilt later. It's a living child. It's her own child, her own flesh and blood. It's a brutal process that could leave her sterile for the rest of her life. It's -- she stops you. To your surprise, she agrees with you. But she's desperate.

"I know it's wrong," she pleads, "but there's nothing I can do about it. My parents have already told me to go ahead and have an abortion because this will ruin my life otherwise. They won't support me. I can't survive college with a baby and anyway, I have no money. My boyfriend — or should I say ex-boyfriend —" here she winces in pain "— doesn't want it either. And there's no way I can have it in me for all this time and then give it away. Who knows what would happen to it? What if no one wanted to adopt it and it went into foster care? What if it got bad parents who abused it? How could I have a baby of my own in the world and never see it? But if I keep it, it'll have an awful life. It's better off for the baby this way." So she says, but you can see in her eyes that she's not convinced, and her heart is breaking.

Every moral fiber in you body is screaming with grief and frustration at the prospect of your own friend's child being sliced up and tossed out like leftovers from last night's dinner. It's a horror you weren't prepared for — never anticipated — and this is your only chance to prevent it. This life, life itself, is at stake. The whole of heaven and earth have stopped for this moment in time, it seems to you, as you search in the darkness for a light to save this child's life.

Then you hear yourself saying something, something that bursts out of you before your mind has a chance to mull it over and censor it. But the words come out: "I will take the baby. I'll help you bring it to term, and then I'll raise it and support it myself. My parents will understand and they'll support me and you too. And that way you can see it as much as you want." She pauses, and starts to cry again, but nods. The baby is yours.

Would you do it?

I've never been in this situation, thank God. But I often wonder if I'd have the courage to do such a thing if the opportunity were presented to me. If I'm brutally honest with myself, I have my doubts. I'd probably be there with the friend while she was telling her parents to make them behave civilly. I'd encourage them to think about keeping it and providing for their daughter and grandchild despite the inconvenience. If they were adamant, I'd work for a satisfactory adoption arrangement. I'd spend my own money to make it happen. But since this is just a made-up situation, it's pretty easy to think up lots of extenuating circumstances that would prevent my own drastic involvement.

Suppose, though, that it really were that simple. Would I let that baby invade my personal life? It would have no real claim on me, other than the eminently breakable bond of friendship between its mother and me. I could work to save its life, but would that imply giving up mine as well, providing a lifetime of love and support to it? I like my freedom. I'm financially independent for the first time in my life. Sure, I pay bills, but they're my bills only. And the extra cash is entirely at my disposal. I don't have to consult anyone else when I cook dinner. I give to charity when I please. I can go away for the weekend with no more trouble than remembering to give an extra dose of water to my zinnia on the way out the door (and if I forget, it revives pretty easily). My apartment is as clean as I want it to be — no more, though frequently less — and my love and attention is a gratuitous gift to whomever I choose to bequeath it. It's a wonderfully unattached, free-wheeling way to live. It is also, I suspect, almost unforgivably selfish.

That's why this baby, this imaginary baby, troubles me so much. No matter how hard I try, I can't convince myself that I don't owe it anything. The silly part is that I have never even known anyone who has had an abortion (or at least, if anyone I know has, she's never told me). So it makes me sound doubly ridiculous that I can't get this unnamed child out of my mind. I guess the most basic question I'm posing to myself is, "Who then is my neighbor?"

The truth is unfair. I am responsible for abortions. So are you, whoever you are, reading this. I'm not accusing you. I'm stating a fact that I can't escape myself. I am guilty as an American: we abort about 1.4 million babies every year. Think about that number! Have you known even ten thousand people your whole life long? That's less than one percent of the number of children aborted every single year. Out of those 1.4 million, only fifteen thousand of them were conceived by rape or incest (which is still no reason to kill a child, but it explodes the myth that most abortions result from such extreme wrongdoing). Three-quarters of the women who abort say that they're doing so merely because the child would "interfere," whether with work or personal life. We Americans have killed, in total, over 30 million unborn babies in the last 25 years since Roe v. Wade passed. We are citizens of a nation that has decided the most vulnerable members of its society — the ones who haven't yet developed adequate limbs or heartbeats or speech facilities to convince the hard-hearted that they're deserving of life and respect — can be liquidated at whim.

And it's not enough that we do it within the bounds of these fifty states. We're exporting abortion too. Would you believe me if I told you that 50 million abortions take place every year the world over? And yes, it's our own homeland that is pushing its utilitarian view of human life on the rest of the world, even in places where it's not wanted. For now we can hope that the continuing raging controversy over abortion is a sign of our guilty consciences. Maybe, slowly, we'll begin to face up to our crimes.

I am also guilty as a woman. I'm not trying to excuse men from responsibility by stating that. Their role is vital to the stability and honesty of our whole society. They must learn again fidelity to their wives and families, sexual restraint before marriage and willing financial support if they fail at either of these. But as a woman I have to examine my part in the social sin of abortion, too. We as women are the ones who bring life to the world. That's our special gift, to carry new life in our bodies. Our role is maternal, whether we have children of our own or not. We are always called to care and nurture those around us, to seek the best in them, to cultivate their talents and virtues. We are the ones whose very bodies are pro-life.

And we are the ones who make the final decision to kill the lives within us. When we kill those babies, we are killing an inextricably intimate part of ourselves. We are hating our calling to be women. It is the worst kind of illusion to pretend that the scraping clean of a uterus and the dissection of the tiny fingers and heart and head inside of it comprise a viable "choice," an affirmation of one's freedom as a woman.

I am guilty as a Christian. Every year I allow over a million martyrs to march unnoticed before my eyes, and I suppose that my private opposition to abortion makes the slightest difference. It doesn't. My silence makes me an accomplice to the crime.

American law permits abortion. But before the divine law, I am guilty.

The good news is that God doesn't choose the perfect, the ones who don't think they need him because they are already righteous on the books. He chooses the tax collectors and sinners. He chooses you. He chooses you right now, as you read these words, to start speaking the truth.

The truth makes you free, and you're still allowed to speak the truth in this country. Not everyone is so lucky, and we are guilty of laziness on top of everything else if we ignore this privilege. So start talking about it. Don't fear what people will say, that they might accuse you of innumerable incorrect opinions that you're foisting on them. You don't have to foist the truth on anyone: All you have to do is say it. Say it with love and forgiveness. Don't condemn anyone — judgment is God's task — but call everyone to repentance, to turn their hearts around to speak the truth too. Speak in class, speak at home, speak in church, speak at parties, speak in dorms, speak at the cafeteria and in restaurants, speak in private and in public, speak at abortion clinics (but educate yourself about the consequences before you do; an uninformed conscience can't do anywhere near as much good as an informed one can).

Allow people to disagree with you, even violently, but never return it with violence. Forgive everyone; forgive especially the women who abort their children and the doctors who perform those abortions. Remember that Jesus asked his Father to forgive even those who put him to death. But never, ever, stop speaking about it. Lives depend on your words.