April 11, 2012
Dear Delegate to GC2012,
First let me thank you for your willingness to serve as a delegate to this General Conference and the long hours and hard work it entails. As an ordained elder in the Mississippi Annual Conference and a delegate to our Jurisdictional Conference, I want to thank you as well for being willing to shoulder such a huge spiritual burden as leaders of a portion of the whole world wide Church. I wanted to take this moment to share with you my story in hopes that it can be a help to you in your deliberation upon some of the most weighty topics to be considered at this and every General Conference.
I was born in 1971 as an unwanted child of an unwanted pregnancy. My birth mother was likely an unwed teenage mother who gave me very poor pre-natal care. I was adopted at 8 weeks old by Lawrence and Pattie Sparks, a loving and wonderful childless couple who raised me, loved me and prayed me into the person I am today. Norma McCorvey (Jane Roe) got pregnant in 1969. Roe v. Wade was filed in 1970, argued before the Supreme Court in December 1971 and reargued in Oct. 1972 with a ruling by the Supreme Court in January, 1973. Had this case been fast tracked or I been born a few months later, I might not be here with you to write this email. I find the issue of abortion to be deeply personal for me and difficult. I share a deep sense of connection with other adopted children. Over my life that sense of connection and almost familial connectedness has also extended to the thousands upon thousands of unwanted children whose lives are snuffed out each year before they have ever even had a chance at this life at a life like what I got to live. Why was I spared and why are they not?
I am writing to you to ask you to consider strengthening, not weakening, our church’s support of an unborn child’s right to a life. I became physically ill the first time I realized how close I had come to not being born. And I often wonder what and who have we missed out on because someone chose to terminate a pregnancy. It is also very hurtful to me and other adopted children when a pro choice person argues that my birth mother's rights to control her own body supersede my or any unborn child’s right to be born, supersede my/their right to a life. I find it perplexing for persons to on one hand argue that we must look to the individual, to the person, the human and accept them for who they are when it comes to sexuality and orientation and at the same time be unwilling to see the person that is or could be but will never be because of a life cut short by an abortion. If you have trouble visualizing that person, they are me. We as Methodists say that we believe every person is a person of sacred worth. Shouldn’t that include all person regardless of their status as born or unborn? Shouldn’t we call on the world to protect the most vulnerable persons, those that are yet in their mother’s womb, the very place that God is knitting them together, counting the hairs on their head and knowing them even then by name? What are missing out on, who are we missing out on, by not?
Sincerely yours,
Stephen Sparks
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