“Some pro-life people are against the killing of unborn babies, but they won’t speak out in support of the girl who chooses to keep her baby. Honestly, that makes me feel like maybe the abortion would have been better. Then they would have just forgiven me, rather than deal with this visible consequence.”

Last month, The New York Times ran a feature story about Maddi Runkles, a high school senior and straight A-student at a private Christian school in Boonsboro, Maryland, who became pregnant. After she came forward to share about her pregnancy, school officials disciplined Maddi for breaking the school’s code of conduct, first by suspending her for two days and removing her as student council president, but also by not allowing her to walk at graduation.

Both Maddi and her parents agreed with the first two disciplinary actions. However, they strongly disagreed with the school’s decision to bar her from participating in the graduation ceremony. Her father said, “Typically, when somebody breaks a rule, you punish them at the time they break the rule. That way, the punishment is behind them and they’re moving forward with a clean slate. With Maddi, her punishment was set four months out. It’s ruined her senior year.”

Maddi’s story has served to become part of a bigger conversation about how Christians can both encourage and uphold standards of chastity and purity, while still showing respect and care for unborn children and their moms, in a way that’s truly consistent with a prolife ethic.

In her interview with The New York Times, Maddi made this statement:

“Some pro-life people are against the killing of unborn babies, but they won’t speak out in support of the girl who chooses to keep her baby. Honestly, that makes me feel like maybe the abortion would have been better. Then they would have just forgiven me, rather than deal with this visible consequence.”

That Maddi came forward and also spoke to her classmates shows real integrity, and a willingness to take responsibility and accept the consequences of her decisions. Unfortunately, the school’s actions only serve to demonstrate to other teens who find themselves pregnant that there’s so much shame associated with pregnancy that abortion is the easy way out and “the only answer.” Sadly, the message it gives to others is: “Don’t tell, or look what will happen to you! If you get an abortion, no one will ever have to know.”

But isn’t there a way for us to show both grace and truth (like Jesus, see John 1:14), to be clear that promiscuity is against God’s revealed will and therefore our own happiness, but also to honor a girl’s courageous choice to give her child life?  Isn’t there a way to uphold rules, but still value relationship?

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