Andrew in Naples, Florida asks, "Pastor John, do your pro-life convictions change when it comes to situations involving rape, incest, or matters of a mother's life?" These are hard questions. Do your pro-life views change in these circumstances? Well, they are hard questions, and by hard I don't necessarily mean hard to answer.

I mean hard to live with. In other words, and the women here are the ones who bear the greatest weight because the baby is in her, not in the boyfriend or the rapist. And this is why it's so troubling when abortion is justified for equality's sake, which is what our president says repeatedly, which just galls me, that he would say in front of his daughters that for women to have equal rights, they have to have access to abortion, which really means equal rights to have sex outside marriage without any more consequences than the boy has.

That's what he means, which is horrific to say, but that's that's another question. The question asked is, when a woman has been attacked or say, broken at a party or something, and now she's pregnant, didn't want to be pregnant, it's going to change everything in her life. The guy was either an ugly brute or a manipulator, and what should she do?

And my answer, as hard as it is, is that the baby didn't do anything wrong. And we're asking that the baby be penalized here, as well as the mom, if there's an abortion. And so I would say, no, rape and incest ought not to be a warrant for killing the baby.

The baby's not the criminal here. The guy needs to be criminalized, not the baby. And here I would add this, as horrific as that is for a woman who is raped, say, and now a pregnancy totally outside her plan and desire. I read the other day on a survey, I wish I could remember where I read it, that in a survey of hundreds of women who had carried a baby to term, who had been conceived in that kind of situation, virtually none of the women regretted it.

Whereas many of the women who got an abortion felt pangs of regret. Here's the reason, I think. When the horror begins to die down of what just happened, and that this baby in her was conceived in that kind of ugly and hostile way, she still says, "It's my baby.

It's my baby." Just as if her husband had conceived the baby. Yes, it was conceived by a man who she didn't want to have anything to do with, but it's her, just like it would be her if it was conceived by her husband. And she feels that deep down, and I would just say there are ways forward, either with her caring for the baby or giving the baby to a loving family who would raise the baby, because she's in a situation where she can't, that would be less damaging to her soul than if the baby were taken.

Pastor John, how about in the situation of a mother whose life is at risk because of the pregnancy, what would you say to her in that case? Yeah, there are issues there that are really difficult, and it takes a doctor to be able to point out the nature of some of these risks.

For example, the little bit that I know, there are pregnancies, ectopic pregnancies, where the baby cannot live. The baby is outside the womb, the baby is alive now, the baby cannot grow in that kind of situation, and if you leave it, it could imperil the mother's life. Now in that kind of situation, it seems to me you're forced to ask, with a certain death of the baby taking the mom with the baby, what would you do and how would you, I would just say no, we don't want to lose two here, better to lose one than two in that case to take the baby from a situation where the baby cannot possibly live and could kill the mother while the baby's dying.

With regard to other situations, like the mother's health is, say she's got cancer or something, and the doctor says, you know, to carry this pregnancy through could imperil your own life. Many women have said, and I think rightly, I'll risk it. I don't want to take my baby's life for the possibility that I will lose my life, and some women have lost their lives in childbirth and many times they haven't, and so I don't think it's obvious then that every risk that a mother is put in warrants the baby's life being taken, and where that line is between this is a certain death for mom, that's really tough and I'm going to have to lean heavy on the wise and Christian doctors, I hope, to help me discern, really, is this a death sentence for mom or is it not?

And this gets down to that whole issue of what risks are appropriate and what aren't, and I'd rather just leave the principle there that it's a beautiful thing that a mom risk her life for the sake of her child, but a sure death sentence, I don't think, would be required of a mom.

Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Send your questions to us via email at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. Please include your first name in your hometown. You can find thousands of other free resources online from John Piper at DesiringGod.org. I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening.