This is an excellent question.  What is at the heart of it, I believe, is the conflict between God's will and human will, the freedom of God and the freedom of human beings.  What is also a problem is a mistaken image of God.  I must admit at the outset that the answer I propose may not be the clearest or the most satisfying, but here goes.

     The question you pose is one of the omniscient (all-knowing) God who will "choose" for a couple to become pregnant when God knows she will eventually abort the baby.  First, allow me to broaden your question.  Did you know that medical science tells us that about half of all fertilized eggs never implant in the woman's uterus?  So, we can also ask, "Why does God allow a fertilized egg, life at it's earliest stage, to never even have a chance to grow, naturally, with no aid from human choice?"  To this, we might also add the question of why God "chooses" for a woman to get pregnant when it ends up in an ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, or death in the womb.

     To tackle this question, let me begin with the relation of God's will to human will.  There is one line of theology that says that human beings must "surrender" their freedom in order for God to reign as God in our lives.  The more our freedom diminishes, the greater the freedom God has to "use" us for his glory.  This is not the Catholic perspective.  Indeed, the more we truly use our grace-empowered freedom for good, the more we enter into the freedom of God as his children.  My main point here is that we do not see any competition between God and humanity in the area of free will (NB: For the mathematically inclined, think of this relation as direct proportion, not inverse proportion!)

     Second, your question (and perhaps the priest's talk) betrays a possible misconception about the mystery of God.  To say that God "chooses" the time for a woman to become pregnant and "knows" the future fate of the child gives God something God does not have: a human causality.  This may be a difficult idea to digest, but when we say that "God does this" or "God does that," we don't believe that God causes things to happen as we do.  In fact, Thomas Aquinas has a famous line that says, "God works through secondary causes."  Those secondary causes are human actions.  The primary cause of God is, as I understand it, God's creative love which holds everything in existence!  That, when you think about it, is a different type of cause!  Likewise, to think that God's omniscience is like a fortune teller gives God a human type of knowing and places God in space and time.  However we understand the omniscience of God (and I cannot say I can offer an explanation of that here), this is not the way we understand it.  I would point you to the first sections of the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas (where he talks about God's omniscience), and it might be good to struggle with understanding it (although it might definitely be a struggle).

      Let me end by saying that I agree with the priest saying that God chooses us; but I would be more specific.  God chooses us at every moment of existence!  Here, I quote the simple words of Therese of Lisieux, who said simply, "All is Grace."  Grace is God's love for us.  And, at every second of every minute of every hour of every day of life, God is constantly loving us.  When the scriptures attest with the same simplicity, "God is Love" (I John 4:8), it is that immutable, omnipotent, omnipresent love that God wills for us.  It is this "causality" of God's love that brings and keeps us in existence.

      Now, it is our challenge to use our freedom in line with this love.  The correct use of one's sexual faculties is part of this.  But the mystery of life is something that science gives us insight into and which human actions serve to bring about in a holy (in marriage) or sinful (fornication, adultery, etc) way.  Yes, we have discovered that the woman has a fertility cycle which couples can exploit to bring about conception or to avoid it; but we should not think of God as pushing along a sperm to an ovum when God "wants" a child.  Rather, we should think of God as ultimate creator who made both sperm and ovum and holds them in being by his great love.

      Now, the real good news is that "while we were sinners, God so loved the world to send the Son."  And, as we live as disciples of the Son, God loves us even in the midst of our sinfulness.  So, yes, God loves the married couple who uses their grace-filled freedom in a holy way; but God also loves the adulterous or unmarried couple who sin in use of their sexuality in the hope that such love will be converting.  And, in the same hope of conversion and repentence, loves that couple who chooses abortion instead of life.

      I understand that this answer may not be the most satisfying or easiest to understand.  Your question is a challenging one and a good one to contemplate; I suspect the best answer will be as challenging to understand as well.

     As always, I sincerely hope this helps!

Grace and Peace,
Fr. Chris

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