We have all witnessed a sad rise in the instances of teenage and unwed motherhood in our lives. The decline in respect for the sanctity of marriage coupled with a widespread parental refusal to instill sexual self-discipline in children has turned America into a vast daycare center, in which children are literally having children of their own. Moreover, the demise of respect for the gift of sex has been met with an equal loss of respect for the gift of life. The unborn who are unwanted because they were conceived at a time deemed inconvenient to his parents can be destroyed in the womb almost as easily as a wart can be removed.
The Bible condemns the hands that shed innocent blood — those who commit murder — who offered the children to idols, and in our age, those who abort the most innocent of all, the unborn (Prov. 6:12-19). Since the slaughter of the unborn was legalized in 1973, almost 40 million innocent babies have had their lives snuffed out.
The Preciousness of Children
Genesis 1:26 tells us that man is created in the image of God, not physically, for God has no tangible form, but spiritually, possessing the intellectual faculty, sense of conscience and eternality that allow him to choose right or wrong. For this reason, murder was outlawed from the days of Cain, through the Law of Moses and into the law of Christ. Killing in time of war and for capital punishment under strict limitations was excluded from the prohibition, but did not confuse the principle any: innocent life was worthy of every protection.
In an apparent departure from this rule, God instructed Abraham to slay his only begotten son, but he stayed the father’s hand when certain that he was so loyal he would obey even this strange command. The sanctity of life was not only preserved, but also magnified.
We can hear the preciousness of life in the cries of Hannah, who sought a son with the depths of her soul poured out in answered prayer. We can hear the hope of the child even in the laugh of Sarah who was told she would bear a son in her old age and then did.
Children are a heritage of the Lord (Psalm 127:3) and a blessing (Psalm 128:3). Contrary to the abortion lobby’s warped logic, children are the contents of women’s wombs — even those mothers who do not want their wombs to be occupied. These are not alien life forms, lifeless tissue masses or malignant tumors; they are human beings in the earliest stages of development, just as we once were.
Life Begins at Conception
The process of conception is not really all that complicated. The male fertilizes an egg within the female and two equally necessary substances are combined to form one new unit, which is human life and nothing else.
The Bible recognizes human life in the mother’s womb. Psalm 139:13-16 reads:
For You formed my inward parts;
You wove me in my mother’s womb.
I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book were all written
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them.
David writes by inspiration of a time in which he certainly could remember nothing by himself, a time in which he dwelt microscopically and then grew in his mother’s womb. It was a time in which no human could see him, in which medical science would only perceive him by the swelling of his mother’s belly and a few other medical clues, yet God had perfect knowledge and even foreknowledge about him.
Imagine that one moment, God is beholding a future king and deliverer for his people and the next a pair of forceps is removing David and a needle is injecting him with a solution that will kill him in a matter of moments. This is just what abortion does to every soul that God alone beholds before a mother, doctor and maybe a father play god.
Testimony of Dr. Luke
One of our New Testament writers was himself a physician, the beloved Luke who wrote a gospel record and an account of some of the apostles’ work. In referring to the unborn John and Jesus, Luke uses the same term “brephos” as he does to refer to them after their births. He does not diminish their humanity by calling them fetuses and suggesting that life has not begun yet while inside the womb.
As an eagle’s egg contains a federally protected endangered species, so a mother’s womb contains a maternally protected, federally neglected human being with all the rights the Constitution affords to anyone else: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Disregard For Human Life
The Old Testament exposes an idolatrous practice that fits the description of shedding innocent blood, in which mothers were persuaded, often by force, to sacrifice their children to the god, Molech, in flames of fire.
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia reveals this:
“The image of Moloch was a human figure with a bull’s head and outreached arms, ready to receive the children destined for sacrifice. The image of metal was heated red-hot by a fire kindled within, and the children laid on its arms rolled off into the fiery pit below. In order to drown the cries of the victims, flutes were played and drums were beaten; and mothers stood by without tears or sobs, to give the impression of the voluntary character of their offering” (Volume III, Page 2075).
God condemned this practice vociferously, destroying the Canaanites for it and then the Israelites when they adopted it.
Herod was guilty of slaughtering innocents when he had every young Hebrew male under the age of two killed in an attempt to prevent Jesus from ascending to his throne. Abortion is just the latest slaughter of the innocents to appeal to manÕs selfish sense of convenience.
Science Says Life Begins At Conception
Although medical science cannot be used as an absolute standard of truth, the testimony of people often disinterested in Bible morality, serves to show that opposing abortion is more than the appeal of Bible thumpers. Consider the testimony of the following scientists, given before a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on April 23-24, 1981 concerning the beginning of life and the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion on demand (http://roevwade.org/upl39.html):
Dr. Micheline M. Mathews-Roth, Harvard medical School, gave confirming testimony, supported by references from over 20 embryology and other medical textbooks that human life began at conception.
The “Father of Modern Genetics,” Dr. Jerome Lejeune, told the lawmakers: “To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion … it is plain experimental evidence.”
Dr. Hymie Gordon, Chairman, Department of Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, added: “By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”
Dr. McCarthy de Mere, medical doctor and law professor, University of Tennessee, testified: “The exact moment of the beginning of personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception.”
Dr. Alfred Bongiovanni, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, concluded, “I am no more prepared to say that these early stages represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty … is not a human being.”
Dr. Richard V. Jaynes: “To say that the beginning of human life cannot be determined scientifically is utterly ridiculous.”
Dr. Landrum Shettles, sometimes called the “Father of In Vitro Fertilization,” notes, “Conception confers life and makes that life one of a kind … To deny a truth [about when life begins] should not be made a basis for legalizing abortion.”
Professor Eugene Diamond testified: “Either the justices were fed a backwoods biology or they were pretending ignorance about a scientific certainty.”
Death Toll
Since 1973, almost 40 million babies have been killed by abortion; if it were a tobacco company, they would be sued for billions of dollars. The number of abortions has peaked at about one and half million per year, more than were killed in our nation’s deadliest wars.
The misconception is that abortions are most often performed on inner city, minority children and that a large number of abortions are performed to save the mother’s life or because of rape or incest. In fact, only a tragic one percent occurs because of rape, incest or endangerment to the mother’s life. The majority (81%) is performed as a form of birth control for unmarried women whose fornication has caught up with them, at least physically. With the failure rate of prophylactics and a morally libertine culture, this is easy to comprehend. A number of abortions are also performed on married women who do not want a child in general or this child in particular because of birth defects or gender. Only a small number are performed on women who are killing their children because they cannot afford to raise them alive; the majority is for white, middle class women and girls.
A Woman’s Right To Choose What?
Pro-abortion forces claim they want to defend a woman’s right to choose, but to choose what? They want to be free to employ the hands of a doctor to shed innocent blood. Abortion causes pain to the unborn, which can be proven through sonograms. The practice of partial birth abortion is incredibly painful for a little baby, whose slightest tear on the outside would cause new parents to fly into a panic. Neither women nor men have any right through God to choose to slay an innocent person; legalized murder does not make it right (Gal. 5:21).
Any woman is a creature of God and her body belongs to him first (1 Cor. 6:18-20). Abortion is often a mean to cover up the embarrassing sin of fornication, which could have been prevented, had those involved practiced flight rather than flirtation. It is the epitome of selfishness and unwillingness to confront one’s errors with penitence, shame and submissiveness (James 4:7-10). The devil loves to ice the cake of sin with a cover-up; those contemplating an abortion should resist him and come clean. He would love to add murder to the sin of fornication, but God counsels birth and even the possibility of adoption when necessary.
The guilt of abortion is great and deserved. “Immediately after an abortion, many women report a feeling of relief … which is all abortionists want you to hear. What you won’t hear of is the guilt and depression that frequently follows. A national poll found that at least 56% of women experience a sense of guilt over their decision, though the pollster himself acknowledged that many women will not even admit having had an abortion. In fact, a five-year study shows that 25% of women who have had abortions sought out psychiatric care, versus just 3% of women who have not had abortions. Further, numerous studies reveal that women who have had an abortion experience a high incidence of depression, stress, low self-esteem, suicidal feelings and substance abuse” (http://roevwade.org/upl13.html).
Abortion is wrong because it is murder, a crime of convenience and a slaughter of the innocents. Abortion is America’s greatest shame since slavery, blight upon us in God’s sight. May the people of God avoid the behavior that warrants abortion for others. But if any finds herself in that predicament, may father and mother take responsibility for their mistakes and the one most likely to be punished for it first, the baby.
