Abortion is an issue that will require William Wilberforce like Christians who will love their unborn neighbors enough to pour out their lives in defense of them.
Ephesians 5:11
Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.
1. We must be active in exposing evil and darkness
2. We must, like imitators of God, have God’s values as a primary means of determining our actions
3. We must expose the foolish values of fallen man and illuminate darkness with truth
4. We must not sacrifice foundational truth for the sake of western values
- It’s not the economy stupid
- Western values are not God’s reality
- God values: poverty of spirit, mourning over our state as fallen humans,
meekness, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, mercy, purity of heart
peacemaking, being persecuted for righteousness
Lets apply our the doctrine of man to this issue and use God’s wisdom to help us address this issue.
The issue is threefold:
Personhood
The False Argument of Choice
Competing Rights
Personhood
There are essentially two issues which must be resolved concerning unborn embryos and fetuses. The first is, "Are they human beings?"
The second is, "Should they be recognized as persons under the law?"
This is established, primarily as Christians, by God, his word and the doctrine of man.
Medical science also bears this out.
The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 6th ed.
Keith L. Moore, Ph.D. & T.V.N. Persaud, Md., (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1998), 2-18.
"[The Zygote] results from the union of an oocyte and a sperm. A zygote is the beginning of a new human being. Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm ... unites with a female gamete or oocyte ... to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual."
Essentials of Human Embryology
William J. Larsen, (New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1998), 1-17.
"In this text, we begin our description of the developing human with the formation and differentiation of the male and female sex cells or gametes, which will unite at fertilization to initiate the embryonic development of a new individual. ... Fertilization takes place in the oviduct ... resulting in the formation of a zygote containing a single diploid nucleus. Embryonic development is considered to begin at this point... This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development."
Human Embryology & Teratology
Ronan R. O'Rahilly, Fabiola Muller, (New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996), 5-55.
"Fertilization is an important landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed... Fertilization is the procession of events that begins when a spermatozoon makes contact with a secondary oocyte or its investments... The zygote ... is a unicellular embryo... "The ill-defined and inaccurate term pre-embryo, which includes the embryonic disc, is said either to end with the appearance of the primitive streak or ... to include neurulation. The term is not used in this book."
Adding to the consensus of contemporary textbooks is the testimony of older medical texts as well:
Human Embryology, 3rd ed.
Bradley M. Patten, (New York: McGraw Hill, 1968), 43.
"It is the penetration of the ovum by a spermatozoa and resultant mingling of the nuclear material each brings to the union that constitutes the culmination of the process of fertilization and marks the initiation of the life of a new individual."
Biological Principles and Modern Practice of Obstetrics
J.P. Greenhill and E.A. Friedman, (Philadelphia: W.B. Sanders, 1974), 17.
"The zygote thus formed represents the beginning of a new life."
Pathology of the Fetus and the Infant, 3d ed.
E.L. Potter and J.M. Craig, (Chicago: Year Book Medical Publishers, 1975), vii.
"Every time a sperm cell and ovum unite a new being is created which is alive and will continue to live unless its death is brought about by some specific condition."
In addition to the consistent testimony found in medical textbooks, there is some equally conclusive evidence that exists on the public record. In 1981, a United States Senate judiciary subcommittee received the following testimony from a collection of medical experts (Subcommittee on Separation of Powers to Senate Judiciary Committee S-158, Report, 97th Congress, 1st Session, 1981):
Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth
Harvard University Medical School
"It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive...It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception."
Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni
Professor of Pediatrics and Obstetrics, University of Pennsylvania
"I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception."
Dr. Jerome LeJeune
Professor of Genetics, University of Descartes
"After fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being. [It] is no longer a matter of taste or opinion...it is plain experimental evidence. Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception."
Professor Hymie Gordon
Mayo Clinic
"By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."
Dr. Watson A. Bowes
University of Colorado Medical School
"The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter – the beginning is conception."
The official Senate report reached this conclusion:
Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being - a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.
This, of course, should come as no surprise since the American Medical Association (AMA) declared as far back as 1857 (referenced in the Roe. v. Wade opinion) that "the independent and actual existence of the child before birth, as a living being” is a matter of objective science. They deplored the “popular ignorance...that the fetus is not alive till after the period of quickening.”
Doctors knew it during the 1800's and doctors know it today. Human life begins at conception.
If this were not true, if unborn children were not human, there would be no need to even talk about rights of personhood.
"Removing a fetus" would be the moral equivalent of pulling a tooth. This, however, is not the case, and so the debate must now enter the political arena.
There is a very real sense in which the need to answer this second question is, in itself, an absurdity.
If you look up the word "person" in your dictionary, you'll find something like this:
Person - n. A human being.
A person, simply put, is a human being.
This fact should be enough.
The intrinsic humanity of unborn children, by definition, makes them persons and should, therefore, guarantee their protection under the law.
For more than thirty years, however, this has not been the case. The situation we are left with is this:
In America today, there is a huge and singular group of living human beings who have no protection under the law and are being killed every day.
There have been at least two other instances in American history in which specific groups of human beings were stripped of their rights of personhood as a means of justifying their horrible mistreatment.
African-Americans and Native-Americans both felt the brunt of a system which denied their humanity, stripped them of their personhood and subjected them to horrors beyond measure.
While the legal framework that made such injustice possible has now been removed, it remains firmly in place for unborn Americans.
There remains one, and only one, group of human beings in the U.S. today for which being human is not enough.
The inconvenience of their existence has resulted in a legal loophole of shameful proportions.
What is a person?
A person is a human being (unless, of course, you haven't been born yet, in which case we'll define personhood in any way possible so as to exclude you, kill you and forget you).
The False Argument of Choice
Since abortion is impossible to justify on its own merits (it kills a living human being, remember), "choice" has become the foundation of its political justification.
Abortion advocates don't want to talk about facts or science, or even theology but they love to talk about "choice".
"This is America...We're free to choose...You can't legislate morality!"
Nothing has so clouded and confused the politics of this debate more than the misconstrued application of this one little term, “choice”.
The bottom line is this. Choice is nothing apart from the context to which it is applied.
Individual choices are either recognized or restricted based upon the circumstances at hand.
That's how our laws work. You simply cannot talk about choice in isolation.
For thirty years, however, abortion advocates have sought to bestow upon choice a nobility all its own, nobility it has no claim to.
They refuse to be called "pro-abortion", but they gladly accept the label "pro-choice" (despite the fact that there are countless other issues for which they are decidedly not pro-choice).
The fact is, laws against rape, murder, assault, theft, speeding, drunk-driving and even smoking are all "anti-choice".
They take away legal protection from one particular choice in order to protect a more foundational freedom.
All such laws are "legislating morality".
That's the only way society can survive w/o anarchy.
Personal choices that infringe on the life or livelihood of another human being must be legislated against.
Therefore, anyone who defends legal abortion by simply arguing that people must be free to make their own choices is either ignorant or dishonest.
Furthermore, in almost 99% of all U.S. abortions1, the woman having the abortion chose to have sexual intercourse in the first place.
Therefore, it could just as easily be argued that these women already made their choice when they chose to engage in behavior that often leads to pregnancy.
Ultimately, restricting a woman's right to abortion does not restrict a woman's right to not be pregnant.
Abortion, after all, does not keep a woman from being pregnant. Not having sex does that.
Abortion simply ends the pregnancy of an already pregnant woman by killing the embryo or fetus living within her.
In the end, we are only free to choose so long as that choice doesn't kill or harm someone else, and our government exists to take away those choices that do.
Nobody argues that a man should be free to choose when the context is sexual assault.
What a fool he would be to try and justify rape by saying, "My body, my choice." Why? Because rape is a violent assault which involves more than just one body.
And so is abortion. The heart of the issue is not "choice".
The real question is humanity, and nothing short of anarchy can guarantee the perfect freedom of choice.
Choice is the “god” of many.
Illustration: States that have fetal homicide laws
It is murder to kill a fetus or embryo, intentionally except in the case of abortion.
There are 36 states that have this law, including Georgia.
It’s strange that if someone else kills the child, it’s is “feticide”, but if the mother chooses to abort the child it is “choice”.
1. Just over 1% of all abortions in the United States happen as a result of rape: Torres A and Forrest JD, Why do women have abortions? Family Planning Perspectives, 1988, 24(4):169-176.
Competing Rights
Politically speaking, abortion is an issue that involves competing rights.
1. On the one hand, you have the mother's right not to be pregnant.
v/s
2. On the other hand, you have the baby's right not to be killed.
The question that must be answered is this: Which right is more fundamental? Which right has a greater claim?
Abortion advocates argue that outlawing abortion would, in essence, elevate the rights of the unborn over and above those of the mother.
"How can you make a fetus more important than a grown woman?", they might ask.
In reality, outlawing abortion wouldn't be giving unborn children more rights; it would simply gain for them the one most fundamental right that no one can live without, the right to life.
If a baby is not to be aborted, then the pregnant mother must remain pregnant.
This will also require of her sickness, fatigue, reduced mobility, an enlarged body, and a new wardrobe.
Fortunately, it is not a permanent condition.
On the flip side, for a pregnant woman not to be pregnant, her child must be killed (unless she is past her 21st week of pregnancy, in which case the baby may well survive outside the womb).
Abortion costs the unborn child his or her very life and it is a thoroughly permanent condition.
This is what's at stake, both for the child and for the mother. It is not an issue of who is more important, but rather who has more on the line.
Any time the rights of two people stand in opposition to each other, the government must protect the more fundamental right.
Let's consider crosswalks on Broad Street. A car is driving down the street while a person is crossing the street.
The law requires the driver of that car to slow down and stop (giving up their right to drive where they want, when they want, and at what speed they want) so that the pedestrian may cross the street in front of him. Why?
Why must the driver temporarily give up his right to drive down the street just because someone else is walking across the street? Why is the right of the man on foot upheld while the right of the man in the car is denied?
It is not because the pedestrian is more valuable than the driver but rather because, if the driver doesn't stop, the pedestrian will likely be killed.
In order for the driver to proceed down the street at full speed, at that moment, it will cost the pedestrian his life.
In order for the pedestrian to finish crossing the street, at that moment, it will cost the driver a few minutes of drive time.
Obviously, for a woman to remain pregnant, she gives up far more than a few minutes of drive time, but she gives up far less than the baby who would otherwise be killed.
This is what it all comes down to.
Abortion permanently takes away the life of the unborn.
Pregnancy temporarily takes away some of the freedoms of the mother.
Since there is far more at stake for the child, the more fundamental right to life must be upheld.
Arguments taken from www.abort73.com
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