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The Pharaoh of Moses’ time decreed that every male Hebrew was to be slain at birth (Exo. 1:16, 22). All civilized men consider him to be unspeakably cruel and immoral (Acts 7:19). We call the ancient Greeks who “exposed” their unwanted and helpless infants to wild animals and the elements “barbaric” and “inhumane.” Even atheists justly recoil at the jealous blood thirst of Herod the Great as he murdered Bethlehem’s baby boys when Jesus was born (Mat. 2:16).
History remembers Adolf Hitler as a homicidal maniac on a grand scale for his destruction of 6,000,000 Jews. Josef Stalin purged 23,000,000 of his own people. However, Hitler and Stalin combined were small-time operators beside the advocates, judges, and practitioners responsible for legalized, casual abortion in our nation. January 22, 2015, marked the forty-second anniversary of the heinous Roe v. Wade decision of the Supreme Court. In June 2008 the same court that ruled in 1973 that it is not “cruel and unusual punishment” to kill a babe in the womb ruled thatit is “cruel and unusual punishment” to execute a child rapist. Such absurd and contradictory rulings typify the upside-down times of the present.
Since Roe v. Wade, over 57,500,000 lives have been snuffed out in the US alone by this utter contempt for human life; we must be their voices until this ruling can be reversed. Ninety-three percent of these killings occur for “social” reasons—the convenience of the parents-to-be—a gruesome, after-the-fact means of birth control.
Is abortion infanticide or is it merely the removal of “expendable tissue”—similar to the appendix? To the pro-death abortionists, the unborn depersonalized “fetus” is merely a piece of tissue like a wart, a mole, or even a tumor, and therefore expendable. These thoughts lead to the question, “When does life begin?”—perhaps the vital question of the entire discussion of abortion.
The abortion advocate answers, “At birth,” but the Bible, science, and common sense all answer, “At conception.” God told Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the belly I knew you; and before you came forth out of the womb I sanctified you, and I ordained you a prophet unto the nations” (Jer. 1:5). Before he had skeletal or muscular form in the womb (i.e., at conception), God recognized Jeremiah as a living person. The Bible so declares consistently (e.g., Job 3:16; 10:11; Psa. 51:5; 139:13–16; Isa. 44:24; 49:5; et al.).
Medical science generally places the beginning of life at conception. In 1984, 61 physicians, including 2 former presidents of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, issued a statement titled, “The Utmost Respect for Human Life.” It said in part:
We urge all those engaged in the abortion debate to recognize that a central issue in the discourse must include acceptance of the fact that induced abortion causes the death of a living human (emph., DM) (Abortion: Where Have All the Babies Gone? American Tract Society, Garland, TX).
Some abortion advocates recommend singing or playing music to the unborn so as to influence them. How strange: do they expect to influence a “wart” or a “mole”? Pro-abortionists recognize life in the unborn in other forms of animal life. They will gather by the thousands to demand the “right” to slay mercilessly their own kind in the womb, but will go on a hunger strike to protect an eagle egg (i.e., an “unborn” eagle, not merely an eagle “fetus” by their own admission).
If life, humanness, and personhood do not begin at conception, when do they begin—a day, a week, a month, three months after the sperm fertilizes the egg? Let the abortionist tell us. While there are many other crucial principles upon which to oppose abortion, the determination of the beginning point of life is pivotal. If life begins at conception (as certainly it does), abortion just as certainly constitutes murder—legalized murder, but murder no less. A Christian cannot favor this practice and be faithful to God.
We should pray fervently that through God’s providence this ruling will soon be reversed completely. We should let our representatives (both the state and federal) know our abhorrence of abortion. We must vote for candidates at every level who oppose abortion and who will work to correct this tragedy. (Remember that one major party has a strong pro-abortion, pro-death plank in its platform, while the other party has an anti-abortion, pro-life plank.) Let us courageously oppose this monstrous work of darkness (Eph. 5:11), confident that God will bless our efforts.
[Note: This article appeared in The Lighthouse, weekly bulletin of Northpoint Church of Christ, Denton, TX, February 1, 2015.]
Attribution: From thescripturecache.com; Dub McClish, owner and administrator.
