{"id":2676,"date":"2018-01-20T15:39:23","date_gmt":"2018-01-20T15:39:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thescripturecache.com\/?p=2676"},"modified":"2022-02-12T18:16:20","modified_gmt":"2022-02-12T18:16:20","slug":"abortion-a-continuing-abomination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thescripturecache.com\/?p=2676","title":{"rendered":"Abortion\u2014A Continuing Abomination"},"content":{"rendered":"

Views: 7<\/p>

[Note: <\/strong>This MS is available in larger font on our Longer Articles<\/strong> page.]<\/span><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The Pharaoh of Moses’ time ordered that every male Hebrew was to be slain at birth (Exo. 1:16, 22). He is remembered in Scripture (and by all right-thinking men) as an unspeakably cruel, immoral, and evil man (Acts 7:19). The ancient Greek pagans \u201cexposed\u201d their unwanted and helpless infants to wild animals and the elements to dispose of them, and most moderns call their behavior \u201cbarbaric\u201d and \u201cinhumane.\u201d Herod the Great murdered all of the male infants living in and around Bethlehem at the time of Jesus\u2019 birth (Mat. 2:16). Even the irreligious justly recoil at his jealous bloodthirst.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Mass Murderers in Modern Times<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

History remembers Adolf Hitler as a homicidal maniac on a grand scale for his destruction of 6,000,000 Jews in the Holocaust of the 1930s and 1940s. Josef Stalin is said to have murdered far more than this number of his own people. Chairman Mao slaughtered even more than Stalin. However, even Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were small time operators beside the perpetrators and advocates of legalized, casual abortion in our \u201ccivilized\u201d nation. By the forty-sixth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s most heinous decision (Roe v. Wade, January 22, 1973), 61,000,000 totally innocent, helpless babies will have been murdered\u2014either in the womb or while partially in the birth canal\u2014by abortion (http:\/\/www.numberofabortions.com\/<\/a>). This figure equals the current estimated populations of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Georgia, Tennessee, and Indiana.<\/span><\/p>\n

By far, most of these killings take place for the convenience of the mothers-to-be and\/or fathers-to-be\u2014a sordid, grotesque (and intrinsically selfish) after-the-fact means of \u201cbirth control.\u201d The seven black-robed justices (two dissented) who handed down this decision will one day learn that they were not the \u201cSupreme Court\u201d after all as they face the Judgment of the Creator of life, having hands dripping with the blood of these millions of innocents. Hands that \u201cshed innocent blood\u201d are an abomination to Him (Pro. 6:16\u201317).<\/span><\/p>\n

In one of the all-time great ironies, the same court (though not all the same justices) that ruled in 1973 that it is not\u00a0<\/strong>\u201ccruel and unusual punishment\u201d to kill the most helpless and innocent of their own kind later ruled (June 2008) that it indeed is\u00a0<\/strong>\u201ccruel and unusual punishment\u201d to execute a child rapist. These two morally reprehensible rulings demonstrate the irrational and wicked nonsense of our God-despising, morally topsy-turvy times, in which so many \u201ccall evil good and good evil\u201d (Isa. 5:20).<\/span><\/p>\n

When Does Life and \u201cPersonhood\u201d Begin?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

What about abortion? Is it infanticide or is it merely the removal of \u201cexpendable tissue\u201d? For abortion to be \u201cmurder,\u201d the unborn child must be a living person, temporarily dependent upon, but distinct from its mother. To the pro-death advocates of abortion, the content of the womb is merely a \u201cpiece of tissue,\u201d such as a wart, a mole, or even a tumor, and therefore utterly expendable (merely an impersonal \u201cfetus\u201d). This leads to the question, When does life and personhood begin<\/em>? It does not take a Solomon to see that this is the vital question of the entire discussion of abortion.<\/span><\/p>\n

The abortion advocate answers, \u201cAt birth, or several weeks after conception at the earliest,\u201d but God answers, \u201cAt conception.\u201d God said to Jeremiah, \u201cBefore\u00a0<\/strong>I formed you in the belly I knew you; and before you came forth out of the womb I sanctified you\u2026\u201d (Jer. 1:5, emph. DM). Before\u00a0<\/strong>he began to take skeletal or muscular form (i.e., at conception), while in the womb, God recognized Jeremiah as a living person. This is the consistent Biblical teaching (see Job 3:16; 10:11; Psa. 51:5; 139:13\u201416; Isa. 44:24; 49:5; et al.).<\/span><\/p>\n

Medical science generally agrees: life<\/strong>and personhood<\/strong>begin at conception. On April 23\u201324, 1981, various expert geneticists and medical doctors testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding this issue. The \u201cFather of Modern Genetics,\u201d Dr. Jerome Lejeune, of the University of Descartes, Paris, testified:<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2026it is plain experimental evidence\u00a0<\/strong>(emph. DM).<\/span><\/p>\n

Medical doctor and law professor at the University of Tennessee, Dr. McCarthy de Mere, stated to the committee:<\/span><\/p>\n

The Exact moment of the beginning of personhood\u00a0<\/strong>and of the human body is at the moment of conception\u00a0<\/strong>(emph. DM).<\/span><\/p>\n

World-renowned geneticist, Theodosius Dobzhansky, though an atheist, stated:<\/span><\/p>\n

A\u00a0human being\u00a0<\/strong>begins his existence when a spermatozoon fertilizes an egg cell (emph. DM).<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus a separate, distinct human life and person (different from both father and mother in genetic composition) begins at the moment of conception rather than at several weeks later or at the moment of birth.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCommon sense\u201d also argues that life begins at conception. Some abortion advocates\u00a0<\/strong>recommend singing or playing music to the unborn on the theory that such will influence them. How strange. Do they really expect to influence a “wart” or a “mole”\u2014a mere piece of tissue? Pro-abortionists recognize life in the unborn in other forms of animal life. Those who will gather by the thousands to champion the brutal \u201cright\u201d to slay their own kind in the womb will go on a hunger strike to protect the life of the unborn eagle (yes, they know it is an eagle, with eagle \u201cpersonhood,\u201d not merely a \u201cfetus,\u201d while it is still in the egg<\/strong>). In another gross irony, some who may violently oppose the state\u2019s right to end the murderer\u2019s life will staunchly demand the \u201cright\u201d to slay their own offspring in his or her most innocent and defenseless state.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0If life, humanness, and personhood do not begin at conception, when do they begin\u2014one day, one week, one month, or three months after the sperm fertilizes the egg? Upon what basis will this all-important question be determined, except ideology and\/or fickle subjectivism? While many other crucial matters are involved in this issue, upon which abortion should most certainly be opposed, the determination of the beginning point of life and personhood is the very heart of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

If life and personhood begin at conception (as certainly they do), abortion just as certainly constitutes murder\u2014legalized murder, but no less murder\u2014on the grandest scale ever known. How can a Christian favor this practice and be faithful to God<\/strong>? How can a Christian be guiltless who votes for a politician or a political party that favors this atrocity?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

What can concerned people do?<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Pray fervently that in the providence of God this slaughter will soon end by being overturned completely by the Supreme Court.<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Let your legislators at both the state and federal levels know your abhorrence of abortion.<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Vote for candidates at every level who oppose abortion and who will work to correct this tragedy. (Note: One major party has a strong pro<\/strong>-abortion, pro-death\u00a0<\/strong>plank in its platform, while the other party has an anti<\/strong>-abortion, pro-life\u00a0<\/strong>plank.)<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Write \u201cletters to the editor\u201d for inclusion in newspapers and post messages on social media, opposing abortion.<\/span><\/li>\n
  5. Encourage anyone considering an abortion to not consider it at all.<\/span><\/li>\n
  6. Preachers need to keep the churches they serve aware of this tragedy through sermons, bulletin articles, and tracts.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Abortion is a monstrous \u201cwork of darkness\u201d (Eph. 5:11) that we should oppose, confident that God will bless our efforts.<\/span><\/p>\n

    [Note:\u00a0<\/strong>I wrote this article for and it was initially published originally in The Lighthouse, <\/em>weekly bulletin of Northpoint Church of Christ, Denton, TX, January 24, 2016, of which I was editor. I updated the statistics on January 21, 2019.]<\/span><\/p>\n

    Attribution:\u00a0<\/strong>From The Scripturecache.com<\/em>, Dub McClish, owner and administrator.<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

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    Views: 7[Note: This MS is available in larger font on our Longer Articles page.] Introduction The Pharaoh of Moses’ time ordered that every male Hebrew was to be slain at birth (Exo. 1:16, 22). He is remembered in Scripture (and by all right-thinking men) as…<\/p>\n

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