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ABORTION: GOD'S VIEWPOINT
I) GOD IS SOVEREIGN OVER THE CHOICES PEOPLE MAKE
Abortion and freedom of choice advocates maintain that abortion is a personal matter - a personal choice. They say that a woman has a right to her own body no matter what. And that the fetus is part of the woman's body, not a separate entity and certainly not a separate personality.
But God says differently: God being Almighty is sovereign over all - including the choices a man and a woman make with their own bodies and lives:
[Pr 16:9]:
"In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps."
[Pr 20:24]:
"A man's steps are directed by the Lord."
[Jer 10:23]:
"I know, O Lord, that a man's life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps."
So a woman does not have the right to do whatever she wants - even with her own body, and especially with another body which is within her womb. She has free will to choose but she will suffer the consequences for wrongful actions. Compare Ps 139:ALL
First of all, Scripture states that the unjustified killing of a human being is wrong:
[Ex 20:13]:
"You shall not murder"
III) GOD VIEWS THE UNBORN ONE AS A PERSON EVEN BEFORE CONCEPTION:
And Ex 20:13 previously quoted applies to what the world calls a fetus but what God calls an unborn human being who He views as a person while yet in the womb:
[Gen 4:1]:
"Now the man [Adam] had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived [Cain] and gave birth to Cain."
[Notice: Eve conceived - not a fetus - but a person by the name of Cain - that's what God says in His Word. Even today, people refer to a person in the womb by his or her name or the word 'baby.'
[Job 3:1-3]:
(v. 1) "After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.
(v. 2) And Job said:
(v. 3) 'Let the day perish on which I was to be born, And the night which said, 'A boy is conceived.' "
["A boy" = "geberl" = literally a manchild "is conceived" = "harah" = not a zygote or a fetus]
Job refers to himself in the womb as a male person. The Hebrew word "geberl" in this passage which is translated here as "boy" is used to describe postnatal humans in other passages and is rendered "male", "man" or "husband" and not fetus. (Cp Ps 34:8; 52:7; 94:12; Pr 6:34).
[Ps 51:5]:
"Behold, I [David], was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me."
Here David states that his existence begins with conception. This verse describes a person who, beginning at conception, is in the process of developing into an infant, then a child, then an adolescent then an adult, and not a thing that is in the process of becoming a person.
[Jer 1:4-5]:
(v. 4) The word of the Lord came to me, [Jeremiah] saying,
(v. 5) 'Before I [God] formed you in the womb I knew you,
["knew" = "yada' " = knew in a supremely intimate sense, much as a husband and wife know one another - an intimate, close personal knowing relationship. This applies to all humans: Before God formed you in the womb He knew you intimately too. And the baby who was aborted, God knew him too, and had plans for him]
[Jer 1:4-5 cont.]:
(v. 4) The word of the Lord came to me, [Jeremiah] saying,
(v. 5) 'Before I [God] formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."
[So God set Jeremiah apart to be a prophet as he sets every single person apart for particular roles and tasks even before they are conceived, (Eph 2:10; Ps 139:16; Pr 16:9)]
[Lk 1:41, 44]:
(v. 41) "And it came about that when Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.
(v. 44) For behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy."
The word translated as "baby" ("brephos") is used in these verses to describe an unborn child in the womb of Elizabeth, as it is also used to describe our Lord Jesus Christ when He was an infant already born:
[Lk 2:12, 16]:
(v. 12) " 'And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby ("brephos") wrapped in clothes, and lying in a manger.' "
(v. 16) And they came in haste and found their way to Mary and Joseph, and the baby ("brephos") as He lay in the manger."
Incidentally, would modern day abortion rights activists make a stand for Mary's personal 'right' to abort her 'fetus' the Lord Jesus Christ considering the situation she was in: pregnant but not yet formally married - certainly a societal inconvenience to say the least, especially in those days?
Furthermore, God makes it clear in a number of passages that He views man as an individual person from the moment of his existing in the womb.
[Ps 139:13-16]:
(v. 13) "For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother's womb.
(v. 14) I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
(v. 15) My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
["in the depths of the earth" = expression used in ancient times indicating something that cannot be seen or fathomed. Here it indicates how a person's forming in the womb cannot be seen]
(v. 16) Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be."
[God in His sovereignty decreed that each individual He created would have a mortal body with certain specific characteristics.]
IV) EACH UNBORN INDIVIDUAL HAS A GOD ORDAINED NUMBER OF DAYS TO BE ALIVE, NOT TO BE CUT SHORT BY ABORTION
"All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be." = God decreed every individual to live a certain number of days NOT to be cut short by abortion. Abortion is an interruption of God in His sovereign process of creating and developing a human life. To decide to abort is to decide to interrupt what God has sovereignly decreed to be a human life to live a certain number of days thus overriding and making oneself superior in authority to God Himself.
V) BEING HELPLESS, HAVING DEFECTS AND ENCOUNTERING SUFFERING ARE NOT THE ISSUE. AT TIMES ALL INDIVIDUALS ARE DEFECTIVE AND WILL SUFFER AND BE HELPLESS.
Objectors say that a baby in the womb cannot survive independently and therefore is not a person and hence subject to being destroyed. If this is true then new born infants, young children, the elderly and whoever at the moment is seriously ill may be destroyed at will because they likewise cannot survive independently.
All individuals are born with defects, some effective sooner and more severely than others. Since all individuals are born with imperfect, i.e., defective bodies, they will have suffering in their lives and eventually will die as a result. But in spite of this, the position of proabortionists and euthanasiasts is to cut short the lives of those who have certain defects or face certain kinds of suffering. This is arbitrary and playing at being God Himself. To be equitable, they would have to exterminate the whole human race which is 100% defective and faces suffering or exterminate none at all.
Furthermore, God does not indicate in His Word that one is to destroy the helpless or suffering, but instead to come to their aid:
[Jas 2:15-16]:
(v. 15) "Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.
(v. 16) If one of you says to him, 'Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?
[Ro 12:20a]:
"...'If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink..."
VI) MEDICALLY SPEAKING, THE UNBORN CHILD IS A SEPARATE ENTITY FROM THE MOTHER AND TO BE PROTECTED UNDER THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH
Incidentally, modern medical science shows that the human body sets up an all out attack on anything foreign that enters into it. And this is just the case with the human being which is conceived and developing in the mother's womb. The mother's body engages in an all out attack on that baby. What saves the baby from being killed is the defense provided for him in the womb which separates the mother's body from the child's body with a protective sac - not permitting the attack of the mother's system to get through. So that baby is from conception NOT part of the mother's body.
Dr John Danish states, (Evening sermon, Berean Memorial Church, Irving, Texas, 1/29/95):
"...the killing is justified on the basis that the unborn are not full persons. The developing child therefore is described as a mere mass of protoplasm...
...Hippocrates, who is acknowledged and honored as the father of medicine. The Hippocratic oath was named for him. The oath sets forth the physician's commitment to mankind and details the relationships between the doctor and his or her patients. One paragraph of the original oath applies directly to this discourse...
'I will follow that method of treatment which according to my ability and judgment I consider for the benefit of my patients and abstain from whatever is dilatorious and mischevious. I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked nor suggest any such counsel. Furthermore, I will not give to a woman an instrument to produce abortion'...
That is what Doctors take as the Hippocratic oath when they enter the practice of medicine.....
VII) FROM THE TIME OF CONCEPTION THE INDIVIDUAL HAS A SPECIAL BREATH BREATHED INTO HIS SOUL BY GOD, NOT TO BE INTERFERRED WITH BY MAN
...Genesis 2:7 says, 'Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the BREATHS of life [lit. lives, plural] and man became a living being.'
Originally, this verse tells
us that God formed man's physical body from the ground like a potter
shaping a vessel from clay. This produced a lifeless shell without
capacity for anything.
But this is not
how the rest of humanity after Adam and Eve would become alive. First
of all, God breathed in breaths of lives, plural, physical and spiritual life, into already fully matured lifeless composites of human material. This is not
how it worked thereafter wherein a sperm and an egg join together
forming and growing as physically alive human material within the womb
which when it comes out of the womb it is not without physical life at
all as some contend until God breathes lives into the supposed fetus
outside of the womb. The baby, as it were, usually comes out physically
alive, but it is always spiritually dead - with a dead human spirit -
not having received the second breath from God yet as Adam and Eve did
in the Garden of Eden before the Fall - but a certain few but not
all humans receive the second breath from God, evidently the indwelling
Holy Spirit when an individual at least in this age becomes born again
after expressing a moment of faith alone in Christ alone for eternal
life. Not all humans receive both breaths of life from God.
Furthermore, one cannot conclude that whatever is in the womb is dead
human material until after it comes out of the womb, as some contend.
Prebirth views via medical ultra sound equipment and other measures
provide evidence that the human material within the womb is usually
active and alive.
There are several names in the Bible for this shell: Second Corinthinians chapter 5 verses 1 and 4 refer to it as a tent. Second Corinthians 5:6 refers to this shell as a home. First Thessalonians 4:4...[refers] ...to the human body as a vessel. Then this verse tells us that God Himself breathed into this earth body that He had formed - into this shell - and He breathed into it the BREATHS of lives... ...notice that the Hebrew is plural... ...because there were two kinds of lives that were breathed into man. First of all there was soul life - a physical [life]... ...which constitutes his mentality, his emotions and his will for relating to people. There was also breathed into man a spirit life which gave him a live human spirit and capacity for fellowship with God. [That spirit in man thereafter is born with a dead spirit since the Fall and will still need to be born into life in order to have that fellowship with God, (Ref. Eph 2:1)] The earth shell at that moment became a living being with physical life in the physical realm... ...it had full capacity for fellowship with God. Now since the sin of Adam in Eden, all are born spiritually dead and they must be made alive spiritually to God by the inbreathing of the Holy Spirit at the point of salvation when faith is placed in Christ as Savior. So again, for our spiritual contact with God, as for Adam, there had to be an inbreathing of God, for us there has to be an inbreathing of the Holy Spirit for us to come alive spiritually...
[Each one of these "BREATHS" of life are 'breathed' into each individual at the time God views that individual as a person - a person made in His image, (Gen 1:26-27) - and thereafter the Garden of Eden, at that time the breath of physical life occurs IN THE WOMB at the moment of conception, (Gen 4:1, Job 3:3; Ps 51:5) and even before that! (Ps 139:13-16; Jer 14-5)!!!]
VIII) THE BIBLE SPECIFICALLY PRESCRIBES PUNISHMENT OF THE KILLING OF AN UNBORN CHILD
...The key passage that establishes whether an unborn child is a human being and if you take its life it's an act of murder...
[Ex 21:22-23 NAS 1995]:
(v. 22) "And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child [a word which applies to unborn or born child] so that her child comes out [i.e., has a premature delivery] yet there is no injury [to mother or child], he shall surely be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him; and he shall pay as the judges decide.
[Note: Most versions refer to the child literally as "coming out" or render it premature delivery. But the NAS Bible of 1977 has it incorrectly translated as follows:
(Ex 21:22 NAS77) "And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him: and he shall pay as the judges decide."
Later the NAS was corrected to read:
(Ex 21:22 NASB 1995 Update) "If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide."
(v. 23) But if there is any further injury [to mother or child], then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life,"
"child" = "harah" = The Hebrew word which is translated here as "child" is the same word which is applied to an unborn or a born child. The Hebrew has no word such as fetus or any word which would distinguish between the child in the womb and the child who is outside the womb.
"miscarriage" = "yatsa" = in the NAS1977 The word rendered "miscarriage" in this version in the Hebrew literally means to "come out," implying alive, especially in the absence of a qualifying word "dead," if dead is meant. It is a word without qualifiers such as "dead" that IS ONLY APPLIED TO LIVE BIRTHS. This word is never applied to a miscarriage where a child is stillborn. It never applies to a baby that is born dead - only to a premature live birth. The translation is verse 22 NAS77 is inaccurate and would then be more accurately rendered: "she has a premature delivery,"
The word "yatsa" is used only to mean live birth in the Old Testament:
[Gen 25:25-26 NAS]:
(v. 25) "Now the first [baby] came forth red, all over like a hairy garment; and they named him Esau.
(v. 26) And afterward his brother came forth with his hand holding on to Esau's heel, so his name was called Jacob; and Isaac was sixty years old when she gave birth to them."
"came forth" = "yatsa" = "born"
The word "yatsa" here refers to a live birth. Both Jacob and Esau were born alive.
[Compare Gen 38:27-30]:
(v. 27) "And it came about at the time she was giving birth, that behold, there were twins in her womb.
(v. 28) Moreover, it took place while she was giving birth, one put out a hand, and the midwife took and tied a scarlet thread on his hand, saying, 'This one came out first.'
(v. 29) But it came about as he drew back his hand, that behold, his brother came out. Then she said, 'What a breach you have made for yourself!' So he was named Perez.
[i.e., a breach]
(v. 30) And afterward his brother came out who had the scarlet thread on his hand; and he was named Zerah." [i.e. a dawning or brightness]
[Compare Job 3:11]:
"Why did I not die at birth,"
[lit., from the womb]
[Compare Jer 1:5]:
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations."
[Ex 21:22 NAS cont.]:
"And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child [word which applies to unborn or born child] so that she [lit., her children come out] has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him; and he shall pay as the judges decide.
(v. 23) But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life,"
Dr Danish, op. cit, cont:
[Verse 22]"...these men struggle with each other, one of them strikes a woman with child so that she has a 'yatsa'. What she has is a premature delivery. And yet there is no... [physical] ...injury... ...And that refers to both of them - to the mother or the child. She's all right and the baby is viable and able to live outside of the womb.
Now we have this further reinforced by the fact that there are Hebrew words... ...which mean being born dead - stillbirth. So that there is an exact word that could have been used if this woman had a miscarriage and had a dead baby... ...that's [what the phrase in this verse]: 'no further injury' [covers]: ...the child was born prematurely, he was not born dead. One of those Hebrew words looks like this 'shakol'... [which is used in several places]:
[Gen 31:38]:
"These twenty years I have been with you; your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried, nor have I eaten the rams of your flocks."
"miscarried" = "shakol" = born dead
[Ex 23:26]:
"There shall be no one miscarrying or barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days."
"miscarrying" = "shakol" = giving birth to dead babies
[Job 21:10]:
"His ox mates without fail; His cow calves and does not abort."
"abort" = "shakol" = born dead
[Hos 9:14]:
"Give them, O LORD - what wilt Thou give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts."
"miscarrying womb" = "shakol" = dead births - a condition where the children are born dead and therefore the mothers have "dry breasts" because there is no one to feed.
There is yet another word that the Holy Spirit could have used: "nephal" which carries the same idea of being born dead.
[Job 3:16]:
"Or like a miscarriage which is discarded, I would not be, As infants that never saw light."
[Ps 58:8]:
"Let them be as a snail which melts away as it goes along, Like the miscarriages of a woman which never sees the sun."
[Dr. Danish, cont]:
"So what happened to this woman in the fight here in Exodus 21 verse 22 is that she had a premature delivery... ...It was not that the child was killed in the process.
And then it says, 'If no other injury the guilty man is going to have to pay an appropriate fine to the husband as determined by him and the judges. The reason for this is that the woman has suffered mental and emotional stress and therefore she is to be recompensed for that by the fine.... [also any punitive damages]
Now supposing the worst thing happened. The baby is killed as a result of this man's deliberate striking of the woman.
(v. 23 NAS) But if there is injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life,"
[So the loss of life by either the woman and/or the baby is clearly to result in the loss of life of the man who deliberately struck the woman and caused either woman and/or the baby's death. So abortion was a capital crime in Israel and the language here in the Hebrew makes this very clear. Note that if the death of anyone is unintentional then the punishment is not death but the individual responsible must flee to a city of refuge, (cp. Dt 19:4-13). The context of the passage in Exodus 21:22-23 describes a deliberate striking of the woman by one of the men. Notice that verses 24-25 go on to indicate like injury for the injury the man caused, indicating that the punishment must fit the crime. So here in the Old Testament, under the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit, the unborn child is given full legal protection. A deliberate act that results in the abortion of an unborn child is determined by God's Word as murder, punishable by death. There is no permission given in the Bible whatsoever for abortion.
[Dr. Charles E. Rice states in an article in THE NEW AMERICAN magazine, April '96, p. 13, in an article entitled: Are There Any "Hard Cases"?]:
IX) KILLING TO SAVE A LIFE DOES NOT JUSTIFY ABORTION - BOTH LIVES COUNT
"The most difficult case is that in which an abortion is supposedly necessary to save the life of the mother. First, we should remember that an operation to remove the cancerous womb of a pregnant woman, or to relieve an extra-uterine pregnancy, can be performed (even under Catholic teaching) where such surgery is necessary to save the life of the mother, even though it causes the death of the unborn child. Morally such an operation is justified by the principle of the double effect, since the death of the child is an unintended effect of an independently justified operation. The surgery does not involve the intentional killing of the child for the purpose of achieving another good. Legally, such an operation is not regarded as abortion at all. There is no need, therefore, to provide an exception for such cases in a law prohibiting abortion.
Apart from cases such as the extra-uterine pregnancy and the cancerous uterus, there appears to be no medical justification for terminating a pregnancy.
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who himself was responsible for 30,000 abortions, wrote in his first book after he stopped doing abortions that 'we proposed a lengthy list of illnesses (including but not limited to heart or kidney disease) which would justify abortion. We regard that list now with a growing sense of disbelief: if women with heart and liver transplants can be carried successfully through pregnancy, we can no longer conceive of any medical condition which would legitimize abortion. In short, we have slowly evolved to an unshakable posture of no exceptions...'
Even if there were a case in which an abortion was necessary to save the life of the mother, abortion should not be allowed. If two people are on a one-man raft in the middle of the ocean, the law does not permit one to throw the other overboard to save his own life. Otherwise, might would make right. In maternity cases, the duty of the doctor is to use his best efforts to save both his patients, the mother and her child. He should not be given a license to kill intentionally either of them.
BOTH LIVES COUNT
Opposition to abortion in cases where it is supposedly necessary to save the life of the mother is dismissed by some as a cruel sectarian dictate of the Catholic Church, which is charged with preferring the life of the unborn child to the life of the mother. The reality is different. 'Never and in no case,' said Pope Pius XII in 1951, 'has the Church taught that the life of the child must be preferred to that of the mother. It is erroneous to put the question with this alternative: either the life of the child or that of the mother. No, neither the life of the mother nor that of the child can be subjected to direct suppression. In the one case as in the other, there can be but one obligation: to make every effort to save the lives of both, of the mother and the child.'
The moral prohibition against abortion, in whatever case, is an application of the absolute principle that no one ever has the right intentionally to kill the innocent. An incidental consideration is that any language in a law allowing an exception for abortion to save the life of the mother will be open to an expansive interpretation, allowing abortion, for example, whenever the physician claims he perceives a risk that the mother may commit suicide if she is not allowed to have her child killed.
If an exception should not be made where the life of the mother is concerned, then it should not be made for any lesser reason. To allow abortion to prevent injury to the mother's mental or physical health (where her life is not in danger) is to allow killing for what ultimately amounts to convenience. And to kill the unborn child because he may be defective is to do what the Nazis did to the Jews whose lives they regarded as not worth living.
X) PUNISH THE RAPIST NOT THE UNBORN CHILD
Politically, the most appealing cases in which to allow abortion are those involving rape and incest. A victim of rape or incest has the right to resist her attacker. But the unborn child is an innocent non-aggressor and should not be killed because of the crime of his father. Since the woman has the right to resist the rapist, she also has the right to resist his sperm. Non-abortive measures can be taken, consistent with the law and even Catholic teaching, promptly after the rape, which are not intended to abort and which may prevent conception. However, once the innocent third party is conceived, he should not be killed.
When questioned in Arizona about whether he would favor an exception to allow abortion for a woman who had been raped, presidential candidate Pat Buchanan revoiced his firm conviction that abortion should be totally prohibited, 'I don't care about the circumstances of the child's conception. You want to execute somebody in the case of rape, execute the rapist and let the unborn child live.' Buchanan said later that he did not endorse the death penalty for rapists, but he held firmly to his no-exception position on legal protection for the unborn. Supporters of abortion attack the no-exception position as heartless and insensitive to the needs of the mother. And many abortion opponents concede that abortion ought to be allowed in 'hard cases; to see if it really makes sense to forbid abortion in every situation.
XI) COMPROMISE, I.E., THE INCREMENTAL APPROACH LEADS TO LICENSE TO KILL
Since 1981, major elements of the pro-life movement have promoted incremental legislation that would allow abortion when the life of the mother is in danger, in pregnancies caused by rape or incest, and for minors who obtain parental consent. Such incremental legislative strategy, however, affirms the basic holding of Roe v. Wade, that the unborn child is not a person and therefore has no constitutionally guaranteed rights.
It is fair to suggest that these compromise approaches have served to increase the toll of lives from abortion. For example, the enactment of a law requiring an unmarried minor to obtain parental consent before an abortion will predictably decrease the number of abortions from those under the previously unrestricted law. The proper comparison, however, would be between a situation in which the law was either wholly permissive or required parental consent on the one hand, and, on the other, a situation in which the pro-life movement and the churches were insisting that the murder of the innocent can never be rightly allowed.
The dominant abortions of the near future will be committed by pills, implants, or other devices. The only effective way that the law can reach such early abortions will be by licensing and prescription restrictions and similar regulations. But the only way to mobilize sufficient support for such restrictions will be to restore the public conviction that all life is sacred and must be protected by the law. The incremental strategy, which seeks to regulate rather than prohibit abortion, undermines that conviction because it permeates the public discourse with the message that even 'pro-life' advocates agree that innocent life is negotiable.
Consider one example. Station KELO-TV in Sioux Falls, South Dakota conducted two polls on abortion, one in late 1990 and one in late 1991. The major pro-life news event in 1991 in South Dakota was an attempt to outlaw abortions except those for rape, incest, and the life or physical health of the mother. After that campaign, the second poll, which was identical to the first and covered the same audience, showed that more people favored some abortions, and fewer opposed all abortions, than had been the case with the first poll. As Paul R. Dorr of the organization Rescuing the Perishing explained, 'The large body of the public who remain '''unsure''' where they stand on abortion look to committed pro-life and pro-death forces to help develop their views. And with many pro-lifers willing to allow some abortions legislatively, it appears the public has followed their lead. As a result, we have lost ground with the public.'
The 1992 election confirms that a pro-life strategy of compromise contributes to the institutionalization of the abortion ethic. The Washington Post - ABC News poll taken in January 1993 reported the percent of people who believe abortion should be legal and compared the results to those before the election. In the presidential campaign, Bill Clinton took the totally pro-abortion position. The 'pro-life' candidate, President Bush, backed by much of the pro-life movement, supported legalized abortion in cases involving the life of the mother, rape, and incest. The result: Public attitudes shifted markedly in a pro-abortion direction in all categories. The post-election support for abortion was the highest in the history of that poll. And why not? When the 'pro-life' people claim that the right to life is inalienable and then support its alienation, why should people take seriously 'pro-life' rhetoric about the absolute sanctity of innocent life?
While the effort to ban the partial-abortion (PBA) will fail because of the President's veto, it has exposed the barbarity of the abortion culture. 'The moral gravity of procured abortion is apparent in all its truth,' said Pope John Paul, 'if we recognize that we are dealing with murder.' In any civilized society, the issue must be whether innocent human beings may be legally murdered. Over the past two decades, however, the pro-life movement has sought to limit - but not wholly prohibit abortion, thus framing the issue as which innocents may be killed. The PBA campaign is a further retreat, focusing on the issue of how innocents may be legally killed.
If the campaign against the PBA is interpreted by the public as opposition only to the method of the killing, that campaign will, ironically, reinforce the abortion culture. The murder of an innocent child by jamming scissors into his brain is qualitatively no different from murder by any other method, including morning-after pills and other abortifacients. The gruesome reality of the PBA reflects the intrinsic evil of any and all forms of abortion. The campaign to prohibit partial-birth abortions must not distract us from the reality that the law can never validly tolerate the execution of the innocent, no matter how that killing is done. The issue is whether, not which or how, innocent children should be legally killed.
The only chance for the restoration of the right to life in our law is for pro-life people to insist that life is sacred because it comes from God, not from the state, and that the state can never validly tolerate the intentional killing of innocent human beings. It is long past time for us to stop debating refinements of pro-death proposals. Rather, we must shift the debate to our own agenda. The pro-life movement must insist on protection of life, without exception, from the beginning."
XIII) THE SUPREME COURT HAS ABUSED ITS AUTHORITY OVER THE PEOPLE, CONGRESS AND THE CONSTITUTION
In the matter of the Supreme Court's decision in Roe vs Wade, Justice Byron White of that particular Supreme court presented his dissent from the other Justices' ruling:
"I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers... and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes.... It teaches an 'order of priorities' in which the state exalts convenience over the right to life of an unborn human being, including babies who are slaughtered in the birth canal a few inches and seconds shy of birth. That ethic did not develop through spontaneous consensus; it was imposed upon the American public by a lawless Supreme Court."
The House Judiciary Committee has observed, there "is no substantive difference between a child in the process of being born and that same child when he or she is born. The only distingushing characteristic is locale. Clearly, the child is as much a 'person' when in the process of being born as that child is when the process is complete."
[New American, 1/19/98, 'License to Kill', p. 10-14]
God has the final say on the matter as it is taught in Scripture and reflected in America's Declaration of Independence in which the right to life is conferred upon individuals by their Creator, the God of the Bible which goes even farther: before conception.
XIV) BUT CONGRESS COULD RESOLVE THE ABUSE:
Joseph Sobran, states in THE NEW AMERICAN, JANUARY 19, 1998, p. 36:
"Is the Supreme Court really so powerful? No. It has power only by the sufferance of Congress, which can control it any time it chooses. This is why the Court has been so careful, especially since the New Deal, not to cross Congress by striking down even its most flagrantly unconstitutional laws.
If it had truly objected to 'Roe' on either moral or constitutional grounds, Congress could have impeached the justices who had voted to impose legal abortion on the nation. It could have taken the lesser measures of cutting the budget and staff of the Court as a whole.
Even now, Congress has the power, under Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, to limit the Court's appellate jurisdiction. By a simple majority vote of both houses, it could remove the Court's appellate jurisdiction over abortion cases. Of course, President Clinton would veto any such act, but Congress could override his veto.
All that is lacking is the will. And it has been lacking since 1973, even during the tenure of Presidents who opposed 'Roe.' The truth is that most congressmen have no objection to anything the Court does, as long as it leaves Congress free to go on usurping powers never delegated to it. All three branches of the federal government, unfortunately, are in the same business.
Moreover, even well-meaning congressmen are hardly aware of the powers they already have. Few members of Congress have studied the Consitituion they are sworn to uphold against all enemies, foreign 'and domestic.' They think the interpretation of the Constitution can and should be left to the Court."
XV) CLONING INDICATES THAT LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION
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