In December of 1948, the newly-formed United Nations met in Paris France to draft what would become the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was just a few years after the end of World War II. Keep in mind that World War II, at least in Europe, was fought to defeat Adolf Hitler. Hitler had not only killed millions of Jews, but he had also rounded up all those whom he deemed as a drain to his master race, including gypsies, those of African descent, and homosexuals. But he didn’t stop there. Thousands of Germans with birth defects and mental challenges, as well as the old and infirm, were either sterilized, euthanized, or sterilized and then euthanized.
So after Hitler was defeated, the United Nations wanted to make sure nothing like this could ever happen again. And the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, approved December 10, 1948, begins this way:
"Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world."
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948
Just a few years after that in 1953, Theodore Geisel, better known to the world as Dr. Seuss, toured Japan. This was a big deal, because During World War II, Seuss produced hundreds of political cartoons depicting Japanese with dehumanizing racial stereotypes—thick glasses, slanty eyes, buck teeth, the whole works. But Dr. Seuss had been hired by Life magazine to write an article about the effects of the war and post-war efforts on Japanese children.
A university dean named Mitsugi Nakamura was Dr. Suess’ tour guide. He took Dr. Seuss to schools all over Japan, where he talked to school children and asked them to draw what they wanted to be when they grew up.
What Seuss saw made a deep impression, and when he returned to America, he started work on Horton Hears A Who!, the story of an elephant named Horton who is the only animal in the jungle who can hear the tiny inhabitants of a dust speck calling out for help. Horton protects the dust speck, and even when every other animal in the jungle is bent on destroying the speck, Horton keeps insisting,
A person’s a person, no matter how small.
The book was Dr. Seuss’s way of apologizing for the way he had portrayed the Japanese in his political cartoons. And when you open the book, you see that it’s dedicated “to my great friend, Mitsugi Nakamura of Kyoto, Japan.
“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
“Recognition of the dignity of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”
These are both great statements. But there are a couple of problems. First, while both Dr. Seuss and the United Nations affirm the dignity of every person, they don’t define what makes a person. Secondly, even though the UN statement says that a human being has inherent value, it doesn’t say why. Are they valuable because of what they can contribute to society? Are they valuable because they are smart, or good looking? Are they valuable because they are wanted?
So today is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. Every year, hundreds of churches around the country take the Sunday closest to the anniversary of the 1973 Roe V Wade Supreme Court decision, which legalized abortion nationwide, to talk about how Scripture defines human life.
So for that, we’re going to go to Psalm 139. If you are physically able, please stand to honor the reading of God’s Word:
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
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.
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.
Let’s pray
So, I want to talk first about what we learn from the Bible that we don’t learn from science, or the United Nations, or Dr. Seuss. A lot of people will affirm the dignity of human life—that people have value just because they are human. We can talk about the special place human beings have among all the creatures on earth. I was at breakfast with some guys from our church yesterday morning and Gary Alexander said, “You know, the two things that separate us from the animals are self-control, and the ability to use a knife and a fork.”
The Bible takes us a step beyond talking about dignity. The Bible talks about the sanctity of human life. When you hear the word “sanctity,” it’s describing something that is sacred. It comes from the Latin sanctus, which means holy.
Human life is holy. When God created human beings, He said,
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
Our dignity flows from and is rooted in the truth that we are made in God's image. We are not simply an evolved mammal, a collection of cells, the sum of our parts. Psalm 8:5 says we are crowned with glory and honor.
So a person is one who is created in God’s image. Someone who can think, feel, and develop more and more into God’s character. Someone who can respond to God’s calling in his or her life. Now for the second question. When does that begin? God’s Word makes it clear that this happens way before someone is born. Let’s look at what Psalm 139 says about life in the womb.
1. What’s in the womb is God’s possession.
Look at the first part of verse 13. In the ESV it reads “For you created my inmost being.” Which seems straightforward, and most translations say something similar. But when you look at that verse in the KJV, you get something completely different:
For thou hast possessed my reins:
And at least half of that is actually more accurate. The word translated “created” is actually closer to the Hebrew word for ownership or acquisition or purchase. That’s how its used most often in the Old Testament. But the word the KJV translates “reins” actually means kidneys or guts. So put it together and what you have is, “For you own my guts!”
That one truth by itself ought to be enough to make someone think twice about terminating a pregnancy. From the womb, we are God’s possession.
Not only that, we are God’s workmanship.
Verse 13b says God knit us together in our mother’s womb. Picture someone knitting. That takes skill. Verse 15 stays with that image when it says we are “intricately woven” in the depths of the earth I love that word for intricately woven. It’s the same word God used over and over when He described the building of the Tabernacle. He told Moses, I want you to weave together blue purple and scarlet yarn to make the curtains of the tabernacle. I want you to find the most skilled embroiderers in all Israel, because I want the place where I dwell to be special.
And guess what- He still does! Believers are now the dwelling place of God, so of course he put the same care of intricately weaving us together as He did the tabernacle.
And just take a moment to notice that the Psalmist says, “You knit me” (not "it") together in my mother's womb" (Psalm 139:13). What’s in the womb isn’t just an anonymous person, but a person that is known by God. A God who has a plan and a purpose for that life.
He told the prophet Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in your mother's womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." (Jeremiah 1:5)
And don’t miss the fact that even an unborn baby is capable of responding to the Holy Spirit: person that can respond to the Holy Spirit:
"For you see, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped for joy inside me." (Luke 1:44)
No wonder the Psalmist just busts out with "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well." (Psalm 139:14)
--At 18 days, a baby's heart begins to beat.
--At 22 days, it is pumping blood.
--At six weeks, they have detectable brain waves.
--Fingerprints by week ten
--Can feel pain at week 16.
Now, who else could do this? See, we take all that for granted because it literally happens hundreds of times a day, and we miss just how miraculous it is. It’s kind of like that old Shirley Temple movie where Shirley Temple says “My duck does a wonderful trick. She can lay an egg!” And the adult says, “Well, what’s so wonderful about that?” And Shirley Temple says, “Well… can YOU lay an egg?”
Let’s look at verses 13-16 of Psalm 139 again but this time I’d like you to keep track of the pronouns. The Psalmist is speaking to God. So count the number of times the psalmist says God is the active agent in the creation of life:
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; are wonderful, I know that full well. 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. 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.
Any of you that have struggled to have children and have not been able to get pregnant know that ultimately, all this is up to God. That alone ought to make us see just how sacred, holy, and miraculous the growth of a child is in the womb. And on top of that, to know that God is personally involved with that unborn child, and that He is actively creating and knitting and forming and weaving and seeing and ordaining has to make us argue for life and fight for life and work to legislate for life every opportunity we have.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump was asked about his views on abortion. And Trump acknowledged that at one time he had been pro choice. So listen to how he describes his change of heart:
I used to be pro-choice, but a few years ago a friend of mine had a child. The pregnancy was inconvenient, and they considered terminating, but the chose, at the last minute, to keep the baby. And I’ve seen how this child has grown up to be such a bright and talented young man. I can’t imagine killing such a gifted child. So I’m pro-life.”
Now, any time someone reverses their position on abortion from pro- abortion to pro-life, that ought to be celebrated. But look carefully at the logic in this quote. And ask yourself, well, what if the child had not grown up to be such a bright and talented young man? What if he had just been average? Or what if there had been some learning disabilities or physical challenges. If you only become pro-life because the child turns out to be “a total superstar, a great, great child.” then are you really committed to the sanctity of all human life? If God is the Agent behind conception, then God is also the agent behind development. No matter what kind of development it is.
In March of 2018, a young British woman named Charlotte Fien addressed a meeting of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. The same body that published the Universal Declaration of Human Rights seventy years before. At issue was the topic of eugenics, and specifically whether it was ethical to terminate a pregnancy if genetic testing determined the risk of Down’s Syndrome. Watch this extraordinary woman’s testimony. [video: https://youtu.be/FHglwa8vlYg]
Charlotte’s testimony is truly remarkable. But I’ve gotta tell you what I was thinking of as I was watching it. At one point she says,
“because of eugenics [which is the science of determining potential genetic defects early in a pregnancy] “A perfect baby, a perfect family, a perfect society are now possible.”
And I immediately thought, No they’re not! All you have to do is be a pastor for about 45 minutes to realize that there are no perfect people. There aren’t any perfect families. And because of sin, there will never, ever be a perfect society.
But I jumped to a conclusion before I listened to the entire testimony. She followed that up with this:
"But are they really? No… of course they aren’t. There’s no such thing as perfection. You can try to kill off everyone with Down Syndrome with abortion but you won’t be any closer to a perfect society. You will just be closer to a cruel, heartless one. The only way to change society’s view of us is to be a part of our community.”
Whether Charlotte realized it or not, she was describing the church. If you stretch the analogy, every single one of us was born with a fatal genetic defect, which we inherited from our parents Adam and Eve. It is called sin.
[GOSPEL]
Now, before we bring this to a close, I want to encourage you guys with some practical steps we can take, both as individual Christians and as a church.
And the first is, keep fighting, because the tide is turning.
There has been a dramatic decline in abortion rates since Roe v. Wade. 2017 was the lowest they had been since 1973. The peak was in 1980, when there were 29.3 abortions for every 1,000 live births. In 2017, the number was 13.5. You can really see it on this chart from the Centers for Disease Control.
At the bottom are years, from 2004 to 2018. And on the side are numbers of reported abortions, from 850 thousand at the top to 600 thousand at the bottom. And you see how sharply it has gone down. And just for perspective, it’s rate of decline hasn’t really been about who was president. Abortion hit its peak at the midpoint of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Since then, we’ve had twenty years of Republican presidents and sixteen years of Democrat presidents. But the rate has steadily declined. That tells me it hasn’t really been about who’s in the White House.
Number two, keep fighting, but pick your battles.
In the past several years, Christians have been the most vocal about things that don’t really make a huge difference in terms of actually reducing abortion. For example, we’ve worked really hard to eliminate funding for abortion. However, In 2014, the average cost of a nonhospital abortion with local anesthesia at 10 weeks of gestation was $508. That’s not cheap, but its not prohibitively expensive, either.
Parental consent laws don’t make a huge difference either. I say that because in 2018, only 7% of the total number of abortions were from women 19 or younger. 93% were women that wouldn’t need parental consent anyway.
Eliminating late term abortions doesn’t solve the problem. In 2018, only 1% of abortions were at 21 weeks or later. So while that gets the most coverage in the media, it is only a small fraction of the total number.
Number Three: Keep fighting, but prioritize people over policies.
So what does make a difference? Well, let’s look at the reasons women give for terminating their pregnancies: [I downloaded several statistics from the CDC and the Guttmacher institute. Guttmacher did an anonymous survey of about 2000 women who had chosen to terminate a pregnancy, and had their reasons up on the screen]
Based on the reasons women gave for having an abortion, the biggest impact the church could make would be with financial support (25% said they couldn’t afford a baby); parenting classes (32% said they weren’t mature enough/weren’t ready) and adoption (8% said they didn’t want to be a single mother). Think of it: there are 1.5 million orphans in the United States, and 15 million Southern Baptists. If just 10% of Southern Baptists committed to adopting a child, there would be no more orphans.
If you add up all of these that have something to do with not wanting to raise a child-- that it would interfere with school or a career; that they weren't ready or mature enough, that they couldn't afford to raise a child, you get something around 60%. Think of it: If we could cut the number of abortions in 2018 by 60% simply by working to come alongside women who were facing an unplanned pregnancy, and promising to support them, to educate them, and even to help them find a loving home for their child once he or she was born, then we could potentially save over 350,000 babies. Compare that to the 1%--6,100-- that are rescued if late term abortions are banned. Yes, that's a significant number, but if we prioritize people over policies, we could make a much bigger difference.
People over policies. That's how Jesus prioritized. Let's pray.
