This morning we come to an issue that I believe to be one of the most crucial topics we have ever addressed here at this church...an issue that I myself am very passionate about yet an issue that to often the church has been willing to turn a blind eye to. Abortion. It’s an issue that divides political parties, that stirs our emotions and can bring out the best or worse in us. And it’s one of many issues in our society that deal with the issue of the sanctity of life and who determines whether a life is worthy to be lived and when a life shall end.
Leo Alexander, who was consultant to the Secretary of War and on duty with the office of Chief Counselor for War Crimes in Nuremberg, says that what happened with the holocaust in Nazi Germany "all started with the acceptance of the attitude that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived."
Notice, that in Germany, the holocaust all began with "the attitude that there is such a thing as a life not worthy to be lived." That sounds a lot like today’s statistic when it comes to abortion. A life is deemed not worthy to be lived. Ninety percent of expectant parents who receive a prenatal diagnosis of down syndrome will abort their baby. Ninety percent. I have an uncle who has down syndrome, and I can guarantee you that not only is his life worthy to be lived, I bet that he has lived a lot more that any of us ever dreamed of living. A life not worthy to be lived? C’mon. Tell that to Uncle Kenny. I once saw a picture of a little kid saying “God don’t make no junk!” But sadly, not everyone gets a chance to live like Uncle Kenny has, to prove that their not simply junk to be done away with. Many never even get the opportunity to prove the world wrong.
Worldwide, 55 million unborn children are killed every year. Around the world, every day 150,685 children are killed by abortion; every hour, 6278; and every minute, 105. Those are the reported cases.
In our own country. 1,600,000 babies are aborted in these United States every year. Per day, that’s 4,383; per hour, that’s 183; per minute, there are 3. 3 a minute. Imagine that at the beginning of our service, every minute 3 of you would disappear…that’s staggering. And although our state of Mississippi ranks as one of the lowest total abortions in America, it is still an issue that haunts our state as well as our nation.
As we cover this issue this morning, I understand that many of you already have your mind made up. And you are sitting there saying, “He’s not getting to me today.” Well, let me at least try. Listen objectively and let’s look at this issue from a biblical perspective. And as we did last week, I want us to speak the truth in love, by telling the truth about abortion but at the same time reminding that there is forgiveness in Jesus Christ and hope is His grace. And then I want us to look at what the Christian response should be, not only toward the abortion issue itself, but also toward those women who either are considering an abortion or have already done so.
As a Christian, the issue of abortion is not one we can simply pretend that doesn’t affect us. It’s an issue we can’t remain neutral about. You can’t say that you oppose abortion yet still be pro-choice. Yet that’s the cop out many try to use. We try not to get involved on one side or another so we say that I myself wouldn‘t do it, but I‘m not going to force my opinion on anyone else. A politician from my home state of Kentucky a while back was asked by his pastor what his view on abortion was. The politician said that he himself was against it but he wasn’t going to force his view on everybody else and deny a woman her choice. The pastor then asked, “Do you take that same stand on drugs? You personally don’t take them but why should you prevent anybody else. It‘s there choice, right?” The man acknowledged his inconsistency on the subject. But most Christians are like this man…we don‘t want to get involved. We don’t agree with it but we don’t want to take a stand on it either. We don‘t want to make a decision on the topic so we say: Why should I care about what a woman does with her baby? I personally wouldn’t do it, but who am I to judge? Why should I get involved in this? Why should I be concerned?
Well, as Christians, we should care because we are called to defend the defenseless, care for those who have no voice, those who don’t have political power or wealth, those who are the most helpless amongst us. Psalms 82:3-4 reads, “Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” Now who amongst us is weaker that an unborn child? They are completely defenseless and can’t even breath on their own.
And when you consider the brutality of the abortion procedure it is simply horrifying. Now I am going to explain this to you and it will be graphic, but it is something that must be heard to understand what exactly takes place. This past week I got to see a video entitled silent scream, and it’s a video of an abortion being done. And I can truly say I was so saddened by it but at the same time so upset at how we can be so callous to this horrific event.
During the First Trimester, the first three months of the pregnancy, the method that is used is the e Dilation and Suction which basically means that a vacuum tears the child in pieces and sucks the pieces out through a tube. And since the head is to large to be vacuumed up, a pair of forceps are used to crush the head to reduce its size.
During the Second Trimester the safe comfortable home of the child, known as the Amniotic Sack, is wounded by a needle which withdraws the Amniotic Fluid and replaces it with a heavy saline solution (which basically burns the child alive), and in 24 to 72 hours the mother will expel the dead fetus.
During the Third Trimester, a procedure known as “partial birth abortion” is used and this is when the baby is delivered all the way except for it’s head, and then a pair of scissors is jabbed into the soft spot on the baby’s head after which a vacuum is used to suck out the baby’s brain. The baby’s head is then allowed to exit the womb. How horrifying, and over 5,000 partial birth abortions are done a year. Now who will speak on their behalf? Are we still willing to close our eyes and pretend that these atrocities don’t exist and that they will simply go away.
An elderly German man who lived through the Holocaust tells the following story: I always considered myself a Christian. I attended a church since I was a small boy. We had heard the stories of what was happening to the Jews; but like most people in America today, we tried to distance ourselves from the reality of what was really taking place. What could anyone do to stop it?
A railroad track ran behind our small church, and each Sunday morning we would hear the whistle from a distance and then the clacking of the wheels moving over the track. We became disturbed when one Sunday we heard cries coming from the train as it passed by. We grimly realized that the train was carrying Jews.
Week after week that train whistle would blow. We would dread to hear the sound of those old wheels because we knew that the Jews would begin to cry out to us as they passed our church. It was so terribly disturbing! We could do nothing to help these poor people, yet their screams tormented us. We knew exactly at what time that whistle would blow, and we decided the only way to keep from being so disturbed by the cries was to start singing our hymns. If some of the screams reached our ears, we’d just sing a little louder until we could hear them no more.
Years have passed, and no one talks about it much any more; but I still hear that train whistle in my sleep. I can still hear them crying out for help. God forgive all of us who called ourselves Christians, yet did nothing to intervene. And daily, over 4,000 lives are being taken. Are we still not concerned?
Now just like last week, I want to address some myths that circulate about abortion. The first one is that most abortions are done to save the life of the mother or because the pregnancy was caused rape or incest. But this is not the case. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute which is the research arm of Planned Parenthood: Less than 1% are victims of incest or rape, another 1% had fetal abnormalities, 4% had a doctor who said their health would worsen if they continued the pregnancy ; and 75% said that the child would interfere with their lives. C. Everett Koop, formerly the Surgeon General, states that during his 35-plus years of practicing medicine, “Never once did a case come across my practice where abortion was necessary to save a mother’s life.” And even in those cases which seems to be so awful, abortion still doesn’t make sense.
Let me ask you if you would you consider abortion in the following situations? 1. There’s a preacher and wife who are very, very, poor. They already have 14 kids. Now she finds out she’s pregnant with her 15th. They’re living in tremendous poverty. Considering their poverty, and the excessive world population, would you consider recommending she get an abortion? 2. The father is sick with sniffles, the mother has TB. They have 4 children. The first is blind, second is dead, third is deaf, fourth has TB. She finds she’s pregnant again. Given the extreme situation, would you consider recommending abortion?
3. A white man raped a 13 year old black girl and she got pregnant. If you were her parents, would you consider recommending abortion? 4. A teenage girl is pregnant. She’s not married. Her fiancé is not the father of the baby, and he’s very upset. Would you consider recommending abortion?
In the first case, you have just killed John Wesley. One of the great evangelists in the 19th century and the founder of our Methodist movement. In the second case, you have killed Beethoven, the great musician and composer. In the third case, you have killed Ethel Waters, the great black gospel singer. In the fourth case…you have just killed Jesus.
The truth is that most woman get an abortion because they think that a child would interfere with the quality of their life. With their goals and plans. The child is not viewed as a gift from God, but an inconvenience to be rid of.
The second myth is that the baby feels nothing. I told you how I watched that video of the baby being aborted this week, and one thing that struck me was that when the vacuum got near the amniotic sac, the baby started to move to try to avoid it, and then as it is being sucked, you can see the baby open its mouth as if it were screaming…hence the name of the video was silent scream. You could see the agony of this poor child as it was being torn apart literally limb to limb. The baby felt every part of the procedure.
The third myth is that abortions are harmless. That you come in and you come out, and that’s that. Like getting a tooth pulled, but study after study has found that women who have an abortion are sometimes up to 130% more likely to suffer from clinical depression than those women who chose not to have an abortion.
I came across this testimony on a web site for a support group for woman who had had an abortion and now regret their decision. It comes from a 24 year girl who simply identified herself as M.S. “ It has been 2 years since I ended the life of the child my boyfriend and I had conceived. It is something that I never thought I was capable of. I had always attended church, but one December night we created a child. I found out I was pregnant at the beginning of February.
I was in such denial I took 3 tests (2 at home and one at the clinic on campus.) I was in my senior year of college. I had my whole life ahead of me. I didn’t know what to do. What made it worse was my boyfriend who said I had no other decision to make but to terminate my pregnancy. I never felt so alone in my life. Instead of turning to God I listened to him and my fears.
I remember going to the clinic in a daze. I just remember waking up afterwards in a panic. The realization of what I had done was overwhelming. A few weeks later I had to go back to the clinic for a check up. I just remember sitting there in the waiting room, wanting to tell the girls there not to do it. I wanted to say something to make them turn back from what would probably be one of the biggest mistake of their lives. But I didn’t know what to say.
I have asked God many times to forgive me for my ignorance and lack of faith in him. I know he has but I have had the hardest time forgiving myself. For over a year I held on to those 2 home pregnancy tests and the results from the clinic. So many times I want to have a baby to fill the void that I created when I took the life of my child. But I know God has a plan for me as to when that will happen.
If I could give any advice as to what to do when you find yourself caught between your beliefs and your fears: trust God. Things seem bad when you first confront them, but just having faith makes those fears disappear after time. Please don’t cover one mistake with another. God will be your comfort, your provider, your shelter and your protector."
So what does the Bible say about the child within the womb. Throughout scripture we are taught to respect life, to preserve it and to honor it. We see that to God life is sacred. But is the child within the womb actually a child? The question that needs to be asked is when does life begin. There was a pastor who was asked this question, “Does life begin at conception or at birth?” He said, “Neither, life doesn’t begin until the last kid leaves home and the dog dies.” Medical authorities determine a person to be “alive” if there is either a detectable heartbeat or brain-wave activity. With that in mind, it is eye-opening for some to realize that unborn children have detectable heartbeats at eighteen days after conception and detectable brain-wave activity forty days after conception. What is so shocking is that essentially 100 percent of all abortions occur after the seventh week of pregnancy.
In His book, “Christians is a sex-crazed culture” Bill Hybels says that researchers are now saying that there is no decisive moment during the pregnancy when the status of the human being is established as being a human being. In other words, the only marked time when we become human is at the moment of conception.
Former U.S. General C. Everett Koop asked the following questions, “Would you go to a nursery and kill a week-old baby? How about a day-old baby? An hour-old baby? How about an hour before delivery? Or a day before delivery? A week, Three weeks?” The point is, there is no line of demarcation that delineates when a baby changes from a subhuman tissue mass to a human being. And this goes along with what God’s word says. That it is not just a collection of cells. It is not fetal matter. It is not just human tissue. It is created by God in His image, and everything that is there for acting, and thinking, and feeling, and knowing, and trusting, and hoping everything that is rational, and moral, and emotional is there.
Jeremiah 1:5 tells us that we are a person within the womb and that God knows us and has plans for us. It reads, "Before I 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." And the Psalm we read this morning Psalms 139:13-16 “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 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, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
In your bulletin there is a picture that really speaks volumes. It was shot by a photographer for the USA Today newspaper and it was shot on a spina bifida corrective surgery. It was done at Vanderbilt University medical center during the 21 week of pregnancy. Now what you see is amazing, because as the doctor cuts open the uterus, the baby reaches up and grabs the doctors’ finger. Now let me ask you, when you see that little hand, is that a bunch of tissue or is that a life? Just to be sure I want to show you another picture. This is an ultra sound that was taken a while back, and I want you to see the head and the body…but I’m not really an expert on this so I want to bring out someone who is. (Clarissa, who is that in this picture? Where were you?) Now let me ask you is that a blob or tissue, or a beautiful little girl?
Psalms 127:3-5 reads, “Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.” I love that verse because it compares children to arrows. You see, we are to aim the arrows in the right direction, not get rid of the quiver. And perhaps the best thing for a mother to do, is to carry the baby to full term and then let someone else take it from there. Once there was a young teen girl who got pregnant out of wedlock, and though it was tempting for that girl to get an abortion, to make it all go away, she did the brave thing and when the baby was born, her and her parents found a young couple who couldn’t have children who desired more than anything to have a baby, someone who could love and raise the young infant in a Christian atmosphere, and that young couple was Ralph and Laura Trigg, and because a young girl chose life instead of death, little Abby is here today, and what a blessing she is.
So what should our response be as a Christian. First, we need to take a stand for the unborn and protect the sanctity of life. You can do this with you votes, or by working at a counseling center for young woman. There are many ways to get into the fight. Also, we need to offer compassion to those woman who have had an abortion. They are hurting and instead of yelling names like “baby killer”, invite them to know that there is grace and forgiveness in Jesus Christ. Would you believe that one of the most pro-active pro-lifers out there today is none other than Norma McCorvey, the infamous Jane Roe of Roe vs. Wade. She has since then became a Christian and now is working to overturn the law she helped bring into being. You see people can change, and just like we said last week, we need to speak the truth in love and bring them to Christ. And finally, choose life. If you or anyone you know is considering an abortion, help that person to see what an awful mistake they would be making, and help them through their situation, help them to make the right decision and choose life.
Charles McCarry can claim a varied career. In addition to being the author of The Tears of Autumn and The Last Supper, he served as assistant to the Secretary of Labor in the Eisenhower cabinet and has done two stints in the CIA. But he almost wasn’t born. In Readers Digest, McCarry says, “My mother became pregnant with me at the age of 39. She had nearly died while giving birth to my only sibling. Her doctor, who believed the second pregnancy was a serious threat to her life, advised an abortion. The advice made sense, but my mother refused to accept it. Just before she died at age 97, I asked her why. Why didn’t she just abort me?” She replied, “I wanted to see who you were going to turn out to be.”
