The Abortion Controversy Exodus 20:13 and Exodus 21:22-25 (Topical)
Abortion is the number one killer in the United States: Here are some statistics from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services:
Murder by firearms: 17,000
Suicide: 32,000
Auto Accidents: 42,000
AIDS: 42,000
Other Accidents: 48,000
Pneumonia/Flu: 82,000
Cancer: 537,000
Heart Disease: 734,000
Abortion: 1,529,000
It is perhaps most widely debated issue in our society today.
Pro-abortionists demand that abortion is a right and a woman should have enough control over her own body to be allowed to choose whether or not to have an abortion.
“We protect the mother’s right to decide when and how many children she wants,” cry pro-abortion organizations like Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League.
Pro-lifers demand that abortion is murder and should be punished as such.
"We protect the rights of the unborn child", argue pro-life groups such as National Right to Life and Operation Rescue. “They have a right to live.”
In a society so seemingly concerned with individual rights, that would appear to be a valid statement.
After all, we spend millions of dollars each year to protect the rights of animals.
There are even laws that protect the eggs of some animals placed on the endangered species list, but there are no laws to protect the rights of the unborn child.
Here are some more statistics about abortion in America today:
• One third (33%) of all abortions in America are done on non-white women, although nonwhites constitute only about 13% of the country’s population. Since 1973, African-American women have had almost 10 million abortions. Current population of black Americans is 31 million. Nearly 80% of Planned Parenthood’s abortion centers are located in predominantly African-American neighborhoods.
• About one million teenagers become pregnant per year. Slightly over half will choose abortion. The number of births to teens is on the rise. Some people who work with crisis pregnancies believe that is because fewer teens are choosing abortion. The number of teen pregnancies (age 15-19) is declining, ranging from 117 per 1000 in Nevada to 56 per 1000 in North Dakota. The Centers for Disease Control attribute the decline to a combination of more teens choosing abstinence and the increased use of contraception.
• California has the highest abortion rate in the country -- 40 abortions per 1000 women (all ages). Abortions are more concentrated in urban areas and less available in rural areas.
• The number of medical schools teaching abortion procedures has fallen by more than 50% since 1987. There are 580 fewer abortion clinics in 1998 than there were in 1986.
• Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider. Seventy-five of their affiliates perform surgical abortions. In 1996 Planned Parenthood performed 153,367 abortions and referred an additional 54,207 women to other abortion clinics, making Planned Parenthood responsible for approximately 16% of all abortions in America. The highest number of abortions were performed in 1990 (1.6 million reported).
• More than 40 million abortions have been performed in the 27 years since Roe vs. Wade.
A 1992 study called the Worthlin Poll showed that social or “birth control” reasons accounted for approximately 93% of all abortions.
Those so-called “hard cases” of rape, incest, health of the baby and threat to the life or health of the mother account for less than 7% of all abortions.
The poll surmised that the reasons almost all abortions are done are not the reasons for which the majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal.
The bad news is that we are still killing babies.
The good news is that we are killing less of them and the abortion rate is slowly declining.
Today’s message is more of an informative message, but it’s designed to make you think about your position.
I. Where did this controversy come from?
The right to decide whether or not to bear a child was secured in 1973 by the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe vs. Wade and its companion case, Doe vs. Bolton.
Prior to these rulings, abortion was prohibited in most of the 50 states.
Roe vs. Wade repealed all state laws prohibiting abortion.
Doe vs. Bolton extended the right to abortion to the entire nine months of pregnancy.
Exodus 20:13 says, "Thou shalt not kill."
The word "kill" in Hebrew implies intentional killing of innocent human life, or murder.
It seems only natural that a society that punishes murderers through life imprisonment, and in many cases even death, would punish abortionists in the same manner.
Yet in our society the murder of unborn babies is legal.
We have even gone so far as to change the name from murder to abortion.
This makes it more palatable, since we know that murder, the taking of innocent human life, is illegal in all fifty states.
What you might find interesting is that many of those who fight so hard to kill innocent babies are the same ones who fight equally hard against the death penalty.
They fight to protect the guilty while killing the innocent.
The overwhelming opinion of pro-choice leaders is that “harsh biblical terms like sin and murder must be expunged from the Christian’s vocabulary”
• Catherine Weiss, Director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, in a statement condemning the 1998 shooting of abortionist Barnett Slepian, stated: “The American Civil Liberties Union deplores the violent acts of anti-choice extremists. It is perhaps not surprising that when abortion is described as ‘murder’ and fetuses are characterized as ‘babies’ the result is violence against providers and clinics.”
What could be more violent than sucking an unborn child out of his mother’s womb?
Or delivering a baby feet first, puncturing the base of his skull with a sharp instrument, sucking his brains out, then crushing his skull?
When a baby is no longer a baby but a fetus or a neonate, it’s easy to justify killing them.
They would have us believe that the unborn child is nothing more than a mass of tissue.
• Kate Michelman of the National Abortion Rights Action League, in her response to the Slepian death, stated, “Those in leadership of the other side must acknowledge and admit that their words drive unrestrained factions of their own movement to commit these horrific acts…They must stop referring to abortion to murder and to doctors who perform abortion as murderers.”
Do you think it is our words that caused this man to be killed, or the senseless, violent death of millions of unborn children?
• Gloria Feldt of Planned Parenthood, in her statement regarding Slepian’s death, said, “The very existence of such a list (talking about Slepian and those who were injured) is an obscenity. It is a blight-a betrayal of the principles on which this nation was founded-personal freedom, tolerance, justice, and respect for the moral autonomy of women.”
What about the personal freedom of the unborn child?
What about tolerating his presence for a few short months?
After all, it is not his fault he is there.
What about justice?
What about all those laws that are supposed to protect us from murder and manslaughter?
They apparently don’t apply to unborn children.
And where there is moral autonomy, there is no morality.
You see, the abortion issue does not question whether an unborn baby is a "life", but rather whether the unborn baby is a "human life" or "a person."
II. What makes a person?
How do you differentiate between life in general and human life?
Is the unborn baby is a human life; is it a person?
If so, should it be protected under the constitution of the United States?
Webster’s 1977 dictionary states that "human" consists of "having the form or nature of a person; having or showing the qualities characteristic of people."
"Person", based on Webster’s, refers to "an individual human being, especially as distinguished from a thing or lower animal; a living human body."
If we use only these secular definitions of human life and person, it would appear that the unborn child really is a human life, a person, especially since the unborn baby has some of the "qualities characteristic of people" by day five.
By 8 weeks the child is a well proportioned, small-scale baby: about an inch long, weighing about 1/30 of an ounce.
From a Biblical perspective, human life begins with the creation of the soul.
Genesis 2:7 reveals that man became a living soul when God breathed the breath of life into him.
Job 33:4: "The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty has given me life."
In Jeremiah 1:5 God says to Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you...”
Even though these verses would imply that life begins at conception, many disagree with regards to when the soul is created.
Many others do not believe there is a soul.
To appease the secular mind, one must depend on a definition of personhood that moves beyond faith into the reason of humanism.
To appease the Christian mind, one must depend on God’s word to define personhood.
Based on both the secular definition of human life and the Biblical justification that human life begins in the womb at conception, it is my opinion that a life is a human life, a person, upon conception at which time the being not only receives a soul but a genetic code which identifies the developing life as a human life.
Science seems to concur with my opinion.
Science has determined that the unborn baby is alive from the moment of fertilization.
The baby has a heartbeat at 3 weeks and brain waves at 6 weeks.
Incidentally, physicians routinely determine death by the absence of brain waves even in cases where the person’s heart may still be beating.
The unborn baby has 46 chromosomes in the cells of his or her body, the scientifically verifiable human genetic code.
Nothing magic occurs at birth which suddenly makes an unborn baby a human life.
The baby is the same, whether inside or outside the uterus and should be protected under the constitution.
The bald eagle has no rights under our constitution, but it is illegal to kill it or destroy its eggs.
Should it be any less illegal to destroy our unborn children?
III. What, then, is abortion?
Again, according to Webster, abortion is the act of miscarrying.
Continuing our search for the meaning of this word, we find that miscarry refers to the premature birth of a fetus so that it does not live.
Based on Webster’s, we could conclude that abortion is the unassisted termination of an unborn person.
We could reasonably assume that abortion isn’t something one does, but rather something which happens naturally, such as in those cases when an egg might not attach itself properly to the uterine wall, or for some other unexplained reason.
One is led to believe that abortion is something that happens spontaneously, without outside assistance.
Once one interjects outside help, it no longer becomes abortion, but rather murder, if we hold to the dictionary definition that would suggest that abortion is the unassisted termination of an unborn person.
Pro-choice proponents seem to suggest that we should change the definition of abortion, since they don’t want to call it murder.
They have stated emphatically that those of us who preach that abortion is murder are nothing but hate-mongers who have vilified, harassed, and threatened people associated with abortion with the most hate-filled language.
They want abortion to be called a “woman’s right to reproductive freedom.”
Some pro-choice Christians argue that, since the word "abortion" does not appear in Scripture, God doesn’t have anything to say about it.
God does have something to say about abortion.
We can see his view of abortion as we briefly examine the passage in Exodus 21:22-25, which imposes harsh penalties for injury to an unborn child.
IV. God’s view of abortion (Exodus 21:22-25)
Verse 22 indicates that if two men are fighting and accidentally strike (or hurt) a woman so that she delivers her baby prematurely, but no serious injury (harm or mischief) comes to either of them, the men will be fined as the husband demands and the court allows.
Verses 23 through 25 tell us that if the mother or the unborn child are seriously injured, the law of retaliation is invoked.
The law of retaliation issues what the Bible refers to as "degree of harm penalties."
God gave these to us to make sure the punishment fit the crime.
Punishment could be no greater than the crime committed.
For instance, robbery wouldn’t constitute the death penalty, but killing someone would.
In this passage we see that if the mother or the baby dies as a result of two men fighting, the person who caused the death is also to be put to death.
This passage of Scripture refers to a case where injury to the mother or unborn child is purely accidental.
Doesn’t this show the extreme importance God places on the unborn child?
If the punishment for an accidental homicide is death, how could one possibly come to the conclusion that it is acceptable in God’s sight to intentionally take the life of an unborn child?
God says it is not acceptable.
It is sin, no matter how acceptable the pro-choice folks try to make it.
• Mother Teresa, in an address to President Clinton said, “I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it war against the child—a direct killing of the innocent child—murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?”
CONCLUSION:
Life is the constitutional right of every human being.
If you invited a person into your home, and then decided that your visitor was not welcomed and you killed him, you would undoubtedly be tried and convicted of murder.
Doesn’t the same analogy apply to an unborn child?
The unborn child is a visitor in a woman’s body.
Just because she decides the visitor is not welcome is no ground for taking its life.
Men and woman are well aware of the potential for pregnancy each time they have sexual intercourse.
If sexual intercourse results in the conception of human life, both partners must be willing to accept the responsibility for the child, since both are equally responsible.
Both partners must be held accountable.
The argument of abortion is not about rights, it is about responsibility.
Most human beings simply refuse to accept responsibility for their own actions and certainly will not accept the consequences when what they do results in something unfavorable or unwanted, such as pregnancy.
The argument which revolves around rights has been discussed and debated ad nauseam.
Everyone wants "their rights" and oppose anything that might even be perceived as a violation of "their rights."
We must begin to teach our children to take responsibility for their actions, but we can’t possibly do that until we begin to take responsibility for our own actions.
It is a sad commentary on the human race when a society resorts to redefining what makes a human life a person in order to justify killing innocent human beings.
INVITATION:
You might disagree with me about the abortion issue, you might feel that abortion is an acceptable right, but I challenge you to search Scripture and see what God says.
Do you know we really don’t have any rights.
We have privileges, but no rights.
It is not our right to murder innocent children, no matter what the situation.
As the father of five, I can tell you that having children is a privilege.
God granted me the privilege of raising five children.
He didn’t have to, but he did because He trusted me with His possessions.
I believe that if we continue to kill our babies God could easily revoke our privilege of bearing children.
The wombs of women could become strangely barren, and they would have no clue as to why.
It is my prayer that you will get involved in the fight against abortion.
I do not advocate killing abortionists, or bombing abortion clinics.
I do not even advocate picketing abortion clinics, though much good has been accomplished through those peaceful protests.
What I do advocate is this: Prayer
These are God’s children.
