AbortionSue Bohlin
Abortion is one of the most divisive and controversial issues of our day. People generally have strong views about abortion. It is not a social issue of mere preference, but an issue about life and death. Abortion draws out the clashes between two divergent world views. The humanistic world view says, "Man is the highest standard there is. You don't answer to anyone, so do whatever you want." The Christian world view says, "We answer to God, and He has commanded us not to murder. We must always submit our desires and preferences to the authority of His word." In this writer's opinion the real reason that we see such emotional, tenacious commitment to the availability of abortion goes even deeper than the issue of abortion: people want sexual freedom without consequences. Our culture has a definite agenda supporting any and all sexual expression. It's difficult to find a new movie, or a successful TV show, or a popular song, that doesn't embrace this view of sex. When the director of a Crisis Pregnancy Center in Dallas offered a school district a presentation supporting abstinence till marriage, the district turned her down. Their own presentation featured birth control devices, and they couldn't let her talk about self-control one day if they were going to sell the kids on condoms the next. As a society, we are amazingly schizophrenic about this sort of thing. A teenager born in 1982, is a de facto member of what they're calling the "Smokefree Class of 2000." No one bats an eye at this worthy national goal of graduating an entire class of non-smokers, but people laugh derisively at the thought of kids not having sex. Which is easier to get, a sex partner or a cigarette? Teenagers are becoming more and more open about the fact that they are having sex, and this is a reflection of the sexual mores they see in movies, on TV, and in music. The whole society is loosening up to the point that people who have chosen to remain chaste are openly ridiculed on Geraldo; the decision of Doogie Howser, a TV hero and role model for young people, to lose his virginity is hailed as "responsible sex"; and a couple that doesn't live together before the wedding is asked, "Why not?" Western civilization has been heading down this path for a long time. With the rise of humanism during the Renaissance, societies began turning away from God's laws and God's ways. From the Enlightenment sprang a virtual worship of nature. Once nature, not God, became the standard for morality, people started believing that, since humans are a mere product of nature, anything we do naturally is normal and even good. Sex is natural, sex is powerful, and so it eventually followed that all sexual expression was seen as a natural and normal part of all human existence in any circumstances, much on the level of eating and sleeping. It is no coincidence that the two most heated issues of our day are abortion and homosexuality; underlying both is an insistence on sexual freedom while thumbing one's nose at God and His laws. Given the sexually charged atmosphere in which we live, it is not surprising that so many people are having sex outside of marriage and getting pregnant. And so abortion is treated like an eraser; people see it as a way to try to get rid of the consequences of their sexual activity. Of course, there are always exceptions; pregnancies do occur as a result of incest and rape. Some women get pregnant because of someone else's sin. But does that make it right to kill the baby that has been conceived?
Historically, hiding the evidence of sexual activity was the main reason for abortions. One of the early church fathers, Clement of Alexandria, maintained that "those who use abortifacient medicines to hide their fornication cause not only the outright murder of the fetus, but of the whole human race as well."{1}
Pro-choice advocates don't like the use of the word murder. They maintain that no one really knows when human life begins, and they choose to believe that the idea of personhood at conception is a religious tenet and therefore not valid. It is a human life that is formed at conception. The zygote contains 46 chromosomes, half contributed by each parent, in a unique configuration that has never existed before and never will again. It is not plant life or animal life, nor is it mere tissue like a tumor. From the moment of conception, the new life is genetically different from his or her mother, and is not a part of her body like her tonsils or appendix. This new human being is a separate individual living inside the mother.
The Bible doesn't specifically address the subject of abortion, probably since it is covered in the commandment, "Thou shalt not murder" (Exod. 20:13). But it does give us insight into God's view of the unborn. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word for the unborn (yeled) is the same word used for young children. The Hebrew language did not have or need a separate word for pre-born babies. All children were children, regardless of whether they lived inside or outside the womb. In the New Testament, the same Greek word is used to describe the unborn John the Baptist and the already-born baby Jesus. The process of birth just doesn't make any difference concerning a baby's worth or status in the Bible. We are given some wonderful insights into God's intimate involvement in the development and life of the pre-born infant in Psalm 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. Jeremiah 1:4-5 provides God's personal perspective on the value of the pre-born baby, demonstrating that He had a purpose for Jeremiah long before he was actually born: Now the word of the LORD came to me saying, "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." Isaiah also experienced God's prenatal call on his life, as expressed in Isaiah 49:1: The Lord called me from the womb; from the body of my mother He named me. All people, regardless of the circumstances of their conception, or whether they are healthy or handicapped, have been sovereignly created by God. He has planned out all the days of the unborn child's life before one of them has happened.
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