If you had a chance to do something heinous, self-serving and beneficial to you at the expense of others and get away with it, would you do it? Most people would say “no way” yet, when presented with the opportunity, they jump right on it. Why is that? Are we without conscience or just opportunistic, or could it be we are just carnal by nature? I say the same about the abortion arguments we hear all too often; do these women just love to have abortions? That is beside the point, as I want to know what God has to say about it.
In the world of tolerance we live in it is hard to know which “god or God” to follow. Allah condones killing, Buddha says you are going to be reincarnated anyways, Darwin says “big deal, its survival of the fittest anyways. On the other hand, Jehovah God is saying, “you shall not murder.” So which one is correct? I will say I believe there is none but one God; His name is Yahweh. The Holy Bible is the only religious book that can be set apart and proved correct on so many levels scientifically, anthropologically and archeologically let alone philosophically and psychologically—even with (micro) evolution. I will not go into detail on the evidence as that is a topic for another day another time. So I will purport we have a biblical worldview on any issue.
Some of the after-effects of abortion I ran into during this research are heart breaking. Images of late term abortion survivors, are disheartening—some of them are missing limbs, some burnt but the mental scars on both the child and mostly the mother are eternal. I was talking to one of my friends who persuaded her girlfriend to abort their son 5years ago; he still wonders and almost gets depressed when he sees his coworker’s daughter that is the same age as his aborted son. Another friend aborted her son she had conceived because of an affair, as that was the only way to save her marriage. Some were married at the time of the abortion but they could not afford to have another child financially or emotionally so they did it. All these are valid reasons for having an abortion and I will not condemn the person but the act itself. These are good people according to our social standards.
The majority of the candidates for abortion who end up having one in this country, I found out they are single Christian women. Paul said if you have desire for relationships with the “opposite” sex, you are better off marrying. In our singleness, we ought to desire the things of God and fleeing from all immorality. On the other hand, the married ought to keep the marriage bed undefiled. When we keep the marriage bed pure and sexual relationships to the confines of marriage, we eliminate unplanned pregnancies hence no need for abortions. In my right mind if someone rapes my sister, daughter, wife or mother, I am sorry, but I would want to kill them—even though God is likely to forgive them—so for her to abort the child will come naturally! Jesus talks of grace in Matt 18:27 say to forgive 490times a day. He also says in Chapter 6 verse 14 that if we forgive those who sin against us God (our father) will forgive us too. There are several scriptures instructing us to forgive those who sin against us (Col 3:13, Mark 11:25, Luke 6:37). Yes it is a valid reason for one to want to abort the child that resulted from rape, but if Romans 18:28 is to be true, keeping the baby will be a blessing, if we choose to bless those that hurt us (Matt 5:44, Rom 12:14). Also in accordance with Matt 5:7 which says, “Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy,” I believe God has a way of turning our mess into a blessing if we let him.
Did you know, whenever a child is born, the mother is also reborn? This statement applies to both natural birth and adoption. At 58years old, my mother did the unthinkable; she adopted my dad’s love child. When everyone thought it would just crush her, my sister who was going to adopt the child as her guardian to ease the pain off our mother, reported to me “mom has a renewed sense of life and she looks 10years younger because of Yvette (our half sister). How is this possible? Well, even though a struggle in her heart raged on, she fought it down with the Word of God, love and forgiveness.
Allow me to take you to February of 1969, my second sister was born, unfortunately, my dad wanted a son—nevertheless he was happy. It so happens that my mother could not have any more kids let alone a son. They tried everything they could but to no avail. On the contrary, one of my aunts was supposedly living a promiscuous life and having abortions at will. I remember Mom saying she wished she could adopt those kids. Here she was, helpless, trying to have children and could not have any or do anything to save them. Long story short, at the right timing of God, when she decided to leave it all up to God, needless to say, she conceived and I was born in 1979. This is my motivation to understand what the bible has to say about many things that do not make sense at face value.
So what is abortion? The definition has evolved over the years. 1828 dictionary defines it as “the act of miscarrying or producing young before the natural time, or before the fetus is perfectly formed.” The 1913 Webster dictionary describes it as “the act of giving premature birth; particularly, the expulsion of the human fetus prematurely, or before it is capable of sustaining life; miscarriage. It is sometimes used for the offense of procuring a premature delivery, but strictly the early delivery is the abortion, causing or procuring abortion.” The 2008 Webster’s Medical dictionary defines abortion as “In medicine, an abortion is the premature exit of the products of conception (the fetus, fetal membranes, and placenta) from the uterus. It is the loss of a pregnancy and does not refer to why that pregnancy was lost. A spontaneous abortion is the same as a miscarriage. The miscarriage of 3 or more consecutive pregnancies is termed habitual abortion.”
To get to the root of what abortion—as we know it—really is today we have to determine when life begins. So, when does life begin?(K) At the time of conception, if you ask me to. “With the union of spermatozoon and egg, a new living entity results, in its microscopic-genetic substance, consists of everything it ever will be genetically — if sustained with water, oxygen, and nutrition. The implantation in the uterus is analogous to moving into a house built to facilitate the resident.” It makes as little sense to argue that a baby is not a person until it enters the house in which it will live, as it does to allege that the embryo is not a person until it reaches the uterus. Is it permissible to practice infanticide while the child is en route to the house, but not after it has entered? I will let you make your own decision regarding frozen embryos used in embryonic stem cell research—I believe they fall in the same category.
The early church believed that abortion was to be included among the list of prohibitions such as murder, adultery, sodomy, fornication, theft, etc. Modeled after the Septuagint Decalogue, the Didache stated, “Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion.” It is also interesting that the early church viewed a fetus not as part of the mother but as her neighbor. Using the letter by Barnabas, which said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor more than thy own life,” I find it erroneous; I believe in not adding to the word of God Jesus said love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:31). Therefore, I will have to stick with the canonized scripture instead of those documents made by men. Among the greatest contributors to the church is Tertullian (ca 160-ca 240)—ranked 2nd only to Augustine. He cited in ca197 the child sacrifice practices in the mythological and historic Greco-Roman world while defending Christianity against charges of immorality—“In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in the seed.”
To understand exactly when life begins we have to go to the source and foundation of our faith in Judaic Christian faiths—the Holy Bible. In Jeremiah chapter one, while Jeremiah was struggling with people not listening to, and despising him as a young prophet. God the Creator had to remind him that before his conception it was in God’s plan for him to be born and be a prophet. We realize God says He is the one that formed him in his mother’s womb. If we are not careful, we miss the revelation that for conception to happen it is God’s will. It is up to God to open or close the womb at his own discretion. We see in the case of Leah that in Gen. 29:31—“The Lord opened Leah’s womb and in the following verses, she bore 4 sons. Then again, you realize God by default has mandated us to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth (Gen. 1:28). This idea presented in the Bible present a problem to our finite mind especially when we see the population control dilemma in China. We want to do the mandate God gave us but it seems impractical due to fear of overpopulation.
With the life expectancy pushed higher and higher because of better healthcare, we expect the problem to get worse. As crazy, as this may sound—history will always repeat itself—our ecosystem has a way of self-correcting. Even though we are the image of God, when we mismanage what He has given us to manage, we fall prey to the laws of nature that govern the ecosystem. We will see incurable diseases, plagues, famines and wars increasing and our actions determine how fast we reach there. If one had lived in the times of the Egyptian empire there is no way one would have thought people would leave the Nile valley but eventually people who migrated from that region populate most of Africa south of Sahara today.
It is easier to say when a part of your body makes you sin cut or pluck it off (Matt 18:19), than actually doing it. Well that is unless you are trying to justify abortion, then you consider the fetus (not the child) growing in a mother’s womb to be part of the mother’s body a disease. I think basic common sense will tell us that a child growing in the mother’s womb is not part of the mother’s body, which is why she experiences things like morning sickness at conception. The body tries to cope with the new hormonal changes. No matter how much the mother enjoys the pregnancy, she cannot remain pregnant beyond 36 weeks without eventually being life threatening—something has to give because the child is not part of her body. According to the CDC, one-third of women in the United States become pregnant by the age of 20. A sexually active teenage girl has 90% chance of being pregnant. Is there a specific reason why the CDC would be tracking pregnancy rates combined with sexually transmitted diseases? By labeling Pregnancy as a disease, the health department provided a way to create a completely new industry hence more revenue into the economy. In Matt 6:24, Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money (mammon)”. In that context, it sure sounds like they are unknowingly choosing to serve mammon instead of God. Remember God said in Hosea 4:5 well meaning people perish due to lack of knowledge.
A skewed interpretation of scripture Matthew 18:9 “And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire”. The interpretation sound valid on face value. Well that is unless you are trying to justify abortion, then you consider the ‘fetus’ (note the substitution baby for fetus) is part of the mother’s body a disease. Anyways, if the ‘fetus’ offends her, she has the right to get rid of it as the scripture says. By changing the name from an unborn baby to ‘fetus’ (Latin for an offspring), you take away the guilt and conscience associated with the killing of a baby. This interpretation commits the ‘original language fallacy’ by disregarding the meaning of the Greek word [Strong’s] skandalizō – meaning to entice to sin or to cause a person to begin to distrust and desert one whom he ought to trust and obey, or to cause one to judge unfavorably or unjustly of another. If taken out of context, one is more inclined to take the latter meaning. In other words, we are not willing to have our hidden sexual sins exposed by the impending pregnancy; hence, we commit a greater sin to cover a lesser sin because it is hidden.
So even though the basic understanding is that life begins at conception, it has now been generally accepted that no one really knows when life begins. It has also become a norm—thanks to advocates like Planned Parenthood—that pregnancy is a disease. Founded by the staunch evolutionist Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood is the leading legal pro-choice organization in the country. Known for associating with extremists such as the Aryan nation and the KKK, Miss Sanger once said, “I cannot refrain from saying that women must come to recognize there is some function of womanhood other than being a child-bearing machine.” (I).
What does the bible say about babies (including unborn)? The word that means baby or unborn baby—used 6 times in the bible—is Greek word brephos (a) twice used to mean an unborn child, embryo or a fetus and 4times refers to a newborn child, an infant or a babe. In Luke 1:41 and 44 Doctor Luke states “Elizabeth’s child leaped within her”; it talks of Elizabeth describing the actions of the unborn baby John as “the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” So clearly, the New Testament identifies an unborn child as a baby with some actions independent of the mother. This to me makes the baby not part of the mother’s body but a person that is dependent of her for support and sustenance. The bible also in Psalm 139:13-16a: “For You (GOD) formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.”
In the Old Testament we look at Genesis 1:27 on day six we see God “…’creating’ man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” One interesting fact that most people miss is that God created man before forming him in clay. In Genesis 2:4 concludes the narration of how the earth and heaven’s creation. When we get to verse, seven we see “…the LORD God forming [Heb- yatsar] the man (mankind) ['adam] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” The Bible says in Ephesians 4:4 that He chose us before the foundation of the world. Therefore, my interpretation is that God created man (the spirit) before he formed and put him in the earth; hence, Life begins with God.
In Deuteronomy 20:13 God gave Moses the 7th commandment saying “thou shalt not murder….” In Jeremiah 7:9-11 God word came to prophet Jeremiah saying “‘Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”-safe to do all these detestable things? Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the LORD.” Is this not we are doing now by making abortion a normal practice? We turn around and go to worship God! Worshipping Moloch the god of fire, now happens in secrecy in clean sanitary facilities. Mostly known for the sacrificial offerings of young children (2 Kings 23:10). This is something God abhorred in Habakkuk 2:13 and other scriptures.
So what happens if the unborn child is murdered? Is it even possible to murder an unborn child? Exodus 21:22-23 (NIV) “If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, you are to take life for life.” This is the only time in the bible where we specifically get a clear addressing of the issue of abortion. Any other time an innocent life is taken the culprit would live in the city of refuge for the rest of their life or until the High Priest dies (Levitical law).
What then should we do? The bible says in Exodus 20:13-14 (NIV) “You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery”. Based on all the facts above stated, I will say abortion is Murder and is unnecessary. Even the midwives in Egypt under pharaoh’s instruction to do late term abortions (kill all male Hebrew children) they chose not to do so knowing they might be killed. Before you read the next story Imagine being at the Roman Coliseum in the middle ages. Now imagine seeing all the unnecessary ruthless blood sport and everyone around you enjoying it. Now imagine that very same scenario happening today at say the New Cowboys stadium. What would you do, if you did not agree with what is going on before your eyes? I heard a story told by Rev. Dr. Tony Campolo about a young monk.
This story is about a young monk who went to Rome and ended up at the Coliseum. When they came out to battle to the death, realizing what was going to happen, he yelled at the gladiators, “In the name of Jesus, stop! In the name of Jesus, stop!” They did not listen, of course, because they could not hear him over the crowd. So he ran down to the edge of the stands and he yelled out over the field, “In the name of Jesus, stop! In the name of Jesus, stop!” Nobody paid any attention to him. He leapt over the wall, went on to the fighting field, stood between two of the gladiators and he said, “In the name of Jesus, stop! In the name of Jesus, stop!” The gladiators ran their swords through him, and as the monk fell dead to the ground a silence fell over the audience. One man got up and left his seat. Then another and then another and then another and then another until the Coliseum was empty. From that day on, there would never be another fight to the death in the Coliseum in Rome because one man stood up and said, “In the name of Jesus, stop!”
Now do you think you can or cannot make a difference after seeing the power of one man armed with his faith in the name of Jesus? We live in the richest nation of this era; it is up to us to do something. Just like in the time of Esther, Mordecai had to remind her:
Esther 4:14 (nkjv) For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
We have adopted the attitude of being politically correct and not wanting to offend anyone while dishonoring God. Is it possible that we are grieving the Holy Spirit? Maybe, maybe not—but I choose to believe the former.
In this day and age, what we need are people who are filled with the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will go forth into the world and say to the warring people of this world, “In the name of Jesus, stop!” Only the Holy Spirit can give us that kind of courage, that kind of fortitude, that kind of strength. We need peace in our hearts in order to bring peace to the world. However, we cannot condemn or cast stones on those that have gone through abortion. We are to love them (repented or not), because God loves them and does not want them to perish. It is not for us to pass judgment that is for God to do. It is impossible to condemn anyone to Christ but easy to love someone to Christ; hence help heal and forgive themselves in the process. They can then claim Rev 12:11 “overcoming the enemy by the blood of the lamb and the power of their TESTIMONY.” Sharing how God helped them overcome will not only help them let go, but may save a life or two and set others free in the process.
In conclusion, God is the author of human life (and [Acts 17:25 “…He gives all men life and breath”; 1 Timothy 6:13 “…God, who gives life to everything”), therefore HE alone has the right to declare when human life begins and ample scriptural and scientific evidence to support the proposition that human personhood commences at conception. I am going to point out think it is every woman’s right to decide what she does with her body. Despite that, I believe abortion is a sin unless the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother or both. In a blood thirsty society we live in, illegalizing abortion altogether also is unwarranted, as it will result in more black market clinics. Therefore, since God classifies the unborn as a “person”, abortion is murder unless if the mother is acting in self-defense. If keeping the unborn child becomes life threatening to the mother as in ectopic pregnancies, then to abort the pregnancy is not murder nor is it a sin. In my opinion we ought to limit abortions only to life threatening situations that may kill the mother and/or child. Regardless of the choice we make there will be emotional scars to deal with.
