Abortion

by D. Gander & B. Pringle 



     It never ceases to amaze me the extent to which people are willing to go to justify unlimited abortion. President Clinton recently used his last-ditch veto to prevent the US Congress from restricting "partial birth abortions", usually performed late in pregnancy when the child could survive outside the womb. His veto might yet be overturned by a 2/3 majority in an upcoming vote.
     In Canada recently an expectant mother, an abuser of solvents, was ordered by a judge to undergo medical treatment to help prevent further damage to the child she carried. Her previous children had suffered as a result of her substance abuse before birth, and are now under the care of Children's Aid. Her lawyer argued this was an infringement on her rights.
     In a similar case, a woman apparently attempted to kill her unborn son just two days prior to birth by firing a pellet gun into his head. The Criminal Code could treat this as a homicide if the boy was born alive and subsequently died, but amazingly would do nothing if the same act had caused his death just before birth. Abortion in the final trimester effectively does the same thing, except that it is not only allowed but publicly abetted in tax-funded abortuaries! By our inability to redirect tax dollars when our conscience protests, we become unwilling accomplices.

     Friend and publisher Bruce Pringle (in Rockliffe Fellowship Bulletin, Sept.`96) asks, "When does God consider a fetus to be a human being? In Jeremiah 1:5 we read,Before I formed you in the belly I knew you; and before you came forth from the womb I sanctified you, and I ordained you a prophet unto the nations.
     "Now that's clear and straight forward. A fetus is a human being even before it begins its earthly life in its mother's womb and, just as certainly, during every stage of pregnancy from conception to birth. Nor should it be hard to understand why the deliberate termination of a pregnancy, as a mere convenience to the mother, differs little from any other calculated and cold-blooded murder.
     "Anyone who has an understanding of the scriptures will also realize that many people enter this world because God wills that they shall: ...which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:13)."
     Bruce points out that if abortions had been performed in past times because of "high risk" pregnancies, for example a woman "dying of syphilis while the father was an incurable alcoholic", then the world would have lost Beethoven. Or if poverty had been a valid reason, Abraham Lincoln might never have been born.

     I think many people shuddered to learn about the poor, single mother in England who aborted one of twin babies she was carrying, apparently because of her uncertain ability to support them both. Thousand of dollars were raised upon hearing of her plight, but it was too late: the deed was done. 



     "You formed my inner parts. You knit me together in my mother's womb. ...Your eyes beheld my unformed substance; in Your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them" (Psalm 139, 14-16).