Apologetics

Am I My Brother’s Keeper? (Abortion)

March 29, 2018

As we approach this subject on abortion, I want to say there is hatred on both side of this issue. Some groups have the view that it is the woman’s right to choose and no one should interfere with that choice. Another group says that abortion is murder, and they have no tolerance for an opposing argument. Both of these camps, when let out of their cages, go at each other like two pit bulls in a fighting arena. Is there a middle ground? Or will there always be no agreement on this issue? As Christians and light to the world, where are we to stand on this issue?

I personally have strong beliefs on this issue, but my beliefs are nothing if not centered in the word of GOD. So let me start with you.

How in the world did you get here?

To begin with, your mother and father got together in a sexual union, and sperm and an egg got together in your mother’s body, and life began. From this beginning, 9 months of development had to pass before you became the person you are; that is, before you were born into the world. At which point were you a human being? Dr. John Rice says at the point of conception your sex was determined, the color of your eyes and hair, the way you look, your special talents, all that is you today. The only difference is that you had to develop in your mother’s womb. Now this is the natural process for you and me to become an infant child. As Sen. Paul Ryan said in the Vice Presidential debate,

“If you have any children today you probably have pictures of the baby before it was born, maybe of him or her sucking his thumb or making a fist. Sometimes the nurse would have a hard time getting us their ultrasound picture because they were moving around too much. Just as we were alive in our mothers’ body so was our boy or girl.”

So I ask you, what keeps a baby from being a baby? What would keep us from becoming a baby? Something unnatural must take place to stop the growth of this child, and that something unnatural in an abortion is when the baby is killed. This is the interruption, the stopping of the heart, the seizing of the developing brain waves occurring through a traumatic end. There can be no denying that if the fetus is left alone it will become a child. This is the only way that any of us have been brought into this world. You and I are proof of the miracles of God. He has given men and women the power to procreate, and we are here today because we we’re not a mistake, and that’s because God doesn’t make mistakes.

Now that I have shared these truths with you, I will say to you I am pro-choice.

Shocked?

However, I must say it very differently than the pro-choice of modern politics. My pro-choice is that everyone has a choice to wait until marriage before engaging in a sexual union with another of the opposite sex. You and I have a choice since you can wait until you’re in love with the one person you want to spend the rest of your life with, or have sex now. If you choose to fornicate, and break God’s command, then natural consequences come to that choice. You can get a venereal disease, you can get pregnant, and you can have your heart broken. If you get pregnant, you have already made a choice to break God’s command; so you have made your choice. I don’t believe that you should have another choice to kill the baby.

You have already made a choice.

This is pro-choice, the real choice, but now men and women want to erase their choice by eliminating a child because they choose to have sex outside of God’s place of commitment in marriage. The world (Satan) is teaching us that we all should have freedom to have sex with anyone, and have no responsibility to those we have sex with. But the act in God’s eyes is the act of commitment, and to faithfulness to the one who you have had sexual union with. Having sex outside marriage–and then killing the child–will never be right because two wrongs don’t make a right, and they never will.

Since we have established it is a child in the mother (like we were), and that the developing child will–if it is left alone–become a child. Then, that choice is something you have to make before engaging in sex. Once you have gotten someone pregnant, or have become pregnant, accept the responsibility of your choice. Remember you “had” a choice. Since this child is alive just as we are, then it follows that Christians must choose life and defend the rights of the innocent, the weak (the ones who can’t protect themselves); the unborn! What excuse can you give on Judgment Day for turning away from the little ones? Jesus said if you lead one of these little ones astray it would be better that a millstone be tied around your neck and be cast into the sea. These laws that condone abortion clinics are not only leading them astray, but killing them! Are you your brother’s keeper? The blood of the innocent cries out to God as it did against Abel.

On to answering the arguments for abortion, and closing the mouth of the lion:

Argument #1: The fetus is not a human life, therefore it may be killed.

The words fetus and embryo are Greek and Latin words that simply mean “young one.” When scientists speak of a human embryo or fetus, they are not putting it in the category of another species, but are simply using terminology for a stage of development (like the words infant, child, adolescent, or adult). A fetus is a very young person developing in the womb. In pregnancy books it is natural and correct to speak of the fetus as my baby or your child.

As we have stated earlier, from conception the child has its own genetic code. Dr. John Rice says at the point of conception your sex was determined, the color of your eyes and hair, the way you look, your special talents, all that is you today. The only difference is that you had to develop in your mother’s womb. The child has a distinctive genetic code separate from the mother; it shows us all that the child is, and that the child is not a part of the mother’s body. The child is thus a distinct individual, living temporally within her body. Ultrasound imaging reveals this to be true. You can literally follow from your child’s fertilization to its birth in baby books. A fetus is in development until it grows into the known recognizable human form.

At three weeks, a developing baby’s heart begins beating and at six weeks a baby’s brain waves are traceable. At eight weeks the arms, hands, and feet are developed with a distinct set of finger prints being formed. The ultra sound can see a baby making a fist, sucking its thumb, watch it kick, spin and make facial expressions by he/or she’s first trimester. By any reasonable standard, a human fetus is a young human being.

Thus, to kill a baby is murder no matter how young. Have you seen the horrific photo’s of aborted babies? Severed hands feet and heads wrapped up in bags and discarded as trash. This should never be hidden from those who support and vote for those who say this evil is a choice. Each person should get an education on the reality of what happens at an abortion clinic by visiting them, getting to know the procedures by watching the process. Reality will awaken the hardest advocate of abortion to the truth. I will explain three procedures in the next e-mail. Unborn children are precious human beings and must be protected, not sides of beef or drum sticks.

Argument #2: The fetus is not fully human because it is dependent on another to live.

The simple truth is that a baby that has been born cannot live without the care and sustenance from an outside source as well. The baby is dependent on others just as the unborn is on its mother. Is a kangaroo not a kangaroo because it lives in its mothers pouch? Of course not, as with human beings the location and situation does not make him or her less human. If dependency makes a person less human, then on these grounds we should have the right to kill infants outside of the womb. We should kill people on dialysis, war veterans with missing arms, people with pacemakers, the diabetics, and people in comas, handicapped people and the elderly. These people are all dependent on something outside of themselves to keep them alive.

Suppose there are two women several months into their pregnancies. One child is born premature and the other remains in the womb, the premature baby girl is utterly dependent upon medical intervention to survive, and the other is dependent upon the mother’s body to survive. How would the hospital staff react if the mother entered the baby ward with a knife to kill the premature baby girl? Is it a right to kill the baby girl? If it is not the right to kill the premature girl, then why is it right to kill the child in the womb? Both are dependent, both are children, both must have legal protection!

Argument #3: A woman has the right to do with her body as she desires.

We affirm that a women has authority over her own body. She should have the choice of who her husband will be, where she goes to college, where she will live, what kind of car she drives, what she eats for breakfast, if she wears makeup or takes a shower (we would frown at missing too many showers though). As stated earlier, a women has a choice to lay down with a man or not, but after she has, there is no right to take back what she/ they did. It is not okay to murder the innocent child. There are limits to what we can do with our bodies; including causing harm to another human being. Abortion involves the death of an innocent child. As in the US court of law, where there is due process before someone can be brought to a judgment, there is even a stricter scrutiny in the law if a person is to face capital punishment (the death penalty). Those babies have committed no crime, and are given capital punishment without a trial. For what? What evil atrocity have they committed? Let’s punish the bad people! Why do these innocent children who have done no wrong face the death penalty?

Now, to argue further that the living fetus is apart of her body, in which she can do what she wishes, I ask what part of the body is the fetus? What organ? When the child’s heart starts to beat, whose heartbeat is it? When the fetus’s brain waves can be traced, whose are they? When the body has arms and legs, whose are they? Now, both the baby and the mother have bodies; than it follows that both the fetus and the mother’s rights must be considered.

Whenever we speak of the rights of human beings, we must guard against the more powerful person taking advantage of the weaker person. It is the responsibility of the more powerful person to protect the weak. It is especially the responsibility of the mother to protect her children. Does any mother have the right to do whatever she wishes with her children? On the contrary, she has the responsibility of caring for them, or seeing that someone else cares for them. Certainly motherhood calls for sacrifice. We should expect adults to make sacrifices of their resources and freedoms when necessary to preserve the lives of children.

Argument #4: Sex and reproduction are a private matter in which we must not intrude.

Human sexuality expresses the deep intimacy that a husband and wife share. Sex has very public consequences. How we exercise our sexuality contributes to the restraint or spread of disease, the treatment of women with honor or rape, the nurture or sexual abuse of children, and the strengthening or dissolution of families that are the foundation of society. Until the sexual revolution of the 60’s adultery was considered wrong and shameful, now it is accepted as normal. This has directly effected the treatment of women and even affected marriage by creating no fault divorce laws. We have seen the moral fabric of this country slowly unwind as we have stepped away from what used to be absolutes. Society therefore should have a compelling interest to guard the dignity of marriage; women and children with respect to sex and reproduction for can see their outward effects.

People sometimes assume that the constitution guarantees the right to privacy in sexual and reproductive matters. That is not the case as you read the constitution. The fourth amendment acknowledges the right of security against “unreasonable searches and seizures without a warrant” but nothing about sexuality, children, or abortion.

Someone might sarcastically say, “I thought what I did in my bedroom was my own business.” That should be the case but, what if someone is killing a child in your bedroom? Wouldn’t that merit public intervention by the authorities? Privacy is not an absolute moral right, but killing a child is an absolute moral wrong.

Argument #5: Making abortion illegal would force women into dangerous, back-alley abortions.

The idea of the crudely done abortion resulting in a bleeding, dying mother (and dead child) has been widely used by abortion advocates. In reality, 90% of abortions were performed before they were legal were done by physicians in their offices. The idea of thousands of women dying yearly until abortion was legal is a myth that pushed society for its acceptance. In 1972, thirty–nine mothers died in the United States from abortions. The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (March 26th, 2010) admits the legalization of abortion has had no impact on the number of women dying of abortions in the U.S.

In fact, legal abortion is now the leading cause of death related to maternal deaths in the US.

Every woman who dies from a botched abortion is a tragic loss. But so is every child who dies from a successful abortion. We should not make it legal to kill babies in order to make the killing safer for the adults involved. Furthermore, abortion has medical and psychological risks; making it illegal would protect the lives and health of millions and millions of women.

Argument #6: It is better to die before birth than to live as a unwanted child.

To give a human being the power to determine the future life of another individual based on whether he or she is wanted or unwanted is most dangerous. Do we have the right to kill on the basis if we want them or not? Such a view point leads highly-cultured societies to commit genocide against the mentally and inferior races. You see that those who advocate the murder of the unwanted baby will be advocating later–as did Hitler–the murder of others that are unfit or retarded or those who are an extra burden on society. When you justify murder, there is always a next step.

Secondly, is the child never wanted by anyone? Many mothers who did not want their child prior to birth experience a change of heart after birth. There are so many parents that want to adopt a child, therefore these children are very much wanted. To say the child is not wanted now does not mean that the child will never be wanted. Did you know that Apple founder, Steve Jobs, was unwanted by his birth mother and adoptive parents?

Third, this argument has horrifying implications for the “unwanted.” Consider these three “cases” for abortion:

while a woman is pregnant, she finds that the child may be deformed and deaf
another mom finds out her child may be a mongoloid, affected by Down’s Syndrome
another pregnant woman’s boy may be retarded

All of these mothers are considering abortion. Now in these cases we wait until their children are born and find that just one of the children is born with a defect; deafness. Will we kill the baby for it being born deaf? Is this not a good thing because the boy was unwanted? You say that is wrong and we shouldn’t do that! You are shocked at the thought of killing one deaf baby but are not moved when all three of these children were going to be killed by abortion.

Wake up, if it is a right to kill those who may be defective, wouldn’t it be logical to kill those who are already born who are defective, or a burden to society? Using this logic, it is the next step for a society with this worldview.

Finally, what gives us the right to decide whether it is better for a person to live or die? The 14th amendment says no one is to be deprived of life without due process of law. Where is the justification to determine the death of a person without due process? Did you consult the child? Are you the owner of that person’s life? Do you know without a doubt the future of that child? Do not many “unwanted” children overcome severe physical and mental handicaps in their life times and become useful adult citizens? Do not many people in very painful situations choose wisely to live than to kill themselves? You and I don’t know what this child’s life will be so how can we kill a child when she has not committed any crime? In the end, what seems to be a compassionate argument for the “unwanted” child makes no sense at all. At best it is an emotional, illogical appeal; at worst it is a mask for selfishness and a murderous heart.

Conclusion

God’s word in Proverbs 8:36 says, “Those who hate me (GOD) love death.” There are many who claim they love God, yet God is the God of life. If you can vote with or condone murder at any level except for biblical life-for-life are you a Christian? You can say a lot of things but your heart is revealing the truth: you hate your unborn brother and are a murder. Revelation 21:8 says that no murderer has eternal life but will be thrown into the lake of fire. You are called to choose between blessing or cursing, life or death. I beg you to choose life. We all will stand before our Maker and give account. Choose life.

Thank you for reading the answers to a set of hard questions. Jesus said what you have done to the least of these you have done to me: it is the will of God that man protect those who cannot defend themselves. Protect life! There is no greater issue facing the American people than abortion. This is the only issue that is truly a matter of life and death: 53,000,000 have been killed in abortions and counting!

We are able to stop this evil, so don’t vote for, nor support anyone who is for the killing of a child; no matter how young that child is.

You are your brother’s keeper!

God bless you as you defend the rights of unborn children; it is God’s will.

Scott