Abortion/Pro-Life

Sanctity of Human Life Sunday
by Kenyn Cureton, PhD
January 15, 2006

Turn in your Bibles to Proverbs 24. The title of the message is “Stand for Life,” and it carries with it a PG rating because of some graphic descriptions that will be made during the course of our time together. Yet it is a message I am compelled to preach because of its urgency. Let’s look at our text in Proverbs 24:11-12. Would you please stand in honor of the reading of God’s word? (Read & Pray)

Introduction

We remember tragic moments in American history when life was lost. When Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese, killing thousands of our young men, a somber President Roosevelt addressed our grief-stricken nation, and said: "December 7, 1941 is a day that will live in infamy." The same was said about September 11, 2001, when two planes took down the twin towers of the World Trade Center, another smashed into the Pentagon, and another crashed in rural Pennsylvania because some heroes rose up against the hijackers. But America will never be the same after 9/11. We lost nearly 3,000 Americans that day, a date that will also live in Infamy.

But did you know that almost 4,000 innocent people will be murdered in America tomorrow? It’s true. In fact, we can predict these horrible deaths with chilling accuracy. One life will be snuffed out every 24 seconds. When added up, that's around 1.4 million Americans a year.[1] Over the last 31 years, over 40 million have been murdered without mercy in these United States. These individuals have had no trial, no legal representation, and no opportunity to defend themselves. Yet, they have been executed in a cruel, inhumane way. Mark down January 22, 1973 as a day that will also live in infamy. For on that day, the United States Supreme Court made it legal for our nation to murder over 40 million and counting of its own by what doctors call an abortion.[2]

Here is an excerpt of the Supreme Court's decision: "A state is forbidden to proscribe (i.e., prohibit) abortion any time prior to the birth, if the opinion of one licensed physician, an abortion is necessary to preserve the life or the health of the mother.” Now few would argue about the life of the mother. But what about the health of the mother? Here's the Supreme Court's definition of the health of the mother, quote: "The medical judgment (in the case of abortion) may be exercised in the light of all factors: physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age, relevant to the well-being of the patient. All of these factor's may relate to health."

The bottom line of all that legalese is this: American women can abort their babies for any reason, and at any time, up to the moment before birth. This month marks the 33rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade. There have been over 40 Million pre-born babies terminated since abortion was legalized by the Supreme Court in 1973. In fact, one out of four pregnancies ends in abortion.[3] So the most dangerous place in America is a mother’s womb. Abortion truly is the American Holocaust.

Yet at the founding of this nation, we believed that life made in the image of God was a fundamental, God-given right. According to the Declaration of Independence, “All men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”[4] The order is significant. Life is the first God-given right of every human being. If you don't have life, you certainly can't enjoy liberty or pursue happiness.

But in America today, we've turned it around. We pursue happiness at any price, we demand unrestrained personal liberty, and therefore the value of human life comes in a distant third. Don’t believe me? In these same United States, you can be fined up to $5000.00 and/or spend a year in jail for crushing the egg of a bald eagle.[5] For destroying an unborn animal! And yet you can make a handsome living destroying unborn human babies. What insanity?!

Today in America, the average teenager will be taught how to practice “safe sex” without the consequences of disease or pregnancy, and many educators will give these teens contraceptives often without parental consent. However, if a teenage girl becomes pregnant, she can go to a clinic, and without her parents knowledge or consent in many states, have that unwanted pregnancy terminated, that unborn baby aborted.

Yet in these same United States, that same health clinic cannot give that girl an aspirin without her parent's permission. In one state, a young girl can't have her ears pierced without parental consent until she's 18, but a 14 year old can have an abortion without parental knowledge or consent. And for those states that do require parental notification or consent, Planned Parenthood has found away around parental authority and gives this advice to teenage girls: “You can ask a judge to excuse you from these requirements. The procedure is called a "judicial bypass." To find out more about the law in your state and the judicial bypass, call the nearest Planned Parenthood center.”[6]

There's something very, very wrong in America. We go all out to save the whales, the eagles, and the spotted owls, but we turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the murder of innocent human beings. That's insanity! And folks we need to rise up as people of faith and say enough is enough! Let’s stand for Life!

I want equip you to do that in this message by 1) exposing the deceptive arguments of the abortionists, and then 2) showing you the declared truth of the word of God regarding unborn human life, and finally 3) giving you some things you can do about this moral madness called abortion.

I. DECEPTIVE ARGUMENTS OF THE ABORTIONISTS

Now the abortionists, who like to be called pro-choice, have a lot of high-sounding arguments they use to shout down their opponents. Maybe some of you have been deceived by these arguments, I don't know, but want you to listen closely to some of their arguments, and see if they really are sound.

Argument # 1: - Fetus is not a Baby: For example, there are some who say: "That's not really a baby while it’s in the womb." Folks, there's a Hebrew word for that, and it’s "Hogwash." That's foolishness. Several years ago a group of 60 prominent physicians, which included former presidents of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the American Academy of Neurology, met in Cambridge MA and presented a declaration that said: "The fetus is not a sub-human species...the embryo is alive, human, and unique in the special environmental support required for that stage of human development."[7] The bottom line: The biological facts are absolutely conclusive that the fetus is a living human being.

Today the big debate is about federal dollars being spent for stem cell research. The argument is that stem cells may hold the answer to some of life's most debilitating diseases. You've heard Christopher Reeves, Ron Reagan, and politicians from both parties argue that the government needs to fund embryonic stem cell research. Now I think it is great when scientific and medical advances can bring help and healing to people, and I agree that stem cells show tremendous potential to bring hope to people with conditions that up until now have been hopeless.

However, the moral question we need to ask is this: Should we harvest human eggs and sperm and create and grow human embryos in the lab for the purpose of cultivating stem cells, and then discard those embryos? Should we create a life only to be destroyed in the name of trying to help give extended life? President Bush and many in Congress have said "No!" Why? Not only do adult stem cells show just as much promise for stem cell research as embryonic stem cells do, but more importantly from an ethical perspective, when you destroy a human embryo, you destroy a human life. No human life should ever be produced or destroyed for the benefit of another through stem cell research, cloning, or any other scientific research.

Yet many are deceived by the terminology used by scientists to refer to the human life created in the lab and by the abortionists to refer to the baby in the mother's womb. They talk about embryos, products of conception, and fetuses. Take the word fetus for example. That's a perfectly good Latin word meaning "unborn baby." But it is a Latin word. In the Middle Ages, Catholic priests read from the Latin version of the Bible and few could understand it. Then Martin Luther in Germany and John Wycliffe in England came along and translated the Latin Scriptures into the language of the people so that they would know what was going on. But the abortionists know how important it is to translate the English words into Latin, so that you won't know what is going on. It’s all a part of their great deception.

And then there are those who would agree that it may be a living human being, but it doesn't have person-hood until the birth takes place, that in the womb, the baby is not a person. That hair-splitting argument brings up some interesting parallels in history. It reminds me of the Dred Scott case of 1857, when the Supreme Court said that the black man was not protected by the Constitution because a slave was property and not a person. It reminds me of Nazi Germany where Hitler and his regime said that the Jew was not a person. The Nazi's were shrewd enough to know that before you can enslave and exterminate human beings, the first thing you have to do is depersonalize and dehumanize them, semantically destroy them before you physically destroy them. Make them into something less than human. So it a dangerous argument to say that the unborn creature in the womb is not human. It leads down a slippery slope where virtually all human life becomes worthless--we're heading down that slope right now. Remember Terri Schaivo?

Argument # 2: What about Rape and Incest and saving the life of the mother?: When you add up abortions due to rape and incest, and those to save the life of the mother, all three account for about 4 percent of all abortions.[8] 4 percent! But these three account for about 96 percent of the pro-abortionist's rhetoric. Fine, let's cut out the other 96 percent of the abortions and we'll talk about these instances, Amen? But no one would dispute that sometimes an abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother. If a choice must be made between the unborn child and the mother, then indeed the mother's life may be chosen because of first domain. She was here first. So aborting the baby to save the life of the mother is the lesser of two evils. No one would dispute that.

But there is a great deal of emotion attached to victims of rape and incest, and rightly so. But are you going to play God in a matter like this? Are you going to say that a baby conceived by rape or incest should not live? Wouldn't that be following a wrong with another wrong? Let's say a white man raped a 13 year old black girl, impregnating her. Should her parents force her to abort that child? If they had, we would not have been blessed by the Gospel Singer Ethel Watters, conceived by rape. And what about Ruth, a woman who has a book of the Bible named after her, and who is named in the genealogy of the Lord Jesus Christ? She descended from a man named Moab, who was born out of an incestuous relationship. Are you going to play God?

Argument # 3: What About Handicaps and Birth Defects?: Let's say that there's a mother who has tuberculosis. She has already given birth to 4 children, one died, one is blind, one is deaf, and a fourth contracted TB from her. She's pregnant again, should she abort? Well if she had, then the world would have been robbed of the music of Ludwig von Beethoven. Are you going to play God? Follow the abortionist's argument to its logical conclusion. Do you believe that defective people should be put to death? Then a lot of us here shouldn’t be alive, including the one who is speaking. All of us have defects. Just how perfect do you have to be in order to live? Where do we start when we eliminate those who are defective? Where do we end? In Nazi Germany, abortion preceded the extermination of the handicapped, the elderly, and finally the Jews. We've started, where do we end?

But when you add up all the abortions in the case of rape, incest, saving the life of the mother, and the cases of deformity and handicaps, that's only 7% of all abortions.[9] What about the other 93%? Well the abortionists try to tell us that abortion laws are primarily for the overburdened and the under aged. Let's say a preacher and his wife are very poor and they have 14 kids already, then she learns that another baby is on the way. Considering the burden it would add to their family, should she abort? If she had, she would have aborted John Wesley, the great 19th century evangelist, and founder of Methodism. Or what about a teenage girl who discovers she's pregnant out of wedlock? The guy she's engaged to is not the father, he finds out, gets really upset, and threatens to call the whole thing off. Should she go ahead and get an abortion? If she had, she would have aborted Jesus.

Well most women who get abortions don't fit the description of being poor and overburdened. Most are not unwed teens. 80% of the women who abort their babies are over 20. Most are not poor and overburdened. The biggest percentage group of those women is white and middle class. In fact, more than 40% of all abortions are performed on patients for the second, third, or fourth time around. Here’s a telling number: 83% of women who abort their babies are unmarried.[10] So we're not talking primarily about teenage girls who get pregnant. We're not talking primarily about poverty stricken women who can't afford a baby. The majority of these women have participated in illicit sex and are using abortion as a means of birth control or they are professionals who don't want their lives interrupted by children. The statistics don't lie.

Argument # 4: Doesn't a Woman have the Right to Choose? That’s the question we hear most often: Doesn't a woman have the right to do what she pleases with her own body? No, not according to the law she doesn’t. In most states, it is illegal for her to be a prostitute, to fill her body with drugs, and in most states, to commit suicide. No, a woman can't do entirely as she wishes. But the argument to end all arguments for the abortionist is this: A woman has the right to choose! Choose what? Choose to kill? Choose to steal? Choose to kidnap? No. In a civilized society, a person does not have the right to do as they please. And that's especially true with regard to the unborn child in the mother's womb because we're not talking about her body.

A human ovum together with a human sperm produces a biologically identifiable human embryo. It has separate and unique genetic information and biological material. Every cell in a woman's body has exactly the same 46 chromosomes, and exactly the same genes. Every cell is identical in that way, except for the cells in that baby. The baby has a different set of chromosomes and a different set of genes. Listen, the baby even provides its own nest, the placenta and the umbilical cord. The baby has its own blood stream, maybe even a different blood type than the mother. In half of the cases, the baby has a different gender.[11] So we're talking about a guest, a baby, living inside the host, the mother. Run out that line of reasoning. Let's say a salesman comes into my home trying to sell me some product I don’t need. He is an unwanted guest. Do I have the right to murder an unwanted guest? Of course not. That’s the same faulty reasoning with abortion.

II. DECLARED TRUTH OF SCRIPTURE

Well, we've heard their deceptive arguments, but what is the declared truth of Scripture? We claim to accept the Bible as the word of God and therefore the final word. Do you agree? If you are a Christian, it ought to be. Well there are over 100 texts that deal with the unborn. According to God’s word, life is precious. Miraculous. Delicate. Created by a loving God who makes every human being unique. God is the Author and Artist of human life.

For example, consider Psalm 139:13-16. These verses tell us that God forms that child in a mother's womb, and that child is the subject and object of God's love and concern. Look at the pronouns. This is not an "it," a "thing" that can be removed like a tumor and destroyed. This is a person made in the image of God. And the Bible doesn't distinguish between prenatal and postnatal life. Look at Jeremiah 1:5. Jeremiah was a prophet and God told him: "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born I set you apart (KJV - consecrated).” You don't consecrate disposable body tissue like an appendix to become a prophet, you consecrate a person.

In Luke 1:39-45, we read that Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus, went to visit her relative Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist. Listen to v 41: "When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit." I mean, you never heard an expectant mother say: "A fetus leaped inside me or a product of conception kicked me." No. In fact, the Greek word brephos is used when it says that the baby leaped in her womb. That word can mean: "an unborn child, embryo, fetus, a new born child, an infant, a babe." It is the same term that is used to describe Jesus, the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. In other words, there is no distinction made in the Greek NT between an unborn baby and a new born child. No distinction. And remember, Greek is an expressive and precise language—there are 4 words that are used to describe love! But when it comes to describing an unborn child or a newborn child—there is only one term used. An unborn child is therefore not an "it," an unborn child is a he or she, a person.

Let me ask you, if a mother delivered the child and then decided to kill the baby, would that be OK? What about the university student, who received national attention because she delivered her baby, ripped the umbilical cord loose, wrapped the child in a sweatshirt, and threw her unwanted child in the trash? She eventually went to jail for murder.[12] But she wouldn't have if she had simply gotten an abortion. There's no difference between what she did and an abortion, because terminating a pregnancy is, in fact, taking a life.

When God set forth the final five of the 10 Commandments to protect people's rights and preserve order in society, the first one is a prohibition is against taking someone's life. In fact, the high value God places on human life is the justification for Capital Punishment.[13] Therefore, human life should be protected at every stage from the “womb to the tomb.” God highly values human life, and as followers of His Son, we should do the same. We should stand for life because abortion is murder.

Do you know how an abortion is performed? It is ironic that the media will never allow you to see one. They will show us some of the 6 million victims of the Nazi Holocaust, they will show us abuse in Iraqi prisons, but none of the over 40 million victims of the American Holocaust. They will bring the evils of slavery and the horrors of war into your living room night after night, but no babies being aborted. Why? Because as supporters of abortion rights, they know that if the light ever shined in that darkness, there would be such an outcry that abortion would be stopped. Well what happens in an abortion? Some abortion doctors inject the womb with a solution that burns the baby alive. Other abortion doctors use a vacuum device that dismembers and sucks the unborn baby out of the womb. Others use forceps, which the baby fights to avoid, according to the sonograms. They rip off the limbs, crush the baby's head, pull it out of the womb, and throw it in the trash! And then there's the equally grisly practice of "partial birth abortion," so much in the news today.

What is a partial birth abortion? Brenda Schafer, a pro-choice RN with 13 years experience, watched her first and last partial birth abortion performed on a woman who was 6 months pregnant. Nurse Shafer said: "The baby's heartbeat was clearly visible on the ultra-sound screen. The doctor delivered the baby's body and arms, everything but his little head. The baby's body was moving. His little fingers were clasping together. He was kicking his feet. Then the doctor took a pair of scissors and inserted them into the back of the baby's head, and the baby's arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks he might fall. Then the doctor opened the scissors up. Then he stuck the suction tube into the hole and sucked the baby's brains out. Now the baby was completely limp."[14]

Now I hope that appalls you! I hope that makes you sick to your stomach! I hope that makes you fighting mad so that you will quit standing by and letting it happen with out so much as lifting a hand or saying a word! Again, Prov. 24:11-12 says: "Rescue those being led away to death, hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say: ‘We knew nothing about this.’ Does not He who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not He who guards your life know it? Will He not repay each person according to what he has done?" Folks, we need to stand up and speak out! Why? Again, because abortion is wrong - it is pre-meditated murder!

And I want you to know that God hates it. Proverbs 6:16-17--"There are 6 things that the Lord hates, seven are an abomination to Him: a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood." God hates the shedding of innocent blood! And His ears are filled with the cries of the innocent being slain in this nation, and friend there will be a day of reckoning! And we will answer for what we do and for what we don't do!

III. DEFINITE ACTIONS WE CAN TAKE

Well my time is past, but what should we do, what can we do, what must we do?

Action Step 1: Be Informed. We need to be informed. It is the duty of Christ-followers to be salt and light in our culture, but before you take action, you need to do your homework. Don’t just take my word for it. Study the Scriptures. Consider how biblical principles address the critical moral issues of abortion, cloning, harvesting human embryos to do stem cell research, and euthanasia. There are many good resources, such as the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission’s website (www.faithandfamily.com). Be informed.

Action Step 2: Be Compassionate. We need to be compassionate. We should not condone the sin, but we should care for sinners, leading them to repentance and restoration. Christians should be just as concerned before the pregnancy and after the pregnancy as we are during the pregnancy. We need to show the love of Jesus in practical ways. For example, we need to encourage Pregnancy Support Centers as they help women choose life and then seek to give their children a life, whether in their own home or with a loving adoptive family. One of the many ministries we can support is the Psalm 139 Project, which provides ultra sound equipment to these centers. Once a mother sees her child on ultra sound, she is far less likely to have an abortion. Some might feel compelled to offer a home to an unwed pregnant teen, or offer a home for the baby. Be compassionate.

Action Step 3: Be Active. We need to be active. James 2:26 NIV says: “faith without deeds is dead.” If we believe abortion is wrong, we should do something about it. Progress is being made - the politicians are feeling the heat and some have begun to see the light. Congress overwhelmingly voted to do away with partial-birth abortion, which is nothing more than infanticide - pulling the baby almost out of the womb, suctioning the brains out, and crushing the skull. President Bush signed a ban against this grisly procedure into law. Yet liberal judges have blocked the ban as “unconstitutional.” For now abortions continue to be performed for any reason, at any time during the pregnancy, even to the point of killing a baby “partially born.”

However, don’t get discouraged. Don’t give up. Hear our marching orders in Isaiah 58:1: "Shout it aloud! Don't hold back! Raise your voice like a trumpet! Declare to my people their rebellion, and to the house of Jacob their sins." We need to be that voice. We need to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.

There are several ways we can do that.

· Join a Pro-Life Rally or March for Life in your area in addition to our recognition of Sanctity of Human Life Sunday.

· Contact your Senators and Representative (Visit www.faithandfamily.com, enter your zip code, and follow the prompts) and let them know that you stand for life when it comes to questions about abortion, stem cell research, morning-after pills, euthanasia, etc.

· Support judicial nominees with a pro-life record (e.g., Samuel Alito has been nominated to the Supreme Court).

· Vote your pro-life values in ’06 (See www.iVoteValues.com).

In this election year, do you homework on the candidates. There are Pro-Life and Pro-Abortion candidates in both major political parties, so do your research on each candidate, register to vote, and then vote your values. Think about it. Voting for a pro-abortion candidate is like a citizen of Nazi Germany saying: “You know, I don’t like what Hitler is doing to the Jews in the gas ovens, but I support him because he’s good for the economy.” How can anyone do that? Yet every election it happens. I remind you, 6 million died in the Jewish Holocaust, but over 40 million and counting have died in the American Holocaust! So remember in November. Be active.

Action Step 4: Be Prayerful. Above all, be prayerful. Fall on your knees and pray to Almighty God that He will change our hearts. Pray that He will change the direction of this nation that has launched out into a sea of innocent blood. Pray that even as slavery ended, even as the Jewish Holocaust ended, that the American Holocaust might end, that the murder of the innocent unborn might end, and that by the grace of God and our repentance, that this dark night on the soul of our nation might end and that the light of the Gospel might shine brightly in America - a land where we once again stand for life!

Closing Prayer & Invitation

[1] 2003 Statistics from the Alan Guttmacher Institute. See http://www.agi-usa.org/pubs/abslides/abort_slides.pdf.
[2] Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S.; 113, 163-164 (1973)
[3] Statistics from the Alan Guttmacher Institute. See http://www.agi-usa.org/pubs/abslides/abort_slides.pdf.
[4] Richard Land, One Nation Under God: Our Founding Documents (Nashville, TN: For Faith & Family Publishing, n.d.), 10.
[5] Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act (16 U.S.C. 668a-d)
[6] See http://www.teenwire.com/index.asp?taStrona= http://www.teenwire.com/ask/articles/as_20020107p338.asp
[7] http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0717_Abortion__Evolution.html
[8] See the stats provided by the Alan Guttmacher Institute: http://www.agi-usa.org/presentations/abort_slides.pdf
[9] See http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/abortionstats2.html. Statistics can be found
at: http://www.agi-usa.org/presentations/abort_slides.pdf
[10] See the stats provided by the Alan Guttmacher Institute: http://www.agi-usa.org/presentations/abort_slides.pdf
[11] C. Everett Koop, M.D., Koop: The Memoirs of America’s Family Doctor (New York: Random House, 1991), p. 264, comments: “It always seemed clear to me that life begins at conception. After the twenty-three chromosomes of the sperm are united with the twenty-three chromosomes of the egg to become a one-celled living organism containing the entire genetic code that will eventually become a you or a me, that single cell requires nothing except nutrition to become a baby nine months later. Biologists seem to have no trouble believing that life begins at the time of fertilization when they talk about lizards, doves, or baboons; it is only when the argument turns to the highest form of animal life, a human being, that there enters a lot of fuzzy thinking about conception and life.”
[12]http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:GdMVASyYwHkJ:onlineathens.com/stories/101302/
new_20021013047.shtml+Courtney+Jo+Dukes+LMU+student&hl=en
[13] See Genesis 9:6, which says: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed for in the image of God has God made man." When you murder another person, you have committed a great evil. Why? Because God created man in His image, and your malicious attack against another human being is considered an indirect attack on God Himself. And that crime is worthy of the death penalty. Rom. 13 in the NT talks about the fact that God has ordained government to carry out that penalty-the authority "does not bear the sword for nothing-He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer." Human life is precious in God's sight, the object of his great love. Anyone who takes a life wrongfully, is the object of God’s wrath. See also Exod. 21:12-17, 22-23, 29.
[14] Hear the interview with Nurse Brenda Pratt Schafer at http://home.christianity.com/topics/christianity_and_culture/sanctityoflife/77554.html (Part 1) and http://home.christianity.com/topics/christianity_and_culture/sanctityoflife/77553.html (Part 2)