Sermon Tone Analysis

ABORTION - IS IT A SIN?

Robert H. West

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I.       DEFINING ABORTION

!! A.  Abortion is the practice of purposely causing the death and removal of unborn babies from their mothers’ wombs.

Let us speak plainly:  Abortion is killing!

Whether or not it is murder remains to be considered.

But the fact that /killing/ is involved cannot be diminished even though some prefer the more delicate term:  “retroactive fertility control.”

!! B.  How Are Abortions Performed?

!!! 1.   Suction Method -- The surgeon inserts a hollow plastic tube with a knife-like edge on the tip, into the uterus.

The tube is connected to a vacuum machine almost 30 times more powerful than a home vacuum cleaner.

The result is that the Baby is torn to pieces and sucked out into a jar.

!!! 2.   D & C (Dilatation and Curettage) - The doctor inserts a curette (a loop-shaped knife) into the womb, with which he cuts to pieces the baby and the placenta and then scrapes them out into a basin.

The little body is then re-assembled in jigsaw fashion to ascertain if any parts were left behind.

!!! 3.   Prostaglandin -- A drug (developed recently by Upjohn Company) which induces labor and birth.

If the baby survives the trauma of premature labor, it will then have to be “disposed of” by some other means.

!!! 4.   Saline Method (Salt-Poisoning)  -- This is done after the 16th week.

A large needle is inserted through the abdominal wall into the baby’s amniotic sac.

A concentrated salt solution is injected into the amniotic fluid.

The baby swallows this fluid, struggles for some time and usually dies (although a small number survive to be killed some other way).

Some doctors refer to these aborted babies as “candy-apple babies” because the salt often burns off the outer layer of skin, giving the resulting tissue a “candy apple” appearance.

!!! 5.   Hysterotomy -- This is the same as a Caesarean Section with the exception that the object is to kill the baby rather than save it.

The mother’s abdomen is surgically opened, as is her uterus, and the baby is lifted out and “discarded”.

Almost all hysterotomy babies are born alive and left to die from lack of attention.

!!! 6.   IUDs (Intrauterine Devices) -- These are small plastic or metal objects that are inserted in the womb and left there.

IUDs are promoted as “contraceptive devices.”

They are highly effective -- /but not as contraceptives/.

They do not prevent the union of sperm and egg.

Rather, the IUD irritates the lining of the womb that causes the cells to produce substances that either destroy the fertilized egg (zygote) when it arrives or prevent it from implanting.

In other words, IUDs cause very early abortions!

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II.

WHY STUDY THIS ISSUE?

!! A.  Because We Are To Be An Influence For Good In The World - See Matthew 5:13-16.

We cannot remain silent or “neutral” on such an issue when that silence may well be identified as an endorsement of that which tends toward evil.

\\ !! B.  Because of Recent Supreme Court Decisions

!!! §         1973 - In Roe vs. Wade, ruled that prior to “viability,” the fetus is not meaningful human life and thus is not worthy of the protection of the Constitution; between “viability” and birth it may be worthy of that protection, but only under some circumstances and only if the states so decree.

!!! §         1976 - Ruled that neither husbands nor parents could interfere with their wives’ or daughters’ decisions to have abortions.

!!! §         1979 - Ruled more specifically that unmarried, minor females are permitted to have abortions without parental consent.

/(Cannot buy booze or cigarettes -- but can have an abortion!)/

!! C.  Because of the Consequences of Those Decisions

!!! §         In 1966 there were only 8,000 legal abortions reported in this country.

Since the 1973 Court decision, that number has risen to 1,600,000 annually This means that one unborn baby is killed every 20 seconds, day after day, year after year!

!! D.  Because of the Dangerous Devaluation of Human Life in Our Society

!!! §         This same Supreme Court whose decision precipitated the current destruction of over a million human lives annually, stopped construction on the $116,000,000 Tellico Dam in Tennessee - because it might endanger the life of the Snail Darter, a 3-inch fish! (“Save the Fish~/Kill the Fetus”).

Since then, citizens concerned about the safety of the Lousewort plant raised legal questions about building a power plant in Maine!

Similar concern for the life of the Orange-Bellied Mouse has complicated site requirements for a power plant near San Francisco!

And a $340,000,000 dam on the Stanislaus River in California ran into legal difficulties because of a 5~/8 inch daddy-long-legs spider that lives there!

We commend all efforts which show concern for the value of life.

/But does this not show that our society has confused values and priorities and has, legally, devalued human life?/

!! E.  Because of Some Dreadful Doors Which Have Already Been Opened

!!! 1.   Infanticide (killing infants) - It is an ever-increasing practice to advocate more liberal laws and guidelines that would allow the “termination” of the lives of newborn infants.

Sounds incredible?

Read the following quotations:

*James D. Watson*, Nobel Prize laureate, who discovered the double helix of DNA, in an interview with /Prism/ magazine in May, 1973, later quoted in /Time/: / “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few are given under the present system.

The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering.

I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.”/

*Francis Crick,* also a Nobel laureate, as quoted in January, 1978 by the Pacific News Service: /“...no newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and that if it fails these tests it forfeits the right to live.”/

In the book, /Ideals of Life/, *Millard S. Everett* (professor of philosophy & humanities at Oklahoma State), wrote:/ “My personal feeling - and I don’t ask anyone to agree with me - is that eventually, when public opinion is prepared for it, no child should be admitted into the society of the living who would be certain to suffer any social handicap - for example, any physical or mental defect that would prevent marriage or would make others tolerate his company //o//nly from the sense of mercy.....This would imply not only eugenic sterilization but also euthanasia due to accidents of birth which cannot be foreseen.”/

Even “religious experts” have had their say in advocacy of infanticide.

A task force of the Anglican Church of Canada in a 1977 report concluded that it could be morally right to terminate the lives of newborn infants with severe brain damage.

Their callousness is quoted in /The New York Times/, July 28, 1977:  /“Our sense and emotions lead us to the grave mistake of treating human-looking shapes as if they were human, although they lack the least vestige of human behavior and intellect.

In fact the only way to treat such defective infants humanely is not to treat them as human.”/

(The above quotations among many others can be found in the book, /Whatever Happened to the Human Race,/ by Francis A. Schaeffer & C. Everett Koop, M.D.)

!!! 2.   Euthanasia (mercy-killing) - The forces of Humanism and “situation ethics” have long advocated the right of man to sit in judgement on which of the elderly, crippled, or retarded people have ceased to possess “meaningful life” and thus have the right to live.

With the legal acceptability of abortion, new leverage has been granted to their arguments:

*Joseph Fletcher*, who popularized “situation ethics,” in his 1973 discussion of death with dignity in the /American Journal of Nursing/:  /“It is ridiculous to give ethical approval to the positive ending of sub-human life in utero as we do in therapeutic abortions for reasons of mercy and compassion but refuse to approve of positively ending a sub-human life in extremis.

If we are morally obliged to put an end to a pregnancy when an amniocentesis reveals a terribly defective fetus, we are equally obliged to put an end to a patient’s hopeless misery when a brain scan reveals that a patient with cancer has advanced brain metastases.”/

§         As bad as the theory and practice of euthanasia is, there are two notable distinctions between it and abortion that must be considered.

Virtually all “mercy-killings” take place with the explicit or presumed consent of the victim.

The consent of the fetus, on the other hand, is pre-empted by the mother, doctor, or the Supreme Court.

§         The vast majority of cases of euthanasia are in the presence of terminal and~/or painful disease or injury.

The overwhelming bulk of abortions, however, are performed on normal, healthy fetuses.

Therefore, any moral evaluation of the two practices must view abortion with greater disapprobation.

!! F.   Because of Frightening Historical Parallels

!!! 1.

The Dred Scott Decision

In 1857, in the case of a black slave, Dred Scott, the Supreme Court ruled (contrary to all biological, logical, or scriptural evidence) that Negroes were legal nonpersons, and therefore could not be protected by the Constitution.

\\ !!! 2.   The Nazi Mentality

In Germany under National Socialist law, the Jew, regardless of all scientific and scriptural evidence to the contrary, was deprived of his legal personhood and treated as non-human.

This led to what we know as the Holocaust.

Please read carefully the following statement from *Dr.

Leo Alexander*, who worked with the Chief American Counsel at the Nuremberg Tribunal.

The statement originally appeared in the /New England Journal of Medicine/ of July 4, 1949 and appears in the book, /Abortion And The Conscience of the Nation/ by President Ronald Reagan: /“Whatever proportion these crimes finally assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they had started from small beginnings.

The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basis attitudes of the physicians.

It started with the acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that *there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived* [my emphasis- rhw].

This attitude in its early stages concerned itself merely with the severely and chronically sick.

Gradually, the sphere of those to be included in this category was enlarged to encompass the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the racially unwanted, and finally all non-Germans.*

But it is important to realize that the infinitely small wedged-in lever from which the entire trend of mind received its impetus was the attitude towards the non-rehabilitable sick.*

[My emphasis - RHW]”/

Alexander states further that Hitler exterminated 275,000 in his “killing centers”.

The first to be eliminated were the aged, the infirm, the senile and mentally retarded, and “defective” children.

As World War II approached, those deprived of the right to live included World War I amputees, children with badly modeled ears, and even bed wetters!

*Malcolm Muggeridge*, in his essay /The Humane Holocaust/ appearing in the previously-mentioned book, comments as follows: /“Surely some future Gibbon surveying our times will note sardonically that it took no more than three decades to transform a war crime into an act of compassion, thereby enabling the victors in the war against Nazi-ism to adopt the very practices for which the Nazis had been solemnly condemned at Nuremberg.”/

!! G.

Because This Is An Issue Which Confronted The Early Christians

Contrary to popular opinion, the early Christians also lived in a society in which abortion was commonly practiced:  /“Gynecology developed as a science.

There were many woman physicians, some of whom wrote handbooks on abortion which were read by rich women and prostitutes.”

/- *Abortion & the Early Church by Michael J. Gorman, p. 27.*

This is a subject explicitly mentioned in writings of Christians dating to the late First or early Second century.

§         *Didache or Teaching of Twelve Apostles:*/ “Thou shalt do no murder; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not commit sodomy; thou shalt not commit fornication; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not use magic; thou shalt not use philtres; thou shalt not procure abortion, nor commit infanticide...” (2:2)/

§         *The Epistle of Barnabas:* /“...Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain.

Thou shalt love thy neighbour more than thy own life.