Hot Topics 3: Abortion

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B: Genesis 1:26-28

N: Master Plan Stuff

Welcome

Welcome

Mention Men’s Breakfast: 48 guys were there.

Going to talk about abortion today

Announcements

AOM tonight at 4:30 in MH. I’ll be sharing a little about my trip to Israel, specifically the things that I learned about the geopolitical situation and tensions that exist there, so that we can be more intentional in our prayers for Israel.

AAEO for North American Missions has started, and we will be taking this offering throughout March and April.

My message this morning is quite serious, but before we get to that, I need to address something else that is serious, but a much more exciting serious. Master Plan is completed. We have recommendations from the architect and the Master Plan Planning Team about next steps. Overview. 5 Pictures. Cost Estimate. Stuff online: Family Life Page, link at the top. Pray and plan this week to come to the business meeting next Sunday night at 5:30 here in the sanctuary to be a part of the discussion and decision-making of the church. If you have questions beforehand, email them to me and/or Joe, and we will address them.

Opening

OK, we are in our third of five weeks on Hot Topics. We’ve considered the questions, “Why are people so often hurt by the church?” and, “Are faith and science in conflict with each other?” This morning, we will address the question, “Is abortion wrong?” It is not a question of personal preference or opinion. This morning, we will consider both biblical and philosophical arguments about abortion, and also consider our response to those who have considered or experienced an abortion themselves. Our focal passage of Scripture comes from Genesis chapter 1 this morning:

Genesis 1:26–28 CSB

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female. 28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.”

PRAYER (pray for Ukraine)

So our question today is a simple one to ask: “Is abortion wrong?”

Well, we know that legally (for the moment, anyway), in many ways and in many states it is not legally wrong: it’s not illegal to get an abortion. But not all things that are LEGAL are MORAL. So are we asking a legal question or a moral one? We’re asking in the moral sense this morning. Is abortion wrong morally, meaning that it is essentially wrong for all people at all times in all places: that it is wrong ontologically, or to say it another way: “Is abortion objectively wrong?”

To answer that question, we need to make sure that we understand what abortion actually is. Abortion is defined as a medical procedure used to end a pregnancy and cause the death of the fetus. This would include surgical intervention, medicinal intervention, or any other procedural act that intends to cause the death of an unborn fetus (I don’t want to get into detail here). Please note that I’m intentionally not calling the unborn fetus a child yet, because logically, we haven’t made that step this morning. To do that, we have to ask another question, which is really the first question that must be answered in the discussion of abortion:

The real first question: “What is the unborn?”

The reason that this is the first question is simple: we can’t define the term “abortion” without defining what the unborn is. Every human “fetus” is unborn by definition, so we don’t need to add that term. So the purpose of abortion is to cause the death of the unborn. So we have to answer the question “what is the unborn?” We aren’t really sure what we’re talking about if we don’t answer that question.

Why? Because there are only two options: the unborn is either a member of the human family, or the unborn is not a member of the human family. This is the first question that matters, and the answer to this question should define the answers to all the other questions that follow. I’ll try to explain why this morning.

For those who have experienced abortion: before I get into the arguments here, I want to invite you to hang on to the end. A lot of what I’m going to bring today is to teach the church family why we should oppose abortion from both a biblical perspective and a philosophical one, and just to be clear, I’m going to be direct and frank, but my intention isn’t to hurt. But we have to be honest about abortion. For those who are wondering about whether objecting to abortion is biblical and reasonable, this is a necessary discussion. However, there’s grace to be found. Please don’t tune out before you’ve heard that part at the end.

1) Abortion is wrong biblically.

Since we are a Bible-believing and Bible-teaching church, this is where we are going to start. What does the Bible say about abortion? Along with many others, you might be thinking that it doesn’t really say anything specifically about abortion—that the Scriptural testimony about this topic is completely silent because the word “abortion” doesn’t appear in its pages. But in fact, the Bible condemns abortion. There are four passages that I know of in Scripture where something akin to abortion is mentioned. Three of them reference particularly barbaric acts that happened in warfare, such as we see in Amos 1:

Amos 1:13 CSB

13 The Lord says: I will not relent from punishing the Ammonites for three crimes, even four, because they ripped open the pregnant women of Gilead in order to enlarge their territory.

All three of the verses of this type view the killing of the unborn as a grievous wrong, something to be mourned and/or judged.

The “accidental” one is found in Exodus 21, and this is the passage that will start to give us our framework for the answer to our question:

Exodus 21:22–25 (CSB)

22 “When men get in a fight and hit a pregnant woman so that her children are born prematurely but there is no injury (either to the woman or the child), the one who hit her must be fined as the woman’s husband demands from him, and he must pay according to judicial assessment. 23 If there is an injury (either to the woman or the child), then you must give life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, bruise for bruise, wound for wound.

Notice that if a pregnant woman was injured by a man and had a miscarriage because of it, then the man had to make restitution IN KIND: even a life for a life. The injury occurred while the baby was still in the womb, and so if the baby died, the punishment was death. While this isn’t specifically an “abortion” by definition, it does speak directly to God’s valuation of human life while still in the womb. Life for life. This “life for life” instruction points back to the Sixth Commandment in Exodus 20:13, which simply says, “Do not murder,” and if you were here last summer, you’ll recall that when we looked at the Sixth Word in our TEN series, I explained that the Hebrew word for “murder” in the Ten Commandments specifically refers to killing someone for selfish reasons and without just cause. But even the Sixth Commandment points back to an earlier picture that God painted in Genesis 9:6:

Genesis 9:6 CSB

6 Whoever sheds human blood, by humans his blood will be shed, for God made humans in his image.

This is because God has designed each of us to bear His image, as we also saw in our focal passage in Genesis 1. He intended that only humanity bear the divine image, to be made in God’s likeness, that we would bear that image intrinsically, or as an essential part of our nature or being. Every human being bears that image, because God creates each and every human being to be a divine image-bearer.

Psalm 139:13–15 CSB

13 For it was you who created my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I will praise you because I have been remarkably and wondrously made. Your works are wondrous, and I know this very well. 15 My bones were not hidden from you when I was made in secret, when I was formed in the depths of the earth.

God knows who each of us is. He imagined, designed, and created each of our unique qualities. He lovingly fashioned our features and programmed our genetic makeup. And He “knits” us together at the moment of conception. We are distinct individual image-bearing people in the eyes of God before we are fully “formed.” And since God has decided to carefully and intentionally craft each human being, each human being has incredible worth in His eyes.

Unfortunately, that divine image is flawed and damaged because of sin, but it’s still there as part of our intrinsic being. So we must affirm that all humans have worth in God’s sight as those who bear the image of God, whether they believe in Him or not. Humans are valuable just because of what it means to be human. This includes the unborn, the infant, the toddler, the adolescent, the teen, the young adult, the middle aged, the older adult, the infirm, the physically or mentally challenged, everyone of every race, tribe, and tongue, the rich, the poor, the middle-class, the LGBTQ person, the person struggling with their gender identity. If someone is a human, they bear the image of God, even if they use that image to completely and utterly reject Him. This is the truth of the Gospel:

John 3:16 CSB

16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

God definitively declared the worth of every person (the “world”) when He gave His Son. The only human being who ever perfectly bore the image of God (because He is fully God) died for those of us (all of us) who don’t. If that’s not a declaration of worth, I don’t know what is.

“But Bill,” you might be thinking, “you still haven’t addressed the question. What is the unborn?” I’m getting to that. Remember that last week, I said that faith and actual science are not in conflict. Certainly, unqualified faith IN science is not actual science, nor is ignoring reasonable scientific outcomes in order to fit our preferred narrative. See, scientifically, there’s no way to argue that a baby is not a human being from the moment of conception.

You have the exact genetic coding now as you were the moment you were conceived. Say someone could take a genetic “snapshot” of a human embryo moments after conception, and they stored it for a year. They could then compare that snapshot with the infant’s genetic code and know with 100% certainty whether or not it was the same human. They could save it for another 60 years, and then make the same comparison with the 60 year-old. There would be absolutely no doubt that the three were the same exact human being.

I’ll quote two well-known pro-abortion advocates to make this point:

“We of today know that man… starts life as an embryo within the body of the [pregnant] female; and that the embryo is formed from the fusion of two single cells, the ovum and the sperm. This all seems so simple and evident that it is difficult to picture a time when it was not part of the common knowledge.”

— Dr. Alan Guttmacher, former President of Planned Parenthood, Life in the Making: The Story of Human Procreation

“[Being]… a member of a given species is something that can be determined scientifically…There is no doubt that from the first moments of its existence an embryo conceived from human sperm and eggs is a human being.”

— Abortion rights supporter Peter Singer, Practical Ethics, 2nd ed.

So there’s not really a question about the science of whether an unborn baby is a human being from the moment of conception. The real question is actually a philosophical one. And I can say my next point with certainty:

2) Abortion is wrong philosophically.

The issue is one of ideas, not of science. Ideas have consequences. And the idea is that somehow, some way, a human baby doesn’t have value as a human being until that baby is on the outside of his or her mother. But does this make sense? We’ve just made the argument that it is our creator God who determines our worth, and that worth is intrinsic to our humanity. Humans have value because they are humans. And scientifically, we can say that an unborn baby is a human being, but is that enough to have value?

To get around the scientific FACT of an unborn baby’s humanity, the world has created a sliding scale called “personhood” that is based on performance or usefulness, not on nature. Some argue that a human isn’t a “person” unless they meet certain characteristics such as self-awareness, rationality, sentience, or health. Others argue that someone isn’t a “person” until they can contribute functionally to their survival or to society (Peter Singer is one of these… He actually holds that infants are not “persons”… at least he’s consistent). And who is to say what the standards of performance or usefulness are? The majority of the culture. See how this is a sliding scale?

The Declaration of Independence said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...” Endowment means that our rights are given to us by God as a part of our nature. So are we given an intrinsic value, or does the majority get to determine it?

Most of my thinking here has been greatly influenced by Scott Klusendorf, President of Life Training Institute and author of The Case for Life. I wrote about abortion a couple of years ago in our Vision articles (the back of the Baptist New Mexican). I will be using some of that in today’s sermon as well. I’m also intentionally not using Scripture in this section, because my goal is to show that we can make a well-reasoned argument against abortion because it’s wrong objectively, for everyone.

Philosophically, in order to consider whether an unborn human being is a person, we need to establish some framework to evaluate the differences between someone we would declare to be a “person”, say, a two-year old, and an unborn baby. Logically speaking, you have always been “you:” in one continuous line, from the moment of conception to your current state, and all the way to your death (and genetically even after that). The only differences between our state at conception and wherever we are now can be easily remembered by the acronym SLED. You are different now in: Size, Level of development, Environment, and Degree of dependency. Let’s look at these one at a time:

Size

It is true: when you were an embryo, you were MUCH smaller in size than you are now. But did that mean you were less valuable as a person? I know that we go to the store and see a big bag of chips, and it says that it’s “value-sized”, but does that really make sense for people? Are larger people more valuable than smaller people? Here is a picture of four different sized men. Is Charles Barkley more human than Dwayne Johnson? Is The Rock more of a person than Mark Wahlberg? Is Shaq the most human of them all, because he’s the biggest? Men are generally larger than women. Does that mean that men have more right to live than women do? Is a five-year-old more deserving of life than a two-year-old? I think we can agree that a person’s value is not determined by their size.

Level of Development

It is also true that when you were an embryo, you were less developed than you are now. But why is this a factor? At 12 years old, Abbie is less developed than her 21 year old sister. So does Maggie have a greater value, a greater right to live, than Abbie does? No. Some would argue that self-awareness is what makes a person valuable. If this is the case, infants are not valuable as human beings either, because infants aren’t distinctly self-aware until around three months old. Would it be acceptable to kill a newborn then? Certainly not! One other thought: a sleeping person or a person under sedation is not “self-aware”. So should we be able to kill them? You get the point: a human’s level of development (including self-awareness) does not determine their value.

Environment

Last month, I flew over 6000 miles away to Israel. My environment changed DRAMATICALLY. I was on the other side of the planet from where we are right now, but somehow, my identity didn’t change. I remained myself the entire time. WHERE I was had no bearing on WHO I was. If that’s the case on a 6000 mile journey, how would a baby’s journey of less than 8 inches down the birth canal, going from inside to outside, suddenly change its essential nature from non-human to human? If the unborn are not already valuable human beings, then merely changing their location can’t make them so either.

Degree of Dependency

I think the biggest debate in abortion laws through the ages, and even today, has to do with a baby’s viability. An unborn child is considered viable when they have “attained such form and development as to be normally capable of surviving outside the mother’s womb.” (Merriam-Webster) So, the logic goes, if an unborn child is incapable of surviving on its own, aborting it is acceptable, because he or she wouldn’t have survived otherwise. So the fact that the baby needs her mother’s support to live is the argument that killing her is an reasonable choice.

But is a baby’s capability to survive on its own related to its inherent value as a person? Certainly not. A two-month old is just as incapable of caring for himself or herself. Should we be able to kill a newborn because he is totally dependent on others to survive? No.

Also, there are people in this room who are insulin-dependent diabetics… People with a pacemaker, or who have to have regular kidney dialysis… There are lots of people in this room who are on medication for a life-threatening condition. If individual capacity for unsupported survival is the standard, then all of those types of people are similarly completely dependent on something or someone for their survival. Should it be acceptable to kill them? That doesn’t even make sense!

Facing objections

So we’ve established that there is neither a scientific nor philosophical difference between a human embryo and the adult they might become, and so the unborn are, in fact, human beings who should have full protection as persons. But those who are in favor of abortion have their objections to pro-life arguments. I won’t be able to cover all of them this morning. I’d like to take just a moment and address those:

A: Subjective vs. Objective Claims

Most of the arguments against the pro-life stance fall under this heading. A subjective claim is one that is based on the individual’s perception or opinion. You could also call it a preference claim. An objective claim is a statement about reality: either how it is or how it should be for everyone. In this case, you could call it a moral claim. It can be rationally evaluated and verified as either TRUE or FALSE through examination of evidence.

Consider these two statements: “I like the Pittsburgh Steelers,” and, “The Pittsburgh Steelers are the best team in football.” The first is clearly a subjective, or preference claim. The second is making an objective, or moral claim, that says that the Steelers are the best team in the NFL, regardless of who your personal favorite is (unfortunately, they aren’t at the moment). Just because a moral claim is false doesn’t make it subjective. It just means that its incorrect… but that’s something we can verify by looking at the evidence.

The pro-life argument is that because human beings are intrinsically valuable as humans, abortion is wrong. This is an objective, moral argument.

Here are some examples of pro-abortion arguments that attempt to turn this objective argument into a subjective one:

“That’s just your view.” No it’s not. I’ve made an argument about facts, which can be evaluated based on evidence. I’ve stated that elective abortion is wrong for everyone. I’m not saying that I don’t like abortion or that I would rather not have an abortion. I’ve said that it is, in fact, WRONG. Now, my claim (like the Steelers claim) may very well BE wrong. But instead of arguing the logic and the science about it, saying, “That’s just your view” is just lazy and rude: It is basically saying, “I don’t want to actually have to think about your argument, so I’m going to say it’s just what you PREFER.” This is really an attempt to avoid the discussion.

“It’s wrong to force your morality on people.” Isn’t this a moral statement? They’re saying that forcing your morality on someone is wrong, but they are forcing their morality on you in the process. They’re saying that you can think whatever you want, but you shouldn’t speak or act as if your view is true unless your view agrees with theirs.

“I’m personally opposed to abortion, but I still think it should be legal.” Then why are you opposed to it at all? Probably because it takes the life of a human baby. Change the terms and it becomes clearer: “I’m personally opposed to killing unborn babies, but I still think it should be legal to kill unborn babies.” It’s being subjective by saying it’s about a person’s preference.

“Abortion is a controversial, divisive, moral issue. Therefore, the government should just leave it up to personal choice.” This is just saying that if an issue is highly controversial, it should be left up to the individual. This is the thinking behind the bumper sticker, “Don’t like abortion? Don’t have one.” This fails because it avoids the main question, and we have good precedent. Slavery was a controversial, divisive, moral issue. And the government most certainly legislated that it was wrong. Would the same bumper sticker work for that? “Don’t like slavery? Don’t have a slave.” No. The issue goes back to the main question: Is the unborn a member of the human family? For the slave, the answer was YES, and that demanded that the government legislate about that very controversial, divisive, moral issue. If the unborn IS a human being, then the government should be able to legislate about the issue in order to protect the lives of those innocent little humans.

B: Attacking PEOPLE rather than arguments:

These tactics are more about distraction than about argument. They don’t face the arguments in any way, and instead ultimately attack pro-life people in various ways:

“If pro-lifers really didn’t want people to have abortions, they would adopt all the babies they could.” This deflects the argument about abortion to say that pro-lifers who oppose abortion are hypocrites if they don’t adopt unwanted babies. Great. Maybe we are, and maybe we aren’t, but whether or not I’m a hypocrite doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not an unborn child is a human being.

“You’re a man. You have no right to talk about abortion.” This is really just sexism. People have gender. Arguments don’t. Roe v. Wade was decided by a panel of NINE MEN. By this pro-choice deflection, they had no right to make this decision. Maybe the decision should be overturned then?... Again, this isn’t arguing. It’s distracting.

C: Begging the question (assuming what you’re trying to prove)

“The government shouldn’t be able to tell someone what they can or can’t do with their bodies.” I am very much pro-autonomy with regards to the woman’s life and body. No one should be able to tell a woman what she MUST do with her body. However, the reason this argument begs the question is that it assumes that there is only ONE body involved in an elective abortion. There are TWO distinct bodies: hers, and the baby’s. I’m saying that the government most certainly CAN and SHOULD be able to tell her what she can and can’t do with ANOTHER PERSON’S body, namely, killing that person. This is why we have to keep bringing it back to the question of whether or not a unborn baby is a human being.

“This is a question of a person’s right to privacy.” No it isn’t. This question assumes that one person’s right to privacy is more valid than another person’s right to life. Is it OK for a person to abuse their family, as long as it’s in the privacy of their own home? No. The question of whether or not the unborn is a human being trumps all other discussions. If the unborn is a human, we should not allow him to be harmed in the name of privacy any more than we would a toddler.

“If we make abortion illegal, then women will be forced to have dangerous illegal abortions. We should keep it legal, so women’s health will be safe.” You have to start this question with the assumption that the unborn are not humans, because if they ARE humans, then this question basically says this: “Some people might die or be injured in the process of killing other humans illegally. So we should keep killing humans legal so the humans choosing to kill them will be safe.” This isn’t a safety question or a healthcare, because a human being dies in every abortion procedure.

“Making abortion illegal won’t stop all abortions.” You’re right. It won’t. But does that mean we should legalize it? This assumes that since SOME abortions happen, then we should allow ALL abortions. Why? Murder is illegal. Does it stop ALL murders? No. Should we legalize it because the law doesn’t stop all of them? No!

The final thing that I want to address in this section is this: it is really difficult that women have to bear the brunt of decision-making and responsibility in an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy. This is a real issue, and not one to be taken lightly. But it doesn’t rise to the level of being able to justify killing a baby. So gentlemen: If you aren’t ready to be a father, then you shouldn’t have sex. It’s really that simple. And if you choose to have sex, you MUST take responsibility for any results that come from your choice, because no contraceptive is perfect. Don’t leave a woman to go through that on her own. Don’t encourage her to do something that for most women haunts them for the rest of their lives. That is YOUR baby, too. Step up and do what’s right and care for your child and his or her mother, please.

This takes us to our final point.

3) There’s still grace for those who have experienced abortion.

I know that there are at least two women in this room who have had abortions. And statistically, there are way more than that. Evidence suggests that 25% of American women will have had at least one abortion by age 45. If there are 300 people in the room, and half of them are female, that’s 150 women, so 38 women in this room, statistically speaking. And not only that, but there are men in this room who have experienced the abortion of their child (not in the same way, of course), perhaps with the knowledge and consent, and perhaps not.

Regardless, it doesn’t matter. There’s grace here for you. I know I’ve spoken really strongly about abortion this morning. I believe that I needed to in order to be completely clear about the subject. But there is no sin that isn’t covered by the blood of Jesus Christ.

1 John 1:9 CSB

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Isaiah 43:25 CSB

25 “I am the one, I sweep away your transgressions for my own sake and remember your sins no more.

Forgiveness is found in Jesus. Because of God’s great love for us, Jesus died to cover our sin. Even the sin of abortion. Surrender to Him as your Savior and your Lord, and trust in His sacrifice. He wants to cleanse you from that weight. Forgiveness is available right now. And this goes for both men and women who have experienced the pain and guilt of abortion. Jesus died for you to have life in Him.

Closing

We can confidently stand against abortion.

There is grace for those who have had an abortion.

Invitation

PRAYER

Closing Remarks

Cornerstone fellowship Thursday 11:00 am

Short/Seiler wedding Saturday at 1:30 pm, all are invited to the wedding.

Bible reading: Psalm 68 today.

Instructions for guests

Benediction

Psalm 22:9–10 CSB

9 It was you who brought me out of the womb, making me secure at my mother’s breast. 10 I was given over to you at birth; you have been my God from my mother’s womb.