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The incoming President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, has nominated former Missouri Senator John Ashcroft to be his new Attorney General. Senator Ashcroft is evidently a very religious man and that characteristic is at the center of fervent opposition to his appointment. He is undergoing his confirmation hearings as this is written. He is being demonized in the media as too conservative by a number of liberal interest groups. Chief among these negative voices are those who say they are interested in what is euphemistically called “women's reproductive rights.” What they are actually afraid of is that this religious man from Missouri will in some nefarious way inhibit the right of women to abort their unborn children.
I am certain that if Senator Ashcroft and I were to meet we would find religious differences, some quite substantial. But I do respect and admire his stand on behalf of the unborn. There is ample Biblical warrant for an anti-abortion or pm-life stance. David speaks of God in Psalm 138: “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them” (verses 13-16 NKJV). Here is David's inspired analysis of his pre-born state. God formed him in the womb (“the lowest parts of the earth”). Perhaps remarkably to some, the passage makes reference to something (“Your book”) that fashions our days before we are born. Could this be a reference to our own unique DNA which determines our physicality from conception forward?
Psalm 138 is not the only anti-abortion passage in the Bible. An outstanding example is Jeremiah 1:5: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet in the nations.” God chose Jeremiah for His work before Jeremiah was born. The conclusion must be that the prophet was a human being before his birth. Thus abortion kills not “fetal tissue” but little tiny human beings.
The Old and New Testaments (Exodus 20:13, Romans 13:9) prohibit murder, but not all killing. Killing of animals for food is allowed and even encouraged (Acts 10:13). Authorized agents of government may kill in the execution of their duty to keep peace and order (Romans 13:1-7). The overall teaching on the subject is that certain killing is allowed but the killing called murder is not. The question for those favoring and encouraging abortion is this: “What kind of killing is abortion? It is not killing an animal for food. It is not capital punishment of an evildoer. It is not the killing of an enemy in a just, defensive war. The being killed must be human because it is the result of human reproductive acts. As the unborn are just the very youngest children, the killing of them is simply murder. In no instance is this clearer than in the heinous practice of partial-birth abortion.
Some may ask “What about rape and instances wherein the mother's life is in danger.” These are difficult hypotheticals, but they do not mitigate the basic argument. At any rate, not many abortions result from these circumstances. Most are simply birth control after the fact. As such they are the evidence of a careless and morally deficient manner of living. Women (and men) should indeed have control of their own bodies. And they should exercise that control before conceiving a child.
One of the saddest factors in the Ashcroft matter is the demonizing
not only of him, and of all those who share his views. We who oppose abortion
are portrayed as backward woman haters who would drag the nation back to
some dark back alley. This is mere ad hominem. Until our culture faces
the repellent honor that is abortion we are doomed to continue what will
one-day be identified as a catastrophic evil. May those who practice and
support abortion repent before they stand in front of the God who knew
them in their own mother's womb.
Bill Irby West Hobbs Street Church of Christ, Athens,
Al