Abortion

Today I want to write to you from my heart. On January 22, 1973, by a Supreme Court vote of seven to two, abortion became legal in The United States of America. To borrow historical rhetoric, a day that will live in infamy. It was deemed legal that a woman could by her choice terminate the life of her unborn baby.

Nineteen seventy-three was an important year in my wife’s and my life. It was the year of our marriage. Roe verses Wade created a new atmosphere in our country in the very year Mrs. Pope and I began our life together. Our children were born into this union in 1977, 1980, 1982 and 1985. It has been said the most dangerous place for a person in our county now is in the womb of a woman. More people risk death there than anywhere. Thankfully, that was not the case with our children and probably for most parents reading these words. Before they were born, we realized we were stewards of the most important product in the earth, human life. It is estimated that over fifty-three million of my children’s generation have been aborted since this infamous ruling. How many potential scientists that had the cure for cancer in their future had they lived? How many great preachers with a message to bring millions to Christ were never offered life outside the womb? How much beautiful music would have been written if those composers could have lived? How many professors and teachers would have shaped lives for the future? We'll never know. I know some hard-hearted skeptics would argue in the other direction by saying look how many criminals will not be walking the streets because of abortion, but we take the chance of having any child go in the wrong direction, even from the perceived best environments. If you decide to go down that line of reasoning, you are not un-like Hitler and Nazi Germany in their attempt to “weed out” what they deemed were undesirables in their attempt to create a “super race.” The only thing they managed to do was to show themselves murdering monsters in the Holocaust.

This brings us to our premise today: abortion is wrong. It is difficult to understand why anyone would believe it is permissible to take the life of a child in abortion. Here are some reasons why pro-abortionists go through with this dastardly deed:

1. The abortionist adheres to the depraved belief that the right to life is only true for some.

It is believed that one of the most well-crafted and important sentences ever written in the English language comes to us from the Declaration of Independence. Conservatives as well as liberals, Bible-believers as well as unbelievers appreciate it. The sentence to which we refer says, “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, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

In a children’s dictionary, the definition of “unalienable” is: impossible to take away or give up. I came across this lawyer’s definition of “unalienable”: “it is called un-a-lien-a-ble where lien is pronounced leen...meaning you cannot place a lien on it, so it can never be taken away...as opposed to un-alien-able which refers to an alien which has nothing to do with the meaning.” In our legal documentation, we not only have the right to Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, but also to Life!

No person in this country has the right to pre-meditatively take the life of another person. One of the Ten Commandments is: “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13). The word “kill” in Hebrew is “ratsach” which means to murder and in some cases more literally rendered, “to dash in pieces.” What a terrorizing term! This is often what exactly happens in an abortion. It will do all of us well to remember this is a commandment, not suggestion. Our Declaration of Independence says this right is given by our Creator and no other person has the right to take that precious gift from another.

2. The abortionist adheres to the unfounded belief that the unborn is not a true person.

Another flawed argument the abortionist will give is the fetus is not yet human. Their logic (which is quite illogical) says since it is not a life, it is not murder. The long term conversation continues among politicians and philosophers: when does a human being become life? The belief that a child is not alive until it can live on it’s own outside the womb is very contradictory. Think of this, what child can live on it’s own as soon as it is born? None! Leave a child to fend for itself and it will never live. It cannot feed itself, it cannot communicate his or her needs. Any baby left to itself will die. Every baby is dependent upon another to keep it alive for the first few years of its life.

We see these words in Holy Scripture: “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations” (Jeremiah1:5). The Hebrew word for “form” is “yatsar,” which means to mold into a form; especially as a potter, to purpose. So before a child takes shape, God has a blueprint in mind. The Lord was just as creative and personally involved in His design for you as He was when He created the first man, Adam out of the very dust of the ground! For God, the issue is not mere “tissue”; it is human life and it is life that He knows and has a plan for. To interrupt this process is to play God.

Dr. Suess had it correct in his wonderful, colorful book, “Horton Hears a Who” when he said, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” If you recall the story line, everyone wanted to destroy this little civilization on a speck, but Horton was willing to go to the ends of the earth, even risking his own life because he heard one little voice in that one little world. In 1954, long before Roe verses Wade was argued, even Dr. Suess “got it.”           

3. The abortionist adheres to the selfish belief that their body is their own.

The pro-abortionists will insist their body is their own and therefore has the right to do anything to their body. For the abortionist, that goes for having veto power over life within the parameters of their body. If life is growing inside them, they can take it. I recently heard a young woman refer to her pregnancy as an invasion. Had sad for a mother to view her child as an invasion! For one thing, in most every case the child is invited by virtue of the fact of what you did to cause the conception.

The Bible refers to this prenatal period in Psalm 139:13-16, “For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” I marvel at the intricacy and intimacy of the details of the unborn baby known to God. Please notice the wording of the opening of this inspired discussion, “For thou hast possessed my reins....” In the Old Testament, “reins” refers to the seat of a person’s being. It is the epicenter of who we are. So God is declaring He owns us in creative authority from the primal point of our personhood. As a Christian, we see this truth illustrated dramatically in I Corinthians 6:19: “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” One of the most selfish and uncaring cries of a wicked heart is, “This is my body; I’ll do with it as I please.” Well, you belong to God, you are not your own to do with as you please. The same goes for the unborn baby. That life belongs to God.

4.The abortionist adheres to the misjudged belief that because the baby is not wanted that this crime is justified.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. Many just flippantly write off the baby’s life because they don’t believe they can afford or desire the responsibility of rearing a child. There is one argument that so-called “right-to-lifers” will sometimes cave in on and it is in the case of rape or incest. These are crimes of the deepest dye, no argument there. But we mustn’t punish the innocent baby for the crime of the parent! Would you believe it would be okay for a mother to bring her second grader into a hospital and request that the life of that second grader be terminated because it is the child of a rape or a near relative?  You would cry out this is ludicrous and I would agree, however, you are only talking about the difference of seven years. If at seven years age the life of that child is precious, it was no less precious in the sight of God seven years earlier. When good King Amaziah was confronted with possible punishment inflicted upon children of murderers he held true to the teaching of Deuteronomy 24:16, “But he slew not their children, but did as it is written in the law in the book of Moses, where the LORD commanded, saying, The fathers shall not die for the children, neither shall the children die for the fathers, but every man shall die for his own sin” (II Chronicles 25:4).

Let us continue to pray for America to wake up. Let us pray for our President, Senate, House of Representatives and Supreme Court to do right and reverse the unconstitutional and ungodly act of legalized murder.

-Pastor Pope-