Abortion

Introduction

I came across this observation a while back. I don’t remember where it came from, but I thought it was a good one. I thought it was accurate. About abortion, someone observed that not since the Civil War and the controversy over slavery has an issue so stirred the passion of our nation and divided us as a people. Indeed, abortion has divided us as a nation. I cannot think of a single issue that has proven more controversial, stirred more passion, and proved to be more divisive in our culture than this one. Demonstrations for it and against it can turn out tens and even hundreds of thousands of people to protest. Politicians have been left scrambling. Listen to them talk about abortion today. It would be amusing if it wasn’t so tragic.

They’re scared to death of the issue. Because they realize wherever they come down on it, they’re in trouble with a huge constituency of people. The discourse between the opposing sides of this issue can be intense and marked with harsh rhetoric. I think exposing the intensity of feeling that people have on both sides of the issue. People can’t speak with this issue without talking passionately. You may discover that as I preach about this tonight.

That’s indeed the worst part of it. On one side, you have the tens of millions of legal abortions that have been performed in this country since 1973 when the Supreme Court legalized the practice. And that death toll rises by one every 21 seconds. And on the other side, you have some who call themselves pro-life, but who have betrayed the fundamental principle described in that title by advocating violence against clinic workers and against doctors? And I realize there’s been far fewer loss than on the other side, but it’s a tragic loss of life, either way. But as much as abortion may dominate the political discussion in our country, I want to say to you this evening that it is not, first and foremost, a political issue to be resolved by state legislatures.

In fact, it is not first and foremost a legal issue to be resolved by our courts. I want you to understand tonight that abortion is first and foremost a moral issue. It raises questions about who it is we’re trying to please in our lives, ourselves or our Lord. It raises questions about what standard we’re going to live by, our own or God’s.

Or will we dip deeper into depravity? For those who love Jesus, there is only one way to resolve this thorny issue that sends the politicians running. And it is not by the ruling of a court or the careful reading of the Constitution, but it’s by a study of God’s word. And that’s what I want us to spend our time doing this evening. In trying to decide whether or not abortion is right and wrong and what view a Christian should have of that practice, brethren, we need to get back to God’s word and see what answer He gives us to that question. We’ve been studying on Sunday nights questions that we are likely to face as we go out and try to talk to others about the gospel.

And when we began this series about six or eight weeks ago, I asked for you all to submit questions to me, questions you’ve encountered in your conversations with others, the ones you’d like to be more equipped to answer it. And this was one of the ones that was submitted to me, and I think appropriately, it is a question that we must deal with. But I want to say, in the broader scope, it is a kind of question that I think Christians are often going to encounter as they seek to live in a corrupt world and to base their moral choices and their values on a different standard than the rest of the world does. I think there is a kind of question we are going to typically encounter as we walk to the beat of a different drum in the midst of a perverse culture like ours.

It is not uncommon to find our co-workers and our neighbors and our friends in the world that we come to know. It is not uncommon to find them wondering out loud about us and about the way we live and about things that we do and things that we don’t do that they find, well, rather odd. Why don’t you people go clubbing? Why can’t you go grab a beer with us after work?

Why don’t you guys go see our rated movies? Why aren’t you going to let your kids go to the problem? Why don’t you people drink? Why do you think it’s wrong to get a divorce if two people just aren’t happy with each other? And why do you oppose abortion? Don’t you think a woman ought to have the right to control her own body? Ever face questions like that? I found in recent years that a lot of time in conversations with people we come to know, maybe through the baseball league, we’ll talk about raising kids, or my kids will be out with some other person’s kids, and they’ll call up and say, Can we go see this movie? What’s it rated? No, you can’t go see that.

And I’ve had parents come up to me, why don’t you let your kid go see that movie? I know sometimes those kind of questions make us uncomfortable. But what I want you to appreciate with me tonight is I also think they’re open doors of opportunity. They give us a chance to kindly and politely drag people in our culture kicking and screaming back to the standard. I tell you why I don’t let my kids go see movies like that. Because God’s word said something about it. And that’s what we need to be doing in our culture, folks. When people wonder out loud about the odd life that they observe us living, it is an opportunity to say the reason is I live by a different standard, and it comes from God, and here’s the reason why I do what I do.

Or why we don’t do these other things. Well, we want to think about this issue of abortion. And how we can take people back to God’s word and see the rather uncomplicated answer that he gives to this thorny issue. Well, I think we need to spend some time here at the beginning talking about what really is at issue when we talk about abortion. I want to submit to you tonight that I think that when it comes to all the discussion that’s going on in our culture about abortion, that the waters have really been muddied. And that many a times we’re arguing about things and debating things in the context of this issue that have nothing to do with the issue of abortion and whether or not it’s right or wrong.

1. The Only Relevant Question: What Is the Unborn Child?

And so if you indulge me for a few minutes this evening, I’d like to take a moment to define what the real issue is, so that we can look at what the Bible says about that. And in the process, I’d like to eliminate from our discussion some things that are often talked about, but don’t have anything to do with the issue and shouldn’t even be part of this discussion, part of the debate. So let’s define the issue first of all. I would submit to you there is only one relevant question that needs to be asked in a discussion about abortion. And anything else is frivolous and unnecessary. The only question that needs to be asked is how are we going to view the unborn child? What is the unborn child?

Is it a living person or is it not? Folks, I suggest to you that that’s the only question we need to ask, and the only one that needs to be answered. Those who favor abortion argue that the unborn child is just a blob of cells. That it’s not human life. Therefore, it, as they would say, has no rights and can be destroyed at the will of the mother. Some advocate, even up right to the very moment of birth, some even after it’s been born. Of course, those who oppose abortion see just the opposite. They argue that life begins at the moment of conception, and that the unborn child possesses the same rights that any human being possesses, most importantly, the right to live. The only relevant question in this whole discussion is who’s right about that.

2. The Burden of Proof Rests With Those Who Practice It

How do we view the unborn child? Is it or is it not a living person? And let me add, brethren, that when it comes to that question, the burden of proof is not with those of us who oppose abortion. The burden of proof rests with those who practice it. See, you and I who oppose abortion, we’re not wanting to mess with that child in the womb. We want to leave it be. They want to go in and destroy it. Therefore, I submit to you that it is their burden of proof to establish without any doubt when life begins, and establish that it is at some other point than in the womb, if they’re going to destroy the child in the womb. It is their burden of proof.

Those who favor abortion ought to be talking about this question and only that question if they’re going to make their case. Now let me tell you what’s amazing. You listen to discussions about abortion today in our media, you will never hear people talk about this. Especially those who favor abortion. Listen to the talk show and the news broadcast and read the editorials in the paper, and you will rarely hear anyone talk about this. You’ll never hear someone who favors abortion talk about it. In fact, even the U.S. Supreme Court in its landmark Roe vs. Wade Decision, in essence, dodged the real issue. Writing for the majority, Justice Blackman said this. He said, we need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus due to the judiciary at this point in the development of man’s knowledge is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.

Do you get what he said there? He said, listen, if the preachers and the doctors and the philosophers can’t figure out when life begins, they didn’t ask me about that. But anyway, if the rest of them can’t figure out when life begins, who are the judges to decide? Well, I think we can know when life begins. But listen, if that’s the position he wants to take, that’s fine with me. If he wants to say, we don’t know, okay, he can take that position. But you know what’s disturbing? Is they went from that point to pass laws allowing doctors to legally destroy unborn children. Tell me what sense that makes. He says, we don’t know if what’s inside that woman is a living person or not. No one could figure that out, so I guess we just better pass a law that says, destroy it if you want to.

3. A Woman’s Right to Choose Avoids the Real Issue

That all the intellectual people in our culture didn’t rip that kind of thinking to shred. But that’s the pattern of those who defend abortion and they’re willing accomplices in the media. They forge ahead with millions of abortions every year, unwilling and not being compelled to deal with the real issue, the only one that is of any consequence. In fact, what has happened is that those who favor abortion have sought to reframe the debate. They said what we really need to do is talk about something else. You won’t hear folks talking about this. But what kind of things do people discuss when they talk about abortion? I tell you what I hear most of the time. Don’t you hear this? I hear people say that abortion is all about a woman’s right to choose.

Ever heard that? This is about a woman’s rights to control her body. This is about reproductive rights that are guaranteed in the Constitution and your right to privacy. Who are we to interfere with a woman’s right to choose? And most of the argument that goes on today about abortion deals with that issue. Can I say something to you to folks about that tonight? That has nothing to do with any of this. Oh, it plays to Americans who are concerned, concerned about protecting their rights, it just doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not abortion is right or wrong. All of us recognize that a woman has a right over her body. All of us recognize that we have personal rights, but we also recognize that those rights only extend to the point that they don’t interfere with someone else’s rights.

Don’t we understand that? Isn’t that right? I’ve got a right to give to buy a car and get it out and drive it on the road. I don’t have a right to drive it through David Duncan’s front yard. Right? You see, there are limits to the rights that we have. Women certainly have a right to exercise control over their body. But with abortion, there’s more than one person involved. It’s not just the mother. There’s a child there. He’s in the picture as well. Those who favor abortion rights argue that the rights argue as if the rights of the woman were the only issue, and that the unborn child has no rights. You see, they begin with that assumption that it’s about a woman’s rights and the unborn child doesn’t have any.

Folks, that’s what they’ve got to prove first. They can’t work on that assumption. And until they’ve established that, until they’ve established that unborn child does it have any rights. This is a meaningless, empty argument. Remember also that in the vast majority of cases, women did have the right to choose. They had a right to choose whether or not they got pregnant in the first place. And if people want to talk about choice, that’s where choice ought to be made. That choice ought to be made in the bedroom and not in the doctor’s office. Once the child is involved, they can no longer merely act in their own self-interest. Yes, choice needs to be exercised. We need people to act more responsibly and make better choices about their sexual behavior.

And we’d have to deal less with issues like this. Let me say one other thing about this issue of rights. Turn in your Bibles, if you will, this evening to Romans chapter 6. I think we need to keep in mind, as in our country, we hear so much talk about rights.

That there is at least a sense in which you and I, as God’s children and determined in our lives to live for him, that we don’t have rights. You think about that? In Romans the sixth chapter and in verse 17, Paul would say, but thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed and have been freed from sin, you became what? Slaves of righteousness. When I decided to be a Christian, I enslaved myself to Jesus Christ and to his will. This isn’t about what I want or my rights. Christians don’t make choices that way. It’s about what Jesus wants. And God’s will guides my every decision. We have too many people today in our culture shouting about their rights and not doing enough to take responsibility for their behavior and bringing their lives into line with God’s will.

4. The Effect the Child Will Have on the Mother

We need to talk more about responsibility than we do about rights. Back to the point. This right to choose. Folks, that has nothing to do with the issue. It avoids the real issue. But I there’s a second thing that people often talk about in the debate about abortion. And that is, they talk a lot about the effect that this child is going to have on the life of the mother. We hear the sad stories about the 19-year old college student who made a mistake and wind up getting herself pregnant, and now she’s faced with this child that’s just going to mess up her life. She’s not in a position to bear a child and to and to raise this child why it would destroy her future education and her job opportunities.

It would completely alter the course of her life, and surely it would just be better for her to get an abortion and go ahead with her life. Again, I would say she had an opportunity to make that choice. She could have made the choice not to get pregnant in the first place. But folks, I want you to understand that how the child will affect the life of the mother has nothing to do at all with whether abortion is right or wrong. Can it illustrate that? Y’all remember, I don’t know, maybe it’s been four or five years ago, that a woman named Susan Smith, does that name ring a bell? Yeah. Strapped her little babies in their car seats and drove them off into a lake and let them drown?