Abortion

Introduction

It sure is good to be here and have the opportunity to share some thoughts with you. You’re really going to have a struggle this morning because last night we were very fortunate in being able to be with the young people. And you know how stimulating young people are, and so I expect the same type of response out of you, the same enthusiasm, the same eagerness to ask questions as we go through the series of talks that we’re going to be talking about. Again, it’s just great to be here, and Sandy and I are delighted to be able to share some thoughts with you. I think the probably the only thing that I would correct that Josh said is that it may not be always good to announce that somebody’s from Harvard, particularly in an auditorium like this, uh, since most of the folks up there uh really don’t uh have the same type of beliefs that we have.

What I want to do this morning and and throughout the rest of the day is just to share some thoughts with you about some of the issues uh that we’re facing, uh particularly that the young people, the young married people, uh, and those folks uh that are still uh active in their lives, not like Sandy and I are and Bob and Arlene uh over the hill. We don’t have to worry about these kinds of issues, but there are a lot of you folks out there uh that do have to worry about these issues. And I’m starting this out with you know, why the issue, and put up child abuse, uh the idea of Christianity and a virus. And this comes from a very renowned uh evolutionist, uh Richard Dawson, uh uh of Harvard uh of Oxford University.

He’s a noted, outspoken uh uh person that talks about evolution all the time. And he’s made some, I think, very disturbing comments, uh, such as, I’m very concerned about the religious indoctrination of our children, something that we very much pride ourselves in doing to teach our children the gospel. I want to show how faith acts like a virus that attacks the young and infects generation after generation. It’s time to question the abuse of childhood innocence with superstitious ideas of hellfire and damnation. I want to show how the Judeo-Christian moral edifice are cruel and bullish, and then he goes on to say, why in the 21st century are we perpetuating a book, uh, the Bible that contains such stuff? And that’s kind of the background that we find in places like Harvard and most places around the world.

This is the kind of attitude uh that’s out there. And so we want to spend our time talking about how we as Christians can fit into a changing culture. Uh we talked last night with the young folks about can we use God’s creation? Uh do we have the right to use it? Uh do we have the right to use animals in research and in testing, and had a very good discussion with the young folks. This morning we’re going to talk about a very sensitive topic, and that’s abortion, uh, life choice, what rights are there? And then in our 11 o’clock service, we’ll talk about who is our creator, and then this evening uh we’re going to uh get into some of those issues uh that we’re all facing, or at least reading about.

1. What Does the Bible Have to Say

How far can we go in this changing culture with things such as artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, bioengineering, cloning, all of these types of things that we see and we uh quite often are confronted with. Well, abortion, life choice, and right, which is basically, I want to try to present it to you both from the standpoint of what Scripture says, but since most people won’t listen to us when we talk in terms of scripture, some of the secular arguments that we can use against abortion. Well, first of all, what does the Bible have to say about it? And we know right off it tells us to abstain from sexual immorality. Uh 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians 6, Hebrews 13, and Acts 15. And we’re not going to have time to turn to all of these, uh, but if you would jot these down, these are passages that uh tell us this.

Uh we’re to respect human life, and that becomes very important when we think about abortion. Uh Genesis 1, uh 9 and 6, Romans 13, 9 through 10. God has a concern for the unborn child. Exodus 21, 22 through 25. Remember when Rebecca said, but the child struggle together, the children struggle together within her. And she said, if all is well, why am I like this? So she went to inquire of the Lord. Genesis 26, 22. And in Jeremiah 1 5, but before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. God knew and knows every child that’s formed in the womb. Before you were born, I sanctified you. I ordained you a prophet of the nation, talking about Jeremiah here. Well, Elizabeth’s baby, John the Baptist, in Luke 1, 41 and 44.

2. Abortions Happening at a Rampant Pace

And it happened when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary that the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. For indeed, as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy. It’s brought forth that child with a precious prize, 1 Corinthians 6, 18 through 20. And then we read that then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet saying in Matthew 2, 17 through 18, a voice was heard in Ramuth, lamentation, weeping in great mourning, Rachel weeping for a child, refusing to be comforted because they were no more. This great sadness when something happens to the unborn child. Well, when we look at statistics in the United States, and I’ve got 2002 and 2003, airplane, automobile, boating, train, and uh up to 2006 for the number of troops that we’ve lost in Iraq.

And these are staggering numbers when you think about automobile accidents. Forty two thousand people were killed in automobile accidents in 2003. But you know these numbers are minute compared to abortions that take place in our country. According to the Center for Disease Control, legal abortions in the U.S. in 2003 were 853,000. Probably a better estimate of that is 1.3 million. And when you think about that, it’s 1.3 million abortions per year, 3,000 per day, one per every 60 or every 30 seconds. So this is not a trivial thing that’s happening in our country. Abortions are happening at a rampant pace in the United States. Abortions on demand is available in most parts of the United States for just about any reason. For sex selection, you decide that you want a boy and it’s a girl so you just aborted.

Birth control. Pregnancies out of wedlock for eugenic reasons to get a bone marrow transplant. It’s the most common surgical procedure in the United States. And when we think about pregnancies in the United States, about half are unintended. And of those unintended pregnancies almost half of those end up in abortions. So again I would point out to you it’s not a trivial problem in this country. When we begin to look at it across the world we notice that the United States is right up there at the top at the numbers of abortions that take place in Western industrialized countries. And you look at someplace like Holland the Netherlands that we think here’s a country that has legalized prostitution legalized drug use, and yet their abortion rate is much, much lower than ours in this country.

3. Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

If we begin to look around the world, we see that in developing countries the numbers are just as high. The U.S. share of abortions worldwide is a very small number statistically, but nonetheless, it is a very large number. Remember, I said about 1.3 in the US, that’s only 3% of the abortions around the world. So you can see how huge that number is. Well, the beginning of the human body. A thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ, the Lord’s illustrious ancestor David, the king of Israel, declared, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Psalms 139 and verse 14. There was no way that David could have known by natural research how accurate his statement was. We are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made. And we’ll talk about that a little bit more at 11 o’clock.

Well, the beginning of the race, this is the Boston Marathon. It’s the beginning of the race. The race track is the female reproductive track. And right here, a miracle takes place. The process of the egg moving down the fallopian tube is all geared to move the egg in that direction. The mucus, the ciliating membrane, everything is moving in that direction. And then the sperm come in and they have to fight upstream, just like the salmon has to fight upstream to get back to its breeding place. You wouldn’t think that this could happen, but it does. And this is probably my favorite picture. This is the actual union of a sperm and an egg of a human. And again, another miracle takes place. Literally thousands of sperm are involved, and maybe a hundred or so get to this point.

But once that one sperm gets in, by some mechanism that we still do not yet understand, the egg seals off, and no other sperm can penetrate. Again, another miracle that takes place in God’s design of all of this. Here’s the human embryo several hours after fertilization. And we have a very, very complex mathematical process that goes on. We have one cell, two cells, four cells, eight cells, and I’m out of fingers, 16 cells, 32. You know, it’s just a very simple process. They divide and they continue to divide until we literally have millions of cells to form our bodies. Here’s a three-day human embryo at the eight-cell sage. You can see six of the cells, two of them lie out of the plane. And here’s a five-week ultrasound that begins to show the embryo in its location there.

And here we are at eight and a half weeks. And if you look at where it’s the plus on your left, that’s the head side, and the plus on your right is where the back side of the human fetus is beginning to form. Here it is inside of the yolk sac, and at 10 weeks it now begins to look very much like a human being. And at 23 weeks, uh it it there’s no doubt as to what it is. And this is when a lot of people begin to think about abortion. And Proverbs 16 or 6, verses 16 and 17. There are six things which Jehovah hateth. Yes, seven which are abomination unto him, haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood. And tell me what blood is more innocent than that of a tiny infant not yet fresh from the womb.

And here’s an example of abortion taking place at 23 weeks, and that’s what it looks like too many times when it comes out. And this is a viable human being that has been aborted. Here’s a seven-month-old thetus. Well, why should we try to persuade people, not necessarily from a biblical standpoint, but just try to persuade people that abortion is incorrect. Well, a 1999 Gallup poll on abortion said that the opinion on abortion, that is pro-choice or uh pro-life, is split about 50-50. Of that 50% that is pro-choice, there’s really no strong opinion. So that gives us a great opportunity. These people don’t have a strong opinion, so that we can have an influence on people that don’t have that strong opinion, even though we shouldn’t not think about those people that do have a strong uh pro-life opinion.

Well, as we continue this, the journey from conception to birth is a lengthy and complex one. It’s far too complex to have developed by random chance. And to me, the only reasonable explanation is that we have been designed by God. And we’ll talk more about this at 11 o’clock. The fact of the matter is that human beings are not simply animals. We were created in the image of God, and we have qualities that are unknown in the world of lower biology. And God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them, Genesis 1 and verse 27. Well, some of the abortion arguments are based on science, or at least they think they’re based on science.

4. When Does Human Life Begin?

And we want to talk about some human embryology and just when does life begin? And some of the moral issues, when does a person begin to exist? Well, what when does human life begin? And let’s just look at some medical textbooks and see some statements of physicians, one of whom is from Harvard. When does a what when does abortion occur? And what are some of the products of conception? Is it just a blob of tissue? Well, the developing human, clinically oriented embryology is a is a very well-known and used textbook in medical schools. And what this book says is that the zygote, that is, when we get the original union of the egg and the sperm, that’s the zygote. This cell results from the union of the oocyte, the egg and a sperm.

And it goes on to say a zygote is the beginning of a new human being. Humans’ development begins at fertilization, at the point of conception. Another book, Essentials of Human Embryology, again used in embryology courses around the United States. In this textbook, we begin our description of the development of human with the formation and differentiation of the male and female sex cells, or gametes, which unite at fertilization to initiate the embryonic development of a new individual. So it’s at that point of fertilization, at the point of conception, that new life begins. Another book, Human Embryology and Teratology. Fertilization is an important landmark because under ordinary circumstances, a new genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed at conception. And that’s the point that I’m trying to get across in this is that human life begins at conception, not at two weeks or four weeks or some other time.

It begins at conception. Well, what do physicians have to say? Here’s someone from the University of Pennsylvania. At the time of conception. From the University of Descartes over in Europe, after fertilization has taken place, a new human being has come into being. The Mayo Clinic, life is present from the moment of conception. Harvard begins at conception. So don’t let people tell you that textbooks, medical textbooks, and people who are in the field physicians, do not say that life begins at conception. There are many books and many people out there who work in this area that will tell you that life begins at conception. And that’s very important when we begin to think about abortion in its broadest sense. Human embryology. The fetal heart begins to form 18 days after conception.

You can actually see a beating human heart at that point. The measurable heart begins, the beat begins 21 to 24 days after conception, and you can see here’s a uh a mock up of it. Interestingly, the fetal brain begins to form around day 23, and we can get brain waves at six weeks. So we know that the heart is beating and the brain is functioning by six weeks. Now, let’s look at abortion statistics. If we look at this, 78% of abortions take place after six weeks. After the heart is beating and after the brain is functioning.

Here’s a quote from a physician in training when he was in training. He said, I opened up the sock and put it on the towel, and there were parts there of a person, a scapula, some ribs and a chest, a little tiny head, a piece of a lay, a tiny hand, two arms and a lay. It was like somebody put a hot poker into me, realizing that what he was seeing was human life. A fetal hand grasped 21 weeks in utero. Some of you may have seen this picture. This is little Sammy who had spinal bifida, and he was operated on at Vanderbilt University. And in the course of the operation, his little hand came out and grabbed the surgeon’s finger, and you tell me that that’s not a living human being.

Just a blob of tissue. I watched as the contents of the woman’s wound came through a suctioning device and into a stainless steel pail. I just saw someone murdered. And this is a nurse while she was in training. And here’s one. Seven-week abortion. Remember the heart’s beating, their brain waves. She took a drug to abort, and she said, when I looked in the commote, I saw lying in the center of the placenta my baby, perfectly formed hands, little fingers, a living child that has been murdered. Well, scientific conclusions. Human life begins at conception. Human development proceeds rapidly, and all organs and systems are in place by eight weeks. Abortion stops a beating heart. 78% of abortions occur after the fetus exhibits measurable brain waves. And what that means is pain is felt by that young child that’s being put to death.

5. Some of the Moral Arguments

Well, some of the moral arguments that people put, it’s just a benefit to women to be able to have abortions. It’s a benefit to the child because the child’s not wanted. Every child should be wanted. The right to control their own body. These are arguments that pro-life people make.

And after all, the fetus is not a person, and this is the personality argument, and we’ll get into that in a moment or two. But what about it’s a benefit to a woman? Prevention of death from coat hanger or back alley abortions, uh, cases of rape or incest, uh, fetal abnormalities or threats to the mother’s life or health. And abortion alleviates economic and social problems, particularly in developing and underdeveloped countries. Uh well, let’s think about that for a moment. Abortion must remain legal to prevent abortion deaths. In 1940, uh there were 1,400 recorded abortion-related deaths, and they continue to go down, and they have continued to go down even as abortion has become legalized in this country. So that’s not a very good argument. They went down before abortion was legalized in this country, and yes, they’ve gone down some, but not significantly since abortion has been legalized in this country.

The abortion rate must remain legal to prevent abortion deaths, and here’s just 1972 when abortion was legalized, and there were 24 deaths from legal, 41 uh from illegal, and if you look at the numbers uh in the case of illegal, they’ve gone down, in the case of legal, they’ve remained about uh the same. Well, the hard cases. Abortion must be available for cases of rape or incest, and these are tough ones to respond to. But this only about 1% of all cases, cases of fetal abnormalities that represent only about 1% of all cases, and we’re going to talk about that this evening. How do we handle those kinds of things? The mother’s health is at risk. It only represents about 3% of all cases. So these are small numbers that have been blown way out of proportion by pro-life people.

Abortion alleviates economic and social problems. Pregnancies subject women.

And to have the responsibility of the home and to care for and nourish the man and to bring up the children. And so from our standpoint, this is not an issue, but people of the world it is, because half of the working population now is female.

Except for that period after birth. And now we have laws in this country which require that employers uh take care of and respond to pregnant women and give them the time off that they need to do this. Laws prevent employees from firing and discriminate against pregnant women I just said that and women are not forced to keep their children adoption is always an option and the existence of social problems is really not a justification for another evil one evil does not make another evil right and we need to keep that in mind well every child should be wanted to me this is just an absolutely irrevolent argument but people use it being wanted is not a condition of the child but of the adult the child has no say so in this child doesn’t say that he’s not wanted it’s the mother andor the mother and the father that say that the child is not wanted is it fair to kill a child because the attitude of an adult wanted children are less likely to suffer abuse that’s the argument is made wanted children versus unwanted children are less likely to suffer abuse.

Well let’s look at the statistics wanted children are less likely to be abused reported abuse cases 1973 is after the legalized abortion 16700 reported cases of abuse in 2000 almost two million reported cases. So that argument just doesn’t hold water if you look at the the two extremes. Women have a right to control their own body well do they really have a right to control their own body but first of all is the fetus part of their body? It has a separate circulating system and it has its own unique DNA, its own unique genetic makeup, which is different from its mother, because half of the makeup of the fetus comes from the father. So it has a separate circulatory system and it has a unique DNA.

Do we have a right to do anything to our bodies, both males or females? Do we have a right to assault ourselves, to commit suicide, to use illegal drugs? Do women have the right to use drugs and alcohol during pregnancy? People need to think about these things. Population control. Those countries that outlaw abortion have an overgrown population, and they’re talking about India versus China. China has a very, very strict population control, whereas India does not have nearly as strict. This does not induce, or this does not indicate cause and effect. That is, because you have population control does not say your population is not going to grow. Chinese population is growing, it’s just not growing as fast as the Indian population. These countries also have little or no access to birth control, poor education, nutrition, and poor parental care.

6. The Fetus Is Not a Person

And there’s also another factor. They’re mostly farming communities, and families need and want as many children as they can have so that they can work the farm. Whereas when we become more urbanized, we don’t need those children to do the farm work, and they become much more expensive in an urban setting. War, disease, and famine also curb population growth, and the question would be: should we then condone war, disease, and famine as a way to control population, as some people would suggest that we ought to condone abortion? The fetus is not a person. And this is really getting into a philosophical argument. Susan Sherwin says that persons are members of a social community that shapes and values them. And as Christians, that’s exactly what we do.

We value our children, and we want to shape them to believe in the things that Scripture has to tell us, to believe that God is our creator and to believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior. And personhood must be defined in terms of interactions and relationship with others. Well, a fetus is not a person. Personality is really the definition, it’s a problem in definition. Does a human non-person exist? Think about that for a moment. Does a human non-person exist? The evolutionists might suggest to us that a chimpanzee falls into that category. What traits define personhood? Who makes the definition? Society is excluded, certain humans from personhood before. Certainly in this country, slaves were excluded from personhood. And in the West, in the early days in California, the Chinese were excluded as personhood.

They just didn’t have rights. And think about it for a minute. Half of the population in this country up until the time that they got the voting right was excluded as full personhood. And in many countries in the world, women are not considered much more than property. So it depends on how you define personhood. The lack of certain personality traits would remove from personhood. Those who are in a coma. So does this say that an elderly person, such as one who has Alzheimer’s disease is no longer a person? And please say that’s not true, so that when I get Alzheimer’s that Sandy will no longer consider me to be a person, that she’ll take care of me when I develop Alzheimer’s. Mentally deficient people, whether it’s genetic, neurological, or simple mental illness.

Is it okay to consider such human beings as non-persons? And I would argue, no, it is not.

Eliminates those who are in a coma. One who has a history of performing personal acts. Eliminates one who was in a coma from birth but who wakes up later. One with a future capacity of performing personal acts. And again, these are all just different definitions of personhood. And it would eliminate those who are dying as non-persons because they don’t have any longer the capacity to perform personal acts. Well, the implication of functionally defined personhood, newborns lack the ability to perform personal functions. In fact, newborn humans of all of the animals in God’s kingdom have the less capability physically and mentally than any of the other animals out there or any of the other creations of God’s community. Therefore, on the basis of functionally defined personhood, newborns fail the test and could be killed on the basis of non-personhood.

Well, when does a person become, or when does a human become a person? Is it at conception, as I’ve shown you from the textbooks, at 20 weeks, at 24, at birth, at the point the individual expresses self-conscience and interest in their continued existence. A dilemma that pro-life people get themselves into is when do they decide that this fetus becomes a person? And I’ve already argued that it’s at conception. Well, 24 weeks is generally what people say because that’s the viable, that’s when a fetus now is viable outside of the womb, and that we can carry them in our neonatal emergency areas to uh to the point that they can be taken home by their parents. At conception, it’s only a single cell. And the claim is the fertilized eggs are single cells, just like blood cells or other parts of the body, uh, and I would rebut that by saying that this single cell is unique.

It contains the hereditary material from mom and dad, and it’s the beginning of the new human life. And cloning, and we’ll talk about that this evening, falls into this category. Prior to 20 weeks, a person, a fetus is not a person. A person possesses an individual human personality, and prior to 20 weeks gastation, the cerebral cortex has not yet developed to the point that the fetus can possess an individual human personality. Therefore, the fetus, prior to 20 weeks gestation, is not a person. Well, what about that? Person equals personality problems. We were all at one time a fetus. When did you go from non-person to person status? Was it at conception? Or at 24 or 20 weeks. To say that personality defines personhood is to define the role of the body, and it’s this mind-body dualism.

The body is there, all the organs are in place, we have a heartbeat, we get brainwave function, but we don’t have some of these things that people define as personhood at this stage. Well, prior to 20 weeks, 20 weeks, a fetus is not a person, brain development problems. The development of the brain is programmed by the DNA. That very first cell, the zygote, has everything in it that it needs to be you or to be your children. It doesn’t need anything else except for the nutrition that it gets from, first of all, from the yolk sac which surrounds it, and then later on from its mother. It needs nothing else. It has all of the information that it needs to turn that fetus into a living, viable person at the point of conception.

It’s an inherent function of the fertilized ovum, which is the combination of the sperm and the egg and continues even after birth. Well, prior 24 weeks, a fetus is not viable. Depending upon current technology, the age of viability used to be 28 weeks. We’re down now to 24 weeks. A recent article came out in Nature, which says that we’ve developed an artificial womb for premature infants using an oxygenated chemical, and this might, if it works out, be able to cut the point of fetal viability in half. We can go and set it from 28 weeks where we were to 24 down to 12 weeks. And who knows what future science holds for us. It may be at six weeks or so that we’ll be able to actually put into an artificial womb and bring that young child to its full potential as a young baby.

So these arguments just really don’t hold water in light of what modern science is beginning to do for us. Parenthood starts at the point of self-consciousness. Well this is a uh philosopher Michael Thule who claims in his book uh that individuals have a right to life only at the point of self-consciousness and an interest in their own continuous existence. Does a three-year-old have a real interest in their own continuous existence? No more so than a younger one. Anyway he points out that emphasidal uh is morally acceptable based on this if the individual will excuse me will in the future develop such interests it’s then permissible to kill that individual before such interests develop and can a fetus be excluded from allowing such development to occur and as I pointed out what about babies and young children.

Conclusion

Well here’s some of the arguments that have been used uh they’re not persons it’s a personal choice it’s a religious thing. And if you think back to the times of slavery in 1850 uh Stephen Douglas used these same arguments they’re not persons but property uh it’s my personal choice with what I do with them and it’s a religious issue. And I think I’ll stop here and if there are any questions that anybody has I’d certainly be happy to try to answer them. I think we’ve got what, three or four minutes left