A Turning Point

There is one subject that I have yet to discuss in my 4 years of blogging. It is a subject that is THE political landmine topic….the one that is guaranteed to get people upset fastest…. And that subject is abortion.

Part of the reason why have I have not written on the subject is in large part because I was (until very recently) very torn on the subject. On one hand, the thought of killing an unborn child is absolutely abhorrent to me personally. On the other are the very realities of what happened when abortion was completely illegal. My mother, who is a registered nurse by training, did her Emergency Room residency at a southern Missouri Catholic Charity hospital that saw many a young life ended as the result of a botched illegal abortion. The stories that she told about what she experienced are enough to curl your hair. It made me very “libertarian” on the subject…a stand that was at odds, I knew in my heart, with my Christianity.

That changed a couple of weeks ago when our pastor gave a sermon on the subject. He laid out a lot of facts and figures that got me to thinking…and digging.

The first fact that he laid out was that Roe v. Wade allowed the states to regulate and restrict abortions in certain circumstances. Let me repeat that….the Roe decision gave the states the opportunity to restrict abortion as section 3 of the decision (below) states…

3. State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality only a life-saving procedure on the mother's behalf without regard to the stage of her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman's qualified right to terminate her pregnancy. Though the State cannot override that right, it has legitimate interests in protecting both the pregnant woman's health and the potentiality of human life, each of which interests grows and reaches a "compelling" point at various stages of the woman's approach to term. Pp. 147-164.

(c) For the stage subsequent to viability the State, in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life, may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother. Pp. 163-164; 164-165.

That is something that I never heard anyone talk about prior to that. That ability to restrict abortions was upheld by the Webster v. Reproductive Health Services Planned Parenthood v. Casey rulings and was restricted slightly by the Stenberg v. Carhardt decision.

Another stat that he brought out somewhat surprised me. According to Johnston’s Archives (which is apparently THE place to go for accurate abortion statistics), the number 1 reason forabortion is not health of the mother (3% of all abortions performed in the US), it is not rape or incest (1%) or even fetal health (another 3%) it is pure and simply convenience for the mother – or birth control - a reason that the pro-choice advocates ASSURED US was never, ever, EVER the case! Broken down into categories, the convenience/birth control abortions are done because the mother can’t afford it or is “unready” for the responsibility (21% each), the mother is concerned about how having a baby will change her life (16%), the mother wants to avoid single parenthood (12%) or too immature to have a child (11%). That means 81% of all abortions performed in the US are “convenience” abortions or birth control abortions!

Then we talked about the sheer number of abortions performed in the United States every year. Since Roe v. Wade was adjudicated in 1973 the United States averaged over 1 million abortions a year (until 2002 when the number dropped down to 839+thousand) and 81% of those abortions were abortions of “convenience”!

Those are the facts of abortion in the United States of America, but there is one more disturbing fact about abortion that I have not discussed and it is probably the most disturbing one. It is the fact that politicians who claim to be Christian support abortion. As a Christian, you can not support abortion in light of Biblical teaching – especially in the light of Psalms 139:13

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother's womb.

Christian theology, which all Christians profess to follow, says that God knew each human in the womb – long before “viability”…which is why pro-choice Christianity is an oxymoron. Because the belief that a fetus is “not human” goes against everything taught in the Bible and if you believe the Bible as quoted above, then aborting a fetus in the womb is indeed murder. There is no middle ground.

And therein came the turning point, the point where I knew that I could no longer stay "silent" on this subject - quietly laboring in the background to win hearts and minds and by electing the "right" people. I knew that it was time for me to use the platform that I have in order to proclaim the truths that are out there for those who seek to find. I expect that I will hear from those who disagree with me on this and so be it. However, I intend to show, in subsequent posts, why this is more truth than that which the "pro-choice" movement professes.