“ …Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter.
Psalm 139:13 “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”
News headlines this morning highlight the celebration of voters who approved abortions in several states in our land. Restrictions will lessen. Demand will increase. Women have a right to kill their unborn babies. But God has the final word and His truth is replaced by public opinion. But that doesn’t change His ultimate authority.
Perhaps there is no greater controversy in our country at this time than the debate over the mother’s right to her body, in the privacy of her family to decide with her physician to give birth to her baby or not. Mother’s rights are contrasted to baby’s rights and the moral question is how far does individual freedom go when it means taking of a life to be born?
Volumes have been written on this topic with its popularity overtaking the world. Our church believes all life is from God and terminating a pregnancy is not ours to make.
The moral matters of abortion arise from the question as to when life begins. Some will feel the choice of someone who is alive, the mother, supersedes the life of a unborn child, so if there are matters that may endanger her life one can proceed to abort a baby.
Abortion is also debated with unwanted pregnancies. Perhaps the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest, or the woman is mentally handicapped or impaired. One judge determined recently one woman was unfit to be a mother and court ordered her not to have any more babies because of the death by neglect of her baby. Is abortion an option there?
The Bible teaches us God is not surprised by any pregnancy, whatever the circumstances. Psalm 139 has always made things so clear from a Christian’s point of view that it is a wonder the debate continues among Christians. Certainly, before birth God knew us, planned us, conceived us, and prepared us.
What makes human life so special is that we are created in the image of God – body, soul, and spirit, as we have defined life and death from the very first sermon in this series.
In the Bible the unborn are referred to in personal terms, Describing Rebekah’s twins “The children struggled together within her and of John the Baptist and Jesus greeting one another even at conception as babes in the wombs of their mothers shows the biblical view that life is sacred and even before birth.
Some argue foolishly that babies cannot live independently from the mother. Does that make them subhuman? We don’t call someone less human if they have to be sustained on a respirator for a few months, nor does the lack of rational abilities, or language make the unborn less human. We don’t use that argument once an infant is born into the world.
In our scientific world we have people dependent upon machines for breathing, for blood, for urination, for digestion, just like an unborn child would be on his mother. There is no difference.
Proverbs 24:11 says, “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.” We are supports of alternative options for the unwed mothers or the burdened mothers through Crises Pregnancy Centers. As long as we have voice and vote we must stand up for the unborn and demonstrate loving grace to the women who in troubled time could not see the alternatives in their crises.
Prayer: Lord, have mercy on us and change the hear of people who are being deceived.
