Abortion is a form of necessary violence. We need to move away from arguments designed to placate our enemies, and defend abortion as a right to stop doing gestational work.
Sophie Lewis, Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family Verso, 2019.
R. Scott Clark
R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
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As militant women see it, the womb is their “MySpace”. In their relativistic, oft God-less world, it’s their personal right to engage in sex whenever and with whomever. So by extension, should pregnancy result, it’s ALSO their right to commit infanticide…lest they become slaves to the socio-biological reality of “gestational work.”
It’s a pain to abstain, so they cavort then abort. Thus our latter-day Molech mills around the world never stop…
https://swbts.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/images/main/news-molech.jpg?itok=HLLFr-mU
Divine retribution, heaped, up, pressed down, and running over.
As disgusting as this “post-modern” worldview is, there is and always has been another dimension to abortion in the U.S. I have a sister who worked as an ER nurse back in the 60’s at a well known hospital of a very large Midwestern city. She got to talk to many women who belonged to a certain ethnic group who wound up hospitalized due to complications from botched abortions and other related issues. They pretty much all told her the same sad story, that they were not against birth control, but they could not because if their men (husbands or otherwise) discovered that they were using any kind of contraceptive they would refuse to have relations with them. Statistics collected since Roe v. Wade seem to support something like this because the abortion rate for that group has consistently been three times the number for any other demographic.
And so the baby dies.
George, there is never another dimension to abortion, since before God formed Israel at Mt. Sinai. Unwanted children have been discarded, abandoned to death, and murdered, by primitive cultures since pretty close to The Fall, I’m guessing. The only biblical dimension to abortion is, in my view with appeal to Old Testament and New Testament Scripture, that abortion ends the life of an image-bearer of God, formed in the mother’s womb by God (Psalm 139). Ad hominem arguments for ending the child in the “gestational process” always plead hard cases. At least one child dies, almost without fail, sometimes more, and often the mother is egregiously harmed physically. If the wages of sin is death, those who seek and those who perform abortions are always harmed spiritually.
Amen, Lola.
Lola – perhaps my comment was poorly worded. I did not intend to put a positive spin on abortions of any type. What I was trying to point out was the fact that a particular ethnic group in this country found abortions an “easy way out” of the dilemma in which they saw themselves trapped or else become ignored or abandoned by their men. Which is why the abortion rate for that demographic has been and continues to be higher than any other group in the country. So it’s a double or even triple whammy – can’t/won’t give up sexual relations across the board (immoral relations in some cases), can’t use any kind of birth control so take the abortion route, and misguided and/or culturally inappropriate expectations on the part of the men (most certainly an immoral and unscriptural view).
This was one of the main pressure points that led SCOTUS to rule as it did on Roe v. Wade.
But you never hear that side of it. The story is always that poor women in impoverished areas choose abortions because they can’t afford (additional) children. That’s not the whole truth. What the statistics and demographics have done since then is support the explanation I offered above.
What’s different about what the nut case who made that statement Scott quoted in this post is that she’s declaring militant women’s rights to the use of the womb as she sees fit, just as Laura stated in her comment. That’s a relatively new post-modern spin on the entirety of sexuality that sends the whole issue in yet a different direction (with the same end results).
That last paragraph nails it, George! Social justice for women oppressed by being pregnant is the direction this issue is going! Hitler, Stalin, and many others have justified the murder of innocents to promote their version of promoting the greater good through eliminating those who get in their way. Chilling!
Hi. If abortion is deliberate murder, which it is, should the death penalty be applied to the woman and man that decide to have one?
I comes down to the laws of the land. If those laws determine that as long as a child is not born and fully functioning on their own, it is not a person who has the protection of law, and may be killed with impunity, even if it means shoving surgical scissors into its skull while it is in the birth chamber, to make sure that it cannot function on its own.
I was recently horrified by our Canadian prime minister who complained, during trade talks, about changes to the laws to limit abortion to early pregnancy in some American states, on the grounds that it denied women freedom to choice. Such is the depravity of mankind, sold under sin, that does not even recognize that human beings have God given rights since they are made in the image of God.
Thanks Angela but I was asking what the Bible teaches about the death penalty applied to abortion
Marc,
It’s a difficult question. Everyone knows that a person post-partum is a human being. When someone takes a human life post-partum unjustly that’s murder, capital crime and deserves a commensurate punishment.
Because of ignorance and propaganda, one suspects that at least some women who have abortions are ignorant or don’t believe that they are killing a human being. Obviously, a vocal and apparently growing number of women are openly advocating the murder of unborn children.
The other case that give me hesitation to reach your conclusion, at least in every case, is that case when females are pressured into abortions by their husbands/boyfriends, or the abortion provider (or someone else).
Finally, there are cases where the husbands or boyfriends are completely helpless to stop an abortion. They cannot be held liable.
In a case, however, where a woman knowingly takes the life of an innocent infant in utero, in the case that her life is not jeopardy, I can see a case for legal consequences.
There are three questions here: logical, legal, and political. As a political-cultural matter, the task before us is to persuade fellow citizens that humans conceive and give birth to humans and that all humans are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. To begin to demand capital punishment for the hundreds of thousands of women seems like a non starter. In 2015 there were 638,169 abortions in the USA. The CDC says the abortion rate 12 abortions per 1,000 live births (age 15-44) and the ratio is 188 per 1,000 live births.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/ss/ss6713a1.htm
I cannot fathom anyone campaigning to put to death hundreds of thousands of (mainly) women in their 20s.
As a matter of rhetoric, to campaign for such a thing is likely to provoke a massive backlash and possibly more abortions.
As a matter of law, it seems possible that one day the SCOTUS will admit that Roe & Doe were badly decided and and will overturn them. I can’t imagine any legislative body deciding to make it a capital crime. Even pre-Roe/Doe it was not a capital crime to have an abortion.
As a matter of logic and justice, there might be a case but we live in a fallen world about which we should be realistic.
Thank you Dr Clark for your comprehensive response. It has given me a lot to consider. I think you are correct in your practical approach in 2019. Stopping the abortions themselves should top priority. We will continue to pray for this.
Mark, in this world we must abide by the laws of society. In the eyes of God abortion is an unspeakable crime, but we do not have a mandate to exact God’s punishment individually or as the church. There is a judgment coming where God will exercise His judgment, unless the perpetrators of this crime repent. We do have a mandate to warn people that this is a crime against humanity and that it is God who will judge them for it. Rom. 12:19.
Anthony, the way I read both of those passages is that Job and Jeremiah were stricken with the horror of their circumstances and their calling. In the context, Job is beginning to realize that the LORD has removed all but the ultimate shield against the Adversary from Job, and the cost and suffering will be beyond human endurance. Jeremiah is commissioned by God to speak the terrible truth to his people, and he is lamenting their certain doom because of their hard, rebellious hearts. Neither man is speaking to the issue of abortion, as we know it. Both men are bowed down by what seems an insuperable burden of living. In the context, they are both saying, as I read their laments, that they perceive it would have been better not to be born. I can’t see how that justifies the decision of mothers, or fathers as the case may be, and medical personnel to end the life of a child in utero. They certainly cannot know God’s purpose for that child’s life.
On the other hand, you might look to the passages in the OT, especially Psalm 139, and in the NT that speak of God forming the speaker in his mother’s womb for God’s purpose. That is to say, the passages acknowledge that they were called, while still in the womb, to witness to the glory of God. Ultimately, I think the governing verse is Deuteronomy 30:19: “Choose life.”
Thanks, Lola. I think that is exactly right. To say it would be better to never have been born seems to me to be the ultimate hyperbolic statement to illustrate the severity of God’s anger and wrath against His people for their disobedience and idolatry.
It is a sad time in this glorious world created by God. The women quoted believes that society needs full and free surrogates to carry children for the people who don’t want to, and it should be a means of support for them – and that after the birth that surrogate should be part of the child’s life. That way a woman doesn’t have to through the violence that they are mete with in giving birth; and yes that is how she sees it – birth is the baby doing violence to the gestator. When you think about it, what it amounts to is thumbing her nose at God, and the curse of the fall. “I will have a child, and someone else can suffer the curse.” The woman is doing the work of Satan.
Unfortunately, the so-called post-modern philosophy amounts to more than just “thumbing one’s nose at God.” It espouses the view that “I am (my own) God,” therefore I have control over what I will and will not do. Although I’m sure we won’t get to see the end results at the parousia, it would be interesting to see what these people have to say when confronted by the true God.