Abortion: A Rational Look at An Emotional Issue

by R.C. Sproul

this leading light of the abortion industry may well be the largest and most profitable nonprofit organization in history."

Yet the great divide persists. Despite its obvious cultural clout, its cavernously deep corporate pockets, and its carefully crafted public-relations efforts, the abortion industry has yet to prevail in the battle for the hearts and minds of most Americans.

The poll found women are more strongly pro-life than men, with 64 percent of women asserting that most abortions are morally wrong, a view shared by 51 percent of men.

Once before in American history, a national pro-life consensus was forged, laws were changed, and life was protected. At the outset of the nineteenth century, abortion was actually legal-if only marginally-in every state in the Union. By the end of the century, the procedure had been universally criminalized. Most of the legal changes came during a relatively short twenty-year period, from 1860 to 1880.32In less than two decades, Christians were able to recruit hostile journalists, ambivalent physicians, reticent politicians, and even radical feminists to the cause of mothers with crisis pregnancies and their unborn children. They succeeded overwhelmingly despite the vast wealth, power, and political clout of the burgeoning abortion industry. At a time when the nation was riven with strife over the recalcitrance of chattel slavery, the proliferation of abortion, and the challenging of the most basic principles of American liberty, they demonstrated in word and deed that every human being is made in the image of God and is thus sacred.

It is probably not surprising that pro-life stalwarts of nineteenth-century America did not simply say "no" to abortion; they said "yes" to women in crisis. They said "yes" to the poor and desperate. They said "yes" to the confused and afflicted. In short, they fulfilled their servanthood mandate simultaneously with their prophetic mandate.

Abortion is an ethical issue, perhaps the central ethical issue of the twentieth and now the twenty-first centuries. As a question of ethics, abortion is not morally neutral; it does not fall within the gray zone of things that are indifferent.

The addition of one anti-abortion justice to the nation's highest court could precipitate a reversal of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, the 1973 case that made abortion on demand a reality in the United States.

A further issue complicates the matter-the right to freedom of choice, which many Americans consider the most fundamental democratic right of all. Perhaps the most frequently stated sentiment of those caught in the middle of the abortion debate is this: "I would not choose to have an abortion myself, but I would not force my view on someone else." The right to one's opinion is a sacred belief in United States tradition.

At the heart of the abortion issue rests one overarching question: Is abortion a form of murder? In other words, does abortion involve the willful destruction of a living human person?

I am convinced that if somehow it could be proven conclusively that the destruction of unborn babies is in fact the willful destruction of living human beings, the debate on abortion would be all but over, and the law of the land would as clearly prohibit abortion as it does all forms of homicide. The abortion debate is not over whether or not murder should be legalized; it is a debate over whether or not abortion is a kind of murder.

They are not endorsing the premeditated, willful destruction of human beings with malice aforethought. Almost universally, the proponents of abortion act on the conviction that what is being aborted is less than a human being.

What is a fetus? The question is objective, not subjective. To determine the status of a fetus is not a matter of personal, arbitrary caprice. The fetus is either alive or not alive. The fetus is either human or not human. The fetus is either a person or not a person.

The answer a person chooses to this question often determines his or her position on the abortion issue.

One of the chief functions of law is to protect the rights of individuals. To be sure, every law restricts someone's freedom in order to protect someone else's rights. Laws against theft restrict the freedom of thieves while protecting the private-property rights of their intended victims. Laws against murder restrict the liberty of murderers to do their own thing.

In a pure democracy, the majority rules with complete authority. In a republic, the power and the freedom of the majority are restricted by law. The edicts of the Constitution are designed to protect the rights of every person from the power of the majority.

The religious person assumed that what God revealed in nature was compatible with and consistent with what He revealed in the Bible. The nonreligious person was content to live by natural law as long as the canon law of the church was not made binding by the state.

Now, not only is biblical law under attack, but natural law has all but been eliminated as a foundation for societal law.

Although the perception of reality may change from generation to generation, that does not change reality itself.

This is the core question of the abortion issue: Is abortion a form of murder?

Is a fetus a living person? When does life begin? These questions are foundational to any opinion about abortion.

Once a man ceases to recognize the infinite value ofthe human soul... then all he can recognize is that man is something to be used. But then he will also have to go further and recognize that some men can no longer be utilized and he arrives at the concept that there are some lives that have no value at all.

For the most part, the pro-abortion and pro-choice activists are not denying that life is sacred; they are only saying that a developing fetus is not a human life.

"A philosophy of reason will define a human being as life which demonstrates self-awareness, volition and rationality. Thus it should be recognized that not all men are human.... It would seem ... to be more inhumane to kill an adult chimpanzee than a newborn baby, since the chimpanzee has greater mental awareness."34

Creation in the image of God is what sets humans apart from all other creatures. The stamp of the image and likeness of God connects God and mankind uniquely. Though there is no biblical warrant for seeing man as godlike, there is a high dignity associated with this unique relationship to the Creator.

The biblical ethic is that because man is endowed with the image of God, his life is so sacred that any malicious destruction of it must be punished by execution.