While my observations on the overturning of the Roe v Wade 1973 Supreme Court ruling generated many supportive comments, they also triggered some unpleasant and ill-tempered replies. I was blamed for what I said, what I didn’t say and, surprisingly, what people imagined I did (or didn’t) say.
Now I must admit that my attempt to comment on a big subject in a short blog was probably unwise and I plead guilty to the sin of omission. Nevertheless, I remain unrepentant over my horror of what we can call the normalisation of ‘industrial scale abortion’ and my joy in the overturning of the Supreme Court ruling that allowed it in the USA. (In 2020 there were 930,160 abortions in the USA and 290,917 abortions in England and Wales.)
What I was struck by in the hostile responses was the return of many old familiar arguments for a position of almost unregulated abortion. Let me briefly address some of these.
1) ‘A foetus is no more than a lump of cells.’
In fact much more is now known about the life of the unborn child and I urge you to find out more about the miniature being that already exists after two months of pregnancy. (This website explains human development in the womb.) In view of the fact that the ending of brainwaves is taken as an indicator of death, it is worth noting that increasingly complex brainwave activity occurs from the second month of pregnancy. Moreover, the heartbeat can be detected from just 3 weeks and 1 day! The baby in the womb truly is ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ (Psalm 139:14).
2) ‘Removal of a foetus is no different from the elimination of a gall stone or an appendix.’
I believe that the seriousness of abortion is more widely sensed in the general public than is commonly claimed. Few people take any pride or pleasure in abortion. I’ve seen photos and even test tubes of people’s removed gall stones. No one treats the ‘eliminated foetus’ that way.
3) ‘Because the foetus has no independent, autonomous existence it cannot be considered to be living or to have rights.’
Here I surely need only to mention the fact that no newborn infant has any independent autonomy for many months or even years. There’s not a lot of difference between being fed from the breast or through an umbilical cord.
4) ‘Abortion must be necessary to save the life of the mother.’
Medical friends tell me such occasions are almost unknown. Consider the Dublin Declaration, written and signed by a select panel of the Committee on Excellence in Maternal Healthcare. And in any event, such cases have little bearing on the vast majority of abortions (to the nearest whole number, 0% of UK abortions fall into this category according to the official statistics [see 4.7]).
5) ‘Abortion has to be allowable in the case of rape or incest.’
Of course these are appalling situations which raise challenging and very individual legal and pastoral concerns. However, we need to consider that abortion may in fact add to the trauma.
Read full article here
(c) The Christian Today, used with permission.
