PREGNANT! NEED HELP?

For assistance in obtaining a legal abortion immediately in New York City as minimal cost.

8 A. M.-10 P. M. – 7 days a week

ABORTION REFERRAL SERVICES (ARS), INC.

This ad was found recently in one of our local college newspapers. It is a good example of the increasing acceptance and popularity of a world action – abortion.

Professor H. Hanko has written a series of articles in The Standard Bearer concerning the questions facing us on the abortion issue (August, September 1, September 15, and October 15, 1971 issues). It will help to read his and other churches’ opinions on the major questions “What is life? When is the fetus said to be alive and become a person instead of a mass of tissue?”

I agree with Professor Hanko that an unborn child becomes a living person right at the moment of conception. This can be shown from several passages in Scripture, a good example being Psalm 139:13-18: “For thou has possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.” David, in this Psalm, speaks of himself as a person who was formed and shaped in his mother’s womb by the mighty hand of God. Abortion, then, becomes a violation of the sixth commandment in that it is the killing of a live child.

An important question which arises from this is, should an abortion be allowed if the baby is likely to be born deformed or mentally retarded? I believe that we still have no right in killing the fetus. God, in a sense, has His own abortion – a miscarriage. It is a “safety measure” used by God in taking care of a baby that would otherwise be born abnormal. When a retarded or misformed baby is born, it is because God wanted it this way, for reasons sometimes beyond our knowledge or understanding. We have no right to take things into our own hands and have an abortion. If God had wanted that baby not to be born, He would have used a miscarriage or some other means to prevent its birth. Abortionists, in promoting and encouraging the killing of a misformed fetus are, in a sense, trying to make a perfect race. The root of this idea is, of course sin.

Another situation may arise when a girl becomes pregnant after being raped. Again, I feel that an abortion should not be allowed. No matter how much the girl may hate the baby and what it stands for, she may not kill it. She may, as an alternative, put the child up for adoption after it is born if she cannot give it a mother’s love. My view is not the view held by many other people, one of them being German Protestant Theologian Joachim Beckmann. He is quoted in the Time magazine as having said that he believes the embryo is alive from conception, but firmly insists that certain circumstances – such as pregnancy through rape – allow for abortion just as killing is permissible in war.

The only circumstance I feel that would justify abortion is if the life of the mother is endangered. The choosing here is between the life of the child and the life of the mother. I believe the life of the mother should be saved over against the life of the child.

I do not have all the answers to the questions about abortion. Scripture does not give any clean-cut answers, either, to guide us. But if killing an unborn child is legalized, what is to stop the world from killing all old people or criminals or even every second person in the world? The abortion issue is another sign God has given to tell us that the end of the world is quickly approaching. Let us look at the abortion controversy for what it is, and continue to watch and prepare ourselves, for we know “neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man Cometh.”

Originally Published in:

Vol. 31 No. 8 December 1971