The Right to Life

Abortion has the support of a couple of the catchiest euphemisms I know. "A woman has the right to do as she pleases with here own body." That's one. The other – "A woman's right to choose."

Choose what?

All of us have some opportunities to choose, I suppose. But we're not talking chocolate or vanilla, here. We're talking about the life of a human being. There may be some question when life begins, but it's certainly before abortion.

Where else is there even the suggestion that a person has the right to kill another person for the sake of convenience? We have laws, and civic groups, to protect animals from that kind of behavior. But that's what the "right to choose" is.

Don't want to take the responsibility for not having illicit sex? Don't want to take even the responsibility of protecting yourself from getting pregnant when you have illicit sex? Don't want to take the responsibility of raising the child your irresponsibility created? Just kill it. After all, if you've never seen it, how can it possibly be wrong? And it's not convenient for your lifestyle.

Such reasoning would be bizarre in any other setting, and it's just as bizarre regarding abortion.

As for the right of a person, woman or not, to do as they please with their own body, also not true. That right is limited by political law (every state has laws against suicide, for instance). It's absolutely ridiculous to suggest such a thing might be within God's law.

But that assumes someone is actually meaning to do something to their own body. The fact is, any damage to their own body is incidental in abortion. What they want is to kill another body. That other body does not belong to them, it only rests within them temporarily.

The whole idea is the moral equivalent of singeing your hands while you burn someone at the stake. The fact that you are slightly injured does not absolve you of the murder of that other person.

The undeniable fact is that abortion is the killing of a person. Another fact, whose only deniability is a bunch of irresponsible people claiming it so, is that such killing is murder, at least morally. The Bible makes itself clear on both issues.

If you don't want children, the responsible thing to do is to avoid having sexual intercourse, not to kill the product of said intercourse.

Some would try to claim an exemption for incest or rape. Sorry, while such a situation elicits sympathy in any reasonable person, that's a no go, too. Even if there were no alternatives but abortion or raising the child, the Bible remains clear. You don't harm an innocent person because of your misfortune. But there are other alternatives, specifically adoption, which can give the child a loving home without making you a criminal as well as a victim.

The only exception – and it's a tenuous one – is when there is a clear choice between losing the child and losing the mother. Such a case is too horrible to contemplate, but occasionally must be contemplated anyway. This, however, is a choice of which life to save, not the irresponsible choice to kill a child for sexual pleasure. Further, it's a choice, which must be made. In that case only, each person must make their choice in accordance with their best understanding of God's will.

Exodus 20:13, 21:22-25, Mark 12:28-31, Luke 10:30-37, John 9:41, Romans 13:13, 15:1, I Corinthians 3:16-17, II Corinthians 5:15, Ephesians 2:3, I Thessalonians 4:3