Calling Abortion “Good”—Really?
| by | Eric Lyons, M.Min. |
What
do Americans call it when a doctor uses a knife-like device and suction
from a powerful hose and pump (“29 times more powerful than a household
vacuum cleaner”) to chop and suck a human being out of the mother’s
womb (“Abortion Methods,” 2010)? What is it called when a doctor uses
plier-like devices to twist and tear a four-month-old unborn baby into
pieces? (Usually this procedure requires crushing the baby’s skull and
snapping the child’s spine in order to extract him/her.) How do
Americans feel about a procedure where a doctor injects a strong salt
solution through a mother’s abdomen, which acts as a corrosive and burns
an unborn child inside and out, normally causing the child to suffer
for an hour or more before dying (“Abortion Methods”)? What do Americans
think about such actions?Just a few miles from our offices at Apologetics Press, doctors perform such appalling procedures on living, unborn human beings on a weekly basis. According to the Guttmacher Institute, nearly 10,000 innocent unborn children were slaughtered in Alabama in 2011 (“State Facts About Abortion: Alabama,” 2015). Many of these abortions were performed at the Reproductive Health Services of Montgomery, which “has provided abortion services and other health care for women for more than 30 years” (2015). Consider some of the feedback from various patients that this abortion clinic highlights on its Web site:
- “Thank you for your hard work and for changing people’s lives with your compassion and dignity.”
- “Keep up the good work. As my very religious friend told me, I was against abortion until my own fifteen year old daughter became pregnant.”
- “To all who work to allow me to keep that right to choose: What you do is important, empowering and fine. I chose to have an abortion because it was theright decision for me at the time….”
- “I am saying prayers for your safety and success.”
- “Keep up the good work….”
- “Thank you for your brave work for justice and freedom for women.”
- “Every woman I know who has exercised her right to abortion made that decision with thoughtfulness, tortured consideration and integrity. All the recent talk of heroes comes into focus for me when I think of people like you who’ve been on the front line for so long. Please know you are supported not only with good thoughts and thanks but with resources, will and active determination.”
- “I thank God I was given a choice in September 1973. Abortion was just legalized a few weeks earlier” (emp. added).
No matter how great the challenge, no matter how fierce the opposition, there’s one thing the past few years have shown—it’s that Planned Parenthood is not going anywhere. It’s not going anywhere today. It’s not going anywhere tomorrow. As long as we’ve got a fight to make sure women have access to quality, affordable health care, and as long as we’ve got to fight to protect a woman’s right to make her own choices about her own health, I want you to know that you’ve also got a president who’s going to be right there with you, fighting every step of the way. Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you. (“President Obama...,” 2013).God bless you?! The Obama administration has proudly published the video from which these comments were made on the White House YouTube Channel.
What’s more, so committed are some elected officials to the murderous cause of Planned Parenthood that when evidence recently surfaced that the organization was not only killing hundreds of thousands of unborn children every year, but also attempting to sell their body parts, some Democrats in Congress petitioned the Department of Justice to investigate, not Planned Parenthood, but the whistleblowers (Ludden, 2015). And, apparently, the DOJ “agreed to look into…the group” (Mershon and Ehley, 2015). Did you catch that? There are some who are more up in arms about exactly how an undercover video was procured, rather than “whether Planned Parenthood illegally trafficked baby body parts” (“Obama DOJ…”). Why? It seems, at least in part, because some have vowed to fight to ensure that Planned Parenthood is not going anywhere today…or tomorrow.
These are sad and absurd times in which we live. Rather than “abhor what is evil” and “cling to what is good” (Romans 12:9), millions in the U.S. (including many so-called Christians) reject the Creator’s standard of right and wrong, choosing rather to do what is right in their own eyes (cf. Judges 21:25). As in Isaiah’s day, they “call evil good, and good evil” and put “darkness for light, and light for darkness” (5:20). Though God is the giver of life (Acts 17:25) and “hates…hands that shed innocent blood” (Proverbs 6:16-17), many actually proceed as if they can pray to Him for the “success” of abominable abortion clinics and thank Him for the legality of willfully destroying innocent human life. God said to the degenerate city of Jerusalem in Isaiah’s day, “When you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood” (Isaiah 1:15, emp. added). The once-“faithful city…full of justice” and “righteousness,” had become a city “full of…murderers” (1:21).
What is the message to America, to the world, to those who are wandering in darkness, and to those hypocrites who claim to be Christians, yet act nothing like the Christ? Repent (Luke 13:3,5; Acts 2:38). Stop calling evil good and good evil. Stop glorying in sin and shame—such “are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction” (Philippians 3:18-19). “Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rebuke the oppressor; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:16-17). Stop provoking Almighty God to anger and submit to His Son and His Will. He can (and will!) save a sinner—but not before the sinner comes to grips with the reality that God hates sin and can have no fellowship with it (Isaiah 59:1-2; 1 John 1:5-6).
“Come now, and let us reason together,” says the Lord, “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword;” for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
REFERENCES
“Abortion Methods” (2010), http://www.lifesitenews.com/abortiontypes/.Ludden, Jennifer (2015), “Sting Videos Part of Longtime Campaign Against Planned Parenthood,” NPR, July 22, http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/22/425314909/sting-videos-part-of-longtime-campaign-against-planned-parenthood.
Mershon, Erin and Brianna Ehley (2015), “IPAB’s on the Horizon—House Republicans Vow to Subpoena Planned Parenthood Official—Casey Takes on Foster Children’s Health Insurance,” Politico, July 23, http://www.politico.com/politicopulse/0715/politicopulse19266.html.
“Obama DOJ Plans to Investigate…The Group That Busted Planned Parenthood” (2015), The Federalist, July 23, http://thefederalist.com/2015/07/23/doj-investigate-planned-parenthood-video/.
“President Obama Speaks at the Planned Parenthood Gala” (2013), The White House YouTube Channel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laYQ2DDFmCg, April 26.
Reproductive Health Services (2015), http://www.rhs4choice.com/index.html.
“State Facts About Abortion: Alabama” (2015), Guttmacher Institute, https://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/sfaa/alabama.html.