Thinking to Believe

You may have heard that Oklahoma recently banned sex-selection abortions.  Interestingly, they are only the third state to do so (Illinois and Pennsylvania are the other two).  Considering the fact that the only major news source to pick up the story was the Washington Times, however, you probably have not heard that The National Board of Health and Welfare of Sweden has ruled that sex-selection abortions are legal in that country (since there is no law forbidding them).  Apparently, quite a few “tourists” come to Sweden to abort their children because they do not like their gender.

The vast majority of Americans – even pro-choice Americans – disapprove of sex-selection abortions.  Polls show that about 85% of Americans believe aborting a child because of its gender is a morally insufficient reason (and many countries ban the practice).  But why?  After all, if abortion is not a moral evil, what does it matter why a woman chooses to abort her baby?

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Dr. Russell Moore of Southern Baptist Seminary posed the following ethical question to his students for their final exam, and then asked them how they would respond as a pastor:

Joan is a fifty year-old woman who has been visiting your church for a little over a year. She sits on the third row from the back, and usually exits during the closing hymn, often with tears in her eyes. Joan approaches you after the service on Sunday to tell you that she wants to follow Jesus as her Lord.

You ask Joan a series of diagnostic questions about her faith, and it is clear she understands the gospel. She still seems distressed though. When you ask if she’s repented of her sin, she starts to cry and grit her teeth.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know how…I don’t know where to start…Can I meet with you privately?”

You, Joan, and a godly Titus 2-type women’s ministry leader in your church meet in your office right away, and Joan tells you her story.

She wasn’t born Joan. She was born John. From early on in John’s life, though, he felt as though he was “a woman trapped in a man’s body.” Joan says, “I don’t mean to repeat that old shopworn cliché, but it really is what I felt like.”

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Abortion-choice advocates often argue that they have a right to an abortion because it is their body, and thus their choice.  Their mantra is “I can do what I want with my own body.”  This is what is properly called the bodily-autonomy argument.  The argument is flawed because it rests on the faulty assumption that the unborn “thing” in the womb is the woman’s body.  It is not.  It is separate living being, and we know so because it has its own unique genetic fingerprint.

While that fact alone should put all debate to rest, some may persist in their claim.  A good way to help them see that the thing growing in them is not their body is by asking them: “If I can show you that the unborn is not your body it would undermine your argument, right?” [Yes] Then ask, “Do you have a penis?” [No] “Could your unborn fetus have a penis?” [Yes] “Then the unborn is not your body, is it?” [Uh…no]

If you encounter someone with a very strong will, they might counter that the unborn “thing” is living inside the mother’s body against her will, and since she has control over her own body she gets to decide if she will share it with this “foreign invader.”  But the fact that it is living inside the woman’s body is irrelevant.  As D. Rutherford remarked, it no more gives her the right to kill the unborn than my owning a house gives me the right to kill the tenants!  The bodily-autonomy argument won’t work as a justification for abortion, so long as the unborn are full members of the human species.

If you haven’t heard by now, the famous late-term abortionist from Wichita, Kansas, George Tiller, was murdered on Sunday while attending a religious service at his local Lutheran church.  It is very likely that he was murdered because of his profession.  Indeed, this was no accidental murder.  He was sought out specifically.  Given how infamous he is for killing late-term babies, it is almost certain that his killer was motivated by his own pro-life ideology.  Given the fact that I am pro-life, and regularly discuss abortion on this blog, I feel it necessary to weigh in on this issue.

First, let me say that I condemn the murder of Mr. Tiller by his assailant.  While I think Mr. Tiller was deserving of death for the thousands upon thousands of babies he murdered over the years, his death should have been administered at the hands of the proper, governing authorities—not a citizen vigilante.  Of course, at this time in our history, what Mr. Tiller did is considered legal, and thus the governing authorities do not consider what he did to be murder, and thus would not execute him for any crime.  While this is a travesty of justice, it is no justification for citizens to take the law into their own hands, setting themselves up as judge and executioner.  We need to work within our unjust legal system to outlaw abortion just as the abolitionists worked within an unjust legal system to ultimately outlaw slavery.  We are not to take the law—or the lack thereof—into our own hands.

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