After-Birth Abortions

I recently read a disturbing article in the UK Telegraph. You can find the link below.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9113394/Killing-babies-no-different-from-abortion-experts-say.html

This article is from a couple of medical ethicists associated with Oxford University. Their premise is that since newborn babies are “morally irrelevant” that ending their lives is no different than aborting these babies while they are in utero. 

They argued: “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.” Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’.”

 “We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.”

Now I understand the need to debate beliefs to determine what society believes but this seems to be seems to be similar to arguments used by the discredited German ethicists during the 1930s and 40s. Revisiting flawed and failed policies of the past seems to be a recipe for repeated failure in the present or the future.

Unfortunately, some well meaning people have threatened to kill the authors of the article. While this might sound ironically appealing to some, it lowers our moral position down to a similar level that they are on. We who claim to love life are willing to take a life because someone disagrees with our belief system. People who are only discussing an opinion, people who have not acted out their suggestion are threatened with death. Hummm sound suspiciously like conquerors who demand of the defeated “convert or die.” Very high moral ground to stand on, isn’t it?

So as a follower of Jesus what should our reaction to this discussion be?

First, Jesus is interested in children as seen in Matthew 19:14 where He says “Let the little children come to me.” The fact that he encourages the littlest ones to join him says that they matter to Him and to God the Father.

Second, God through the Psalmist tells us that God is intimately involved in the creation of a person while in the womb.

¹³ For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
¹⁶ your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
Psalm 139:13-16 (NIV)

When one looks at a DNA helix one can see how the writer with poetic license could say that we are knit together. And remember this was written 1000s of years prior to mankind discovering DNA!

God knows all and has recorded not only our past but also our present and future in His book. Prewritten prior to our creation. This would indicate that not only does God care about people who are persons (according the journal article) but that he cares about us and knows our potential long before we are “viable humans!”

So glad I was not only fearfully but also wonderfully made…exactly the way God intended!

Pastor Val

Partial Birth Abortion of a Vision

Recently I was taking my elders through a leadership program that John Maxwell’s group Equip has produced for churches. We came to a point where we were discussing how vision is birthed in the church.

Maxwell likens casting vision like giving birth. When a married couple decides it time to start a family they try to get pregnant (well actually the wife). Sometimes all it takes is one “try” and the pregnancy happens. Other times it takes multiple tries. Vision is like that. Sometimes it comes with little or no effort other times it is very hard work.

Staying with this analogy, each pregnancy is different. My wife and I had two daughters. When she was pregnant with our first daughter she had a very smooth pregnancy. But with our second daughter my wife was sick all nine months. The gestation period for birthing a vision can also vary from vision to vision. Sometimes things go so smooth with the launching of a vision that one wonders why they don’t do it every day. Other times the vision seems to cause great distress in the body that is trying to bring it to term.

Perhaps the darkest time for a vision is again similar to the actual birth process. Sometimes it is smooth and there is little pain. Other times labor is intense and the pain is unimaginable. But after the birth, the mother might not forget the pain of the birth process but the outcome is worth pain. It’s the same with visions. After the birth pangs the results are so much more important than the spasms that it caused.

The other interesting thing about visions after they have come to fruition is that once the pain has ended all sorts of people want to enjoy the results after the hard work is done.

I guess this reaction is normal. It seems that very few are involved in the normal birth process but the grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends all come pouring out of the woodwork after wanting to enjoy the results. It seems that the best thing to do in these instances is to welcome them to the vision and put them to work.

But what happens when we abort the process? What happens when we decide to quit before the vision is fully birthed? We experience a partial birth abortion. During my twenty-plus years of ministry, I’ve witnessed those seminal moments where the birth of the vision is either achieved or aborted in mid-birth. I remember some ministries where the vision was birthed and all of the struggles to bring the vision to fruition were forgotten for the joy of the vision being fulfilled. In other ministries the vision was aborted after going through almost the entire gestation process only to be aborted during the determining moment when everything is balanced on a razor’s edge. Defeat snatched from the jaws of success because we were unwilling to stay the course.

When we have sought God and his plan for us we decide it’s just too hard to trust the Lord and we decide we will rely on the failed ways of the past.

⁷ Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
Psalm 20:7 (NIV)

¹ Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the Lord.
Isaiah 31:1 (NIV)

Trusting in the name of the Lord our God

Pastor Val