The Heartbeat of why Christians Stand against Aborting Heartbeats
Born again Christians care about the sanctity of human life (i.e. the sacredness of human life and the subsequent duty to treat life as precious). More importantly Christians care about why human life is sacred because the why of it determines the how of it. In other words, the reasons for why Christians believe life is sacred shapes how they think about life and death. In this case, we are talking about how believer’s convictions are shaped regarding the highly controversial and highly political debate on abortion.
This past Tuesday the House of Representatives voted in favor of adopting a law that would criminalize abortion/termination of pregnancy beyond what is determined the “point of viability.” Going back to 1973 we have to consider that the Roe v. Wade decision included, based on medical capabilities, a determined point at which a fetus was able to survive outside of the womb. At the time this point was at 35 weeks. We can celebrate the fact that medical advancements have moved that point to as early as 24 weeks in that span of time, as it sits today. This means that there is a differing point at which it is deemed possible for a baby to survive outside of his or her mother’s womb which, in effect, has impacted the window of abortions. The technical euphemisms suggest that an abortion is the procedure that occurs prior to the point of viability while a “termination of pregnancy” occurs after this point. While most states don’t practice abortions beyond 24-26 weeks some do and there are still plenty of people waging war in favor of ending a pregnancy at any point of the woman’s choosing.
One more crucial development thanks to science which the House had to take into consideration this past Tuesday is what wasn’t known in 1973. At what point does a baby feel pain? This is believed to be, due to medical information, to be at 20 weeks. Of course, pro choice campers reject such proof exists and prefer to keep the water muddy at this point. This is interesting because of the potential this consideration has on how we collectively think about abortion on a moral and legal level. Pain is a human experience that we can all relate to and identify with. If we know, and there is scientific data to prove, that a baby can feel pain as it is being massacred then it humanizes the individual and changes the perspective on what is taking place during and actual abortion. In other words, it is harder to think of it as the benign euphemism such as “termination of a pregnancy” instead of what it really is: massacre, murder, snipping a baby to pieces with a metal scissors and sucking it’s brains into a sink.
Jesus said in Matthew 22:39 that “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” in summarization of God’s law. The brilliance of this teaching is how Jesus draws upon the human motive of selfishness as the standard that individuals ought to treat others with. If we take Jesus’ teaching seriously then we are called to love our neighbor (other people in our lives) to the level that we love ourselves. Brilliant! What an incredibly high standard of love this would ensure if everyone cared for others to the extent that they cared for self. Jesus, the son of God, also shows us another shade of wisdom in this. He knows that humans are more likely to show compassion at the point of understanding! In other words, a person naturally becomes more sympathetic to another if they can share a human experience.
This notion applies and comes shining through in this decision relating to a fetus (oops, another euphemism. I mean, human being) and it’s ability to feel pain. There is something we simply cannot ignore, indeed, no human being can ignore it. This is why “pro choicers” have no other recourse but to deny this information can be known or proven. If a baby at 20 weeks can feel pain, how can we treat it worse than we would a terrorist or a mass murderer? We simply cannot. Pain is a feeling that validates our humanness and forces compassion. If an unborn baby can share in this experience then it is impossible to think of it as a fetus and not a human.
Now at this point it seems like this is a wonderful bright spot for humanity. It is a bright spot that we sympathize with a baby because of the shared experience of pain? Obviously yes, but maybe no. You could reverse it and suggest that the only reason we care about the baby is because it is something that we wouldn’t want for ourselves. So we see human decency but it also suggests human selfishness. It begs the question, is the standard really high enough as it relates to the unborn? Science takes us so far as to help us realize that an unborn child can feel pain at 20 weeks but there are a slew of other questions we must ask. What will science help us to know in another 50 years? Will there be greater insight into what an unborn child experiences at 10 weeks? At 5? at conception? The subtle arrogance in those who claim they “believe in science” is the seeming assumption that science provides us with everything we need to know. Of course it doesn’t as it is always developing and always taking new frontiers. Perhaps, in a roundabout way scientific innovation goes to prove the validity of God’s Word. After all, isn’t science as it develops align with the revealed wisdom of God and validate what Christians have been saying all along, that God makes babies, starting at the moment of conception and therefore they should not be murdered? Perhaps another 50 years of scientific breakthrough would only humanize babies to the point where treating them as anything but would be unthinkable, on the basis of science. Until that time, maybe we should just do we ought to have done all along: submit to God’s wisdom.
Thus, we could ask, does Jesus’ command to love your neighbor as yourself come up short? Is a law that is based on selfish motive really reach high enough? In short, there is nothing in Jesus’ command that comes up short. No rational human being would want to be snipped apart ever, week 1, 24, 35, or ever. Yet, the point remains, while it is nice that scientific proof allows us to argue against abortion at earlier weeks there is a higher rational that slams the door shut on abortion completely.
The second commandment in Jesus’ summarization was that you “shall love your neighbor as yourself” but coming in at number 1? “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). Why is human life considered sacred? Simple, because it is made by God and because God is holy. A Christian’s thoughts on abortion is ultimately determined by the motivation to love God with all our hearts and honor his holiness. Jesus is calling humanity to be chiefly concerned with the holiness of God in our relationship to other humans. The subtle implication of Jesus’ teachings in the two commands is that the way one thinks about God is the way one will relate to humanity. The reverse is true as well, namely, the way you treat humanity reveals the way you think of God. For this reason abortion is about so much more than an attack on innocent humans, as horrendous as that is. In the Christian worldview, to abort is to attack the holiness of God. If there is an understatement of the year award to be given, I am about to win it by saying, God’s holiness is our ultimate motivation, even higher than what we know about a baby feeling pain.
As for Roe v. Wade and the interpretation of this law, up for grabs is the demarcation of when a human life is considered a human life (the point of validation). Even in 1973 there was a hard deadline for when this was so. While most states currently have laws which ban abortion between weeks 24-26 there are three that allow it as late as 28 weeks and nine more states that have no ban at any point. Within a biblical worldview, this is not up for grabs, it is settled. The hard deadline is conception. What pro choice people want to keep muddy is that there is any hard deadline at all. For them, the continuing relevancy of Roe v. Wade hangs in the balance, not to mention, human lives and the holiness of God. Pray this bill continues to move in the right direction, making abortion not only illegal at every point but immoral in every way. Pray that it moves past the Senate where it currently looks like it will be halted. And remember, our battle isn’t ultimately against flesh and blood that is fought and won in the courtrooms, it is in the “heavenly places” against “the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil” (Ephesians 6:12).
Pastor Kevin
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