Pastor David B. Curtis
Pastor David B. Curtis
There is a plague sweeping our nation, which if continued unchecked, I believe will destroy America. I said last week that I think that there are two sins in particular that are leading to our downfall, those sins are homosexuality and abortion. Last week we looked at the sin of homosexuality. This week we want to look at the sin of abortion.
In the late 1970s, George Bush changed his stand on abortion. He said he had become convinced that so many abortions were contributing to an overall decline in moral values in America. I agree with him, and that is why I think that abortion is part of a national plague. Abortion cheapens the sanctity of human life. When we allow actions that cheapen life, we are contributing to an overall decline in our society's moral values. We are now making decisions as to who lives and who dies on the basis of whether it is convenient for the living.
There have been more than 32 million abortions in the twenty one years since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized unrestricted abortion on January 22, 1973. That's over 15 times greater than the number of Americans lost in all U.S. wars. Someone has said, "The most dangerous place in America is in the womb."
What do you believe about abortion?
It is easy to see that America is highly committed by law and practice to mass murder. It's a stark transition from the America of history; a nation known as a nation of liberty and freedom and privilege and rights; a nation where justice was the protector of the people; a nation which always seemed to pride itself on it's humanitareinsm, it's care for the poor, needy, weak and defenseless. Yet it is this very nation in which mass murder has been taking place for many years.
There are nearly 2 million abortions a year in this country. Every 3rd baby being conceived is murdered. Somewhere between 42,000 and 45,000 recorded abortions take place every day, which breaks down to about 3 per minute. In some metropolitan hospitals abortions outnumber live births. How can this happen in America? It's happening because we are buying the lies of the humanists who say that pregnancy is a disease.
Dr. Williard Cates a Planned Parenthood physician presented a paper saying abortion is treatment for unwanted pregnancies, the number two sexually transmitted disease. Dr. Cates is saying that pregnancy is a disease which is treated by abortion.
Situation Ethicist, Joseph Fletcher, has also stated that unwanted pregnancy is a disease, in fact a venereal disease.
If we adopt that view it becomes real easy to terminate a pregnancy. But if we believe that pregnancy is the beginning of a human life, we must cry out against abortion.
The abortion process is really bizarre and I want to share with you what's going on. I believe that concealment of abortion procedures has greatly contributed to the acceptance of abortion. I want you to know what really happens in an abortion. The "Silent Scream," which showed an abortion in the womb, was very controversial and generated much emotion because it visually demonstrated the results of abortion upon an 11 week old girl. The doctor who performed the abortion couldn't bear to watch the film to the end. He rushed out of the room where it was shown and never performed another "procedure," though he had performed several thousand before.
Those who know what happens in an abortion find it very difficult to condone the practice. The method used depends on the age of the pre-born, although more than one method may be necessary.
When an abortion occurs in the first 12 weeks, as most do, the baby is still small enough to be vacuumed out of the womb by a powerful suction machine-- one with almost 25 times the force of a household vacuum cleaner. In this method, known as suction curettage, the force of the vacuum literally tears or wrenches the child apart, limb by limb, until all that remains is the tiny little head. In any abortion, if the infant's head is too large to come through the suction tube itself, the abortionist inserts forceps into the uterus. He uses these to grab the free-floating head, which he then crushes to a small enough size to fit into a suction tube. Then it, too, is removed.
Another abortion procedure is called D and E or "dilation and evacuation." the procedure is usually performed during the forth to eighth months. The cervic is again dilated but instead of suction, the forceps are inserted and clamped onto body parts, twisting them off and removing them in pieces. Then the spine and skull are crushed and extracted. A sharp, oval shaped knife, is then used to scrape out the uterus.
When D and C (Dilation and Curettage) is used, the knife is repeatedly put inside the womb and rotated. When resistance is encountered, the scraping is concentrated. In other words, a child may have its arms cut off, legs cut off, its face slashed, and head cut off, and its body mutilated and cut into small pieces. The body parts and the placenta are then suctioned out.
Any time an abortion is performed which cuts or sucks the child to pieces, the body parts must be carefully reassembled, if possible, to verify a "complete" infant now exists outside the womb. The reason for this is the danger from infection should any body part of the chid be left in the womb.
The "saline method" (salt poisoning) is another abortion procedure that is used between four and seven months. This was the most common method employed throughout the 1970's. In this procedure, a 3-1/2 to 4 inch needle is inserted through the stomach wall of the mother into the amniotic sac. Two hundred milliliters of amniotic fluid are withdrawn and replaced with a powerful salt solution. In this procedure the child swallows salt, as well as "breathes" it in. In essence, the child is slowly poisoned while the salt is burning the skin over the entire body. The mother goes into labor and expels a dead, badly burned and shriveled baby. Occasionally, babies survive the procedure and are born with sever complications.
Saline has another effect as well. Because the salt is so concentrated, it chemically burns human tissue. The child assaulted with saline looks as though it has succumbed to an attack with napalm. Much of the outer skin has simply been burned away.
Other abortions are induced using the chemical prostaglandin (pros-to-gland-en). The prostaglandin consists of hormone-like compounds which are injected or applied to the uterine muscle, causing fetal circulatory damage, intense contractions and expelling of the baby. Because prostaglandin is not as directly lethal to the pre-born, such abortions result in far more live births than with the saline method. These unexpected live births are extremely difficult on medical staff and particularly the mother. Gasping for air, twitching and moving about, babies born struggling to survive abortion are unforgettable to their mothers.
Usually, when the child is born alive, it is simply permitted to starve to death. But there are cases where it is strangled or killed in some other fashion.
In fact, these abortions are so difficult to bear that the "dilation and evacuation" method was developed specifically to avoid the problems of live births. By cutting, crushing, or poisoning the child to death while still "hidden" in the womb, the results were still lethal but "less visible" to the mother and medical staff.
Abortionist Dr. William Rashbaum, a faculty member at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, told the New York Times (April 17, 1977) that abortion is the "destruction of life" and noted that for some time he was beset and troubled by pictures of the fetus resisting his attempts to abort it, holding on in the womb for dear life.
Abortions can also be performed using digoxin (five to eight months) where a syringe filled with digoxin is inserted directly into the heart of the baby, stopping it instantly. It is virtually one hundred percent effective; prostaglandin then induces labor and a dead baby is delivered.
One more method is called a hysterotomy (six to eight months). The only difference between this method and a Caesarean section is that the whole point of the operation is to kill the child, not to save it. An incision is made through the abdomen into the womb, the baby is removed and allowed to die by neglect -- or killed by strangulation while still inside the mother (the baby cannot be strangled outside the womb). It is ironic that once the child is outside the womb it cannot be killed; otherwise the physician is legally guilty of murder. Legally, it can only be left to die by starvation.
When one understands what happens to the pre-born infant, and especially if one has seen the gruesome pictures of abortion procedures, one immediately understands that a human person is being violently and mercilessly slaughtered. Pictures convey the reality here far better than any descriptive words can. In fact, simple words cannot adequately describe what occurs in an abortion.
When women later discover what has really happened in their abortion, many are angry and bitter for never being informed of the truth. Further, this explains, in part, the attendant psychological problems experienced by many women known as the "post abortion syndrome." It is difficult to believe that such acts of violence upon innocent unborn babies have been performed over 32 million times in this country alone.
Some babies do survive and the Revenue rule 73-156 of the IRS states that should you be having an abortion, and the baby comes out alive, you can count it as a tax deduction as a dependant. It's a non-person if it's dead, it's a person if it's alive. That's the stupidity of humanism.
Abortion is a convenience killing. We murder because it is convenient. Why is all this going on? Abortion is a money maker. It's big business. They get money for doing the abortion -- ½ billion per year. They also get money from the sale of the dead bodies, which are often used in the making of cosmetics that contain collagen.
It is truly incredible that in an age where great amounts of money and effort are expended in saving whales, baby seals, bald eagles, and even three-inch fish -- in an era of great concern over "animal rights" -- not only do we deny the rights of the unborn to life, we callously turn our heads to their suffering. We not only treat them as less than human, we treat them as having less value than animals. Dogs have more rights in this country than unborn children.
Dr. Irwin Lutzer reveals the twisted and tragic logic of our society which now places a higher value on animal life than on human life:
Nothing dramatizes the schizophrenia of our age more than the law against crushing the egg of a bald eagle. Such a person may be fined $5,000 and put in jail for one year. Incredibly, our society has adopted the notion that a baby eagle is worth more than a human being. Everyone knows that an eagle's egg is a potential eaglet subject to protection, but a fetus, we are told, is not a human being even if it should be already viable outside of the womb.
New England has a law that makes it illegal to ship pregnant lobsters. There is a $1,000 fine for shipping them because it might do damage to the unborn lobsters.
Massachusetts has a law called, " the anti-cruelty law," and in that law it is forbidden to award gold fish as prizes in games of chance. Why? To protect the tendency to dull humanitarian feelings and corrupt the morals of those who abuse them.
How did our country end up in such a mess? Many things led up to it, but the final blow was struck by the Supreme Court of the United States, supposedly the most esteemed in our nation. The greatest men of wisdom, the wisest men of this entire land who voted wholesale murder of babies on January 22, 1973 in Roe vs Wade, when they legalized abortion. They violated the 14th amendment, that no person shall be deprived life without due process of law. They legalized murder.
What does the Bible have to say about this issue? Let me give you several biblical principles which prohibit abortion.
1. Conception is an act of God. This is perhaps the strongest Scriptural and theological argument against abortion there is. Biblically, God Himself is said to create the child in the womb. So then, those who have an abortion are not merely destroying tissue or protoplasm, but an actual work of God Himself.
We suppose that the power of reproduction lies solely within the ovum and sperm and is entirely controlled by the genetic code. But biblically, it is clear that God Himself is involved in the process. God creates, personally and individually, every human life. God not only starts a pro-creation process but is active in that process bringing into existence all those people whom He has foreordained to life.
Genesis 20:17-18 (NKJV) So Abraham prayed to God; and God healed Abimelech, his wife, and his female servants. Then they bore children; 18 for the LORD had closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife.
God is sovereign over conception and the womb.
Genesis 16:2 (NKJV) So Sarai said to Abram, "See now, the LORD has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go in to my maid; perhaps I shall obtain children by her." And Abram heeded the voice of Sarai.
Genesis 21:2 (NKJV) For Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him.
God ordains who will live and when they will live.
Genesis 25:21-22 (NKJV) Now Isaac pleaded with the LORD for his wife, because she was barren; and the LORD granted his plea, and Rebekah his wife conceived. 22 But the children struggled together within her; and she said, "If all is well, why am I like this?" So she went to inquire of the LORD.
Genesis 29:31-32 (NKJV) When the LORD saw that Leah was unloved, He opened her womb; but Rachel was barren. 32 So Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben; for she said, "The LORD has surely looked on my affliction. Now therefore, my husband will love me."
Genesis 30:2 (NKJV) And Jacob's anger was aroused against Rachel, and he said, "Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?"
Genesis 30:22-23 (NKJV) Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb. 23 And she conceived and bore a son, and said, "God has taken away my reproach."
Ruth 4:13 (NKJV) So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife; and when he went in to her, the LORD gave her conception, and she bore a son.
Psalms 100:1-3 (NKJV) Make a joyful shout to the LORD, all you lands! 2 Serve the LORD with gladness; Come before His presence with singing. 3 Know that the LORD, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
Psalms 127:1-3 (NKJV) Unless the LORD builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the LORD guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain. 2 It is vain for you to rise up early, To sit up late, To eat the bread of sorrows; For so He gives His beloved sleep. 3 Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward.
Psalms 139:12-13 (NKJV) Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, But the night shines as the day; The darkness and the light are both alike to You. 13 For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb.
From the Psalms we see that what goes on in the womb is a work of God.
Psalms 139:14-16 (NKJV) I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.
He attributes his making to God. Human life is God's work.
15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.
When I was nothing but an embryo you had my life all laid out. God is the power behind conception, and every life that begins, begins because God has foreordained that life to begin, and once begun it is eternal. Conception is an act of God and life begins at conception.
In the O.T. the Bible uses the same Hebrew words to describe the pre-born, infants, and children. In the NT the same Greek words also describe the pre-born, infants, and children, which indicates a continuity from conception to childhood and on to adulthood.
The Greek word brephos is used of the newly born, infants and older children in Luke 2:12 & 16, 18:15; and 1 Peter 2:2. In Acts 7:19 brephos is used of John the Baptist while he was still in the womb, a pre-born infant. Even three months before birth, John could miraculously recognize Jesus in Mary's womb:
Luke 1:44 (NKJV) "For indeed, as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.
There is nothing in Scripture that even remotely suggests that the unborn child is anything less than a human person from the moment of conception. So life begins at conception and conception is an act of God. The life of a baby begins long before he or she is born. A new individual human being begins growing in the mother's uterus at fertilization, and if the baby's life is not interrupted, he or she will someday become an adult man or woman.
In 1981 the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee held hearings to discuss the question of when biological human life begins. The testimony was revealing. An overwhelming majority of the experts answered emphatically that biological life begins at conception or implantation.
The American Medical Association shared that perspective until the 1960s, calling abortion a criminal act that ignored the obvious medical fact that fetal life begins at conception. In 1967, however, citing changing social views, the AMA began to officially back away from its anti-abortion stance, completing the retreat in 1970.
So abortion is wrong because conception is an act of God and life begins at conception.
2. Scriptures teach we must defend and protect the weak, the defenseless, the innocent and the needy. I would think that if life begins at conception, that the pre-born fall into this category of weak and defenseless.
Proverbs 31:8-9 (NKJV) Open your mouth for the speechless, In the cause of all who are appointed to die. 9 Open your mouth, judge righteously, And plead the cause of the poor and needy.
Psalms 82:3-4 (NKJV) Defend the poor and fatherless; Do justice to the afflicted and needy. 4 Deliver the poor and needy; Free them from the hand of the wicked.
3. Scripture proves that God values the unborn in the womb as an adult. This principle is illustrated in:
Exodus 21:22-25 (KJV) If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. 23 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, 24 Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
The Hebrew word for "fruit" is yeled, it is the same Hebrew word that is used for children. It is used 88 times in the O.T. of children. In verse 23, God has ordained that the killing of a child prior to its birth is to be paid for by giving your own life.
This law is perhaps the most decisive evidence in Scripture that the unborn in the womb is to be regarded as a living person. The sixth commandment, "thou shalt not murder," is equivalent to, "thou shalt not commit abortion."
The text in verse 22 literally reads "so that her children go (or come) out." Some translations have erroneously rendered the word "depart," yatsa, in this verse as "miscarriage", but there is no linguistic justification for this interpretation. The Bible has a word, shakol that is often used to mean miscarriage or accidental abortion (e.g. Gen 23.26, Hos 9.14), but shakol is not used in this case. Yatsa is used in every biblical case except one (Numbers 12.12 uses it for a stillborn child) for the birth of an ordinary child. Thus these verses are most naturally understood to refer to a case where a pregnant woman is hit and delivers a child.
The object of the phrase "no serious injury" (literally, "and no harm occurs") is not specified, and therefore is most fully understood to be the mother or the child. This means that the lex talionis (i.e. the attacker is punished in keeping with the victim's injuries) applies when harm comes to either the mother or the child in her womb. Only if the mother is spared serious injury and the baby is born without injury is the lex talionis not invoked. The natural conclusion is that the Mosaic law considered the child in the womb to be fully a person, protected by the lex talionis.
To summarize, the Bible does not specifically address abortion or categorically state when human life begins. The overwhelming preponderance of biblical evidence, however, consistently supports the sanctity of human life inside and outside the womb. To interpret the Bible differently reads our preferences into the text and does not do justice to the authors' intentions. We may not agree with the view of the biblical writers, but we should respect their work enough to read it as they intended and not as we would prefer it to be.
4. Scripture condemns murders:
Exodus 20:13 (NKJV) "You shall not murder.
Genesis 9:6 (NKJV) "Whoever sheds man's blood, By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man.
Because man is made in the image of God, life is by definition sacred and should not be destroyed. Capital punishment is based exclusively upon the image of God in man, that is, on the basis of man's divine value and importance. This should make it clear that bombing abortion clinics or shooting doctors that perform abortions is wrong.
Proverbs 6:16-17 (NKJV) These six things the LORD hates, Yes, seven are an abomination to Him: 17 A proud look, A lying tongue, Hands that shed innocent blood,
What blood could be more innocent than an unborn babies?
Here is a verse that the doctors who perform abortions should take a close look at:
Deuteronomy 27:25 (NKJV) 'Cursed is the one who takes a bribe to slay an innocent person.' And all the people shall say, 'Amen!'
I hope you can see that the Bible clearly condemns abortion.
Someone is bound to ask, "What about the hard cases?" What about Rape or incest? Rape is wrong and so is abortion. Two wrongs don't make a right. Why kill an innocent child? Ethel Waters was the product of a rape. She has sung, "His eye is on the sparrow," to millions of people in the Billy Graham crusades. She is very glad to be alive.
What about deformity? Should someone knowingly bring a deformed child into this world?
Exodus 4:11 (NKJV) So the LORD said to him, "Who has made man's mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the LORD?
John 9:1-3 (NKJV) Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. 2 And His disciples asked Him, saying, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" 3 Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.
God creates and preserves all life and that should answer all the questions. Any person created in the womb or the test tube is created by God and therefore is not up to the discretion of any human being as to its worthiness to live. Abortion is a very serious sin against the purpose of God in creation.
Abortion not only kills the babies, it does great damage to the women who have an abortion.
Folks say that if we make abortion illegal, that the woman will have their abortions in a back alley and thus risk their lives. Six to seven times more women die a year since abortion was legalized than did before it became legal.
The suicide rate of women who have had an abortion is between 400 to 800% higher than that of the normal female population.
There is strong evidence that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer. A study of more than 1,800 women appearing in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 1994 found that overall, women having abortions increased their risk of getting breast cancer before age 45 by 50%. For women under 18 with no previous pregnancies, having an abortion after the 8th week increased the risk of breast cancer 800%. Women with a family history of breast cancer fared even worse. All 12 women participating in the study who had abortions before 18 and had a family history of breast cancer themselves, got cancer before age 45.
What about someone who has had an abortion, will the Lord forgive this sin? Yes!
1 John 1:9 (NKJV) If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Keep in mind that the apostle Paul was a murderer before his conversion. God forgave and greatly used Paul and He will do the same for anyone who puts their trust in Him.
What can we do about abortion?
1. Pray :
James 5:16 (NKJV) Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.
2. Share the gospel and the Biblical view of abortion with those you have the opportunity to. Get involved in people's lives. A lawyer told me that a woman he was interviewing, who had had several abortions, said that she did not know any Christians and had never heard the biblical view of abortion.
Teach your children what the Bible says about abortion. Several weeks ago as I was praying with my eight year old daughter, Lindsey, she said to me, "Mommy told me about abortion today. I'm really glad that Mommy didn't abort me." With tears in my eyes I told her that I was really glad of that too.
3. Vote -- support those candidates who are committed to protecting unborn human lives and oppose pro-choice candidates.
4. Support pro-life organizations with your time and money.
5. Become better informed -- make sure that you are not involved in this mass murder. The word contraceptive is being misused today. They use this word in referring to drugs that really end a pregnancy by destroying the already developing human. But a true contraceptive should do no more than prevent the sperm and egg from uniting to form a human life. The pill RU-486 is strictly an abortion pill.
6. Get the beam out of your own eye -- recognize children as a gift from God, not a curse to be prevented. In our society, even Christians seem to look down on large families.
Psalms 127:3 (NKJV) Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward.
May God help us to do all that we can to stop this holocaust.
Media #016
| Continue the Series |