Abortion

Abortion - Facts and Figures

Part of the sexual culture which is destabilizing the family is undoubtedly the easy availability of abortion. The way abortion evolved in the twentieth century was perhaps one of the century's most evil developments. Like bombing Serbia or Kosovo in the Balkans War of 1999 from 30,000 feet, abortion can seem so anaesthetized. From that distance you do not see the cluster bombs decimate villages, destroy families and maim or scar innocent people. It is the same with abortion - or foeticide, as it should more accurately be called. The foetus is so small, the process apparently so clinical.

For many in the West at the start of the new millennium, 'the family' does not include the unborn. That is sinister. At least, however, questions are now being asked. There is now a growing confidence about voicing opposition to abortion that was not present even a few years ago. Ronnie Campbell, the Northeast Labour MP for Blyth, defied Tony Blair and the New Labour machine which marginalizes 'pro-lifers'. He publicly reported how activists tried to deselect him because of his views. Fellow MPs said that his career was at risk because he supported the then Liberal Democrat MP David Alton and his proposals to lower the legal time-limit on abortions. But he had the courage to stand up for what he believed, against the tide.

What especially concerns many, however, certainly amongst the Christian public, are the official government figures such as those highlighted by the Christian Institute. The figures available show that for married couples only 8 percent of pregnancies are aborted, while for unmarried couples the figure is 33 per cent. And abortion is not a matter of poverty. Indeed, the most prosperous areas have among the highest abortion rates, while areas of high unemployment have lower rates.

Most serious of all, out of 156,539 abortions in 1994 only 147 were carried out because the mother's life was in danger; in only 1,796 cases was there a risk that the child would be born handicapped; and in only 2 per cent of cases was there a grave risk of permanent injury to the mental or physical health of the mother. That means that 97 percent of all abortions are performed for 'social' reasons.

The 1967 Abortion Act never said that abortion was moral. It simply said that certain abortions would not be the concern of the criminal law. Practically that legitimized abortion for millions. But how do you decide the morality of an abortion? Many people play a game of 'ethical snap'. Someone cites a case of a woman or girl in desperate poverty who wants an abortion; someone then 'snaps' that with horrific photos of dead foetuses and dismembered foetal limbs.

The pro-choice movement accuses anti-abortionists of being sentimental in the operating theatre. The pro-life movement accuses abortionists of being sentimental in the counselling room. Others say it is all a matter of motives: if the decision is made with reasonably unselfish motives, that justifies an abortion. But the Bible suggests that while bad motives make good actions morally hypocritical, good motives do not make wrong actions acceptable. Peter, no doubt, had some good motives in opposing the way of the Cross for Jesus; but Jesus saw his activity as Satanic (Mark 8:33).


The Christian Tradition and the Bible

We need to note some history. Abortion was common in ancient Greece - hence the Hippocratic Oath for doctors: 'I will not give a pessary to a woman to cause abortion.' It was also common in the Roman Empire. By the time of Christ abortion was well known and common in the ancient world.

The coming of Christ and the spread of the Christian faith brought a challenge to the practice of abortion. In the period immediately following that of the Apostles - the period of the Church Fathers - one of the distinctives that marked the Church off from the pagan world was its opposition to abortion. This was a fruit of the gospel - the extension of care to the humblest of human beings, including human foetal life. Early canon law, and subsequent pronouncements, have in general defended the foetus as 'human' or 'human on the way' and so as worthy of Christian love and protection.

More recently, however, an ethic of 'justifiable foeticide' has evolved. This, too, claims a Christian basis, namely that human life itself does not have an absolute value, only a very high one. There may therefore be occasions when life can be taken or protection withdrawn. But such a serious action has to be justified. As with the 'just war', the right to act cannot be presumed. It has to be argued for.

Most would agree that a serious threat to the actual life of the mother is a justifying reason. Some argue that some congenital deformity is a justifying reason (some would also say that this has to be such that no life outside the womb can be maintained). But these and other difficult cases are very rare. As we have seen, most abortions are for 'social' reasons. That is why the issue is a serious moral question that Christians cannot ignore. It involves the taking of innocent life.

But is it, in fact, innocent life? Is actual human life being destroyed in abortion or in embryo research? And why should conception be so important? What does the Bible say?

Exodus 21:22 refers to an injury to a pregnant woman. If she miscarries, the claims of the foetus are assessed as less than her own. But violence to the foetus is an offence. Mostly, however, the Bible speaks at a more general level. Ecclesiastes 11:5 says, 'As you do not know ... how the body is formed in a mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.' Perhaps the Revised Standard Version's translation is better: 'You do not know how the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child ...' This suggests that there should be a certain agnosticism, or at least humility in our thinking about antenatal life. We are not facing a blob of tissue, but a divine mystery; something we cannot understand fully; and the womb contains not only a body but a 'spirit'.

The basic philosophical question is this: 'Whose is the history of that which is in the womb - the mother's or a separate person's?' The Psalmist had no doubt. It was his history. He was in the womb: 'For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb' (Psalm 139:13, my italics). Isaiah said much the same thing: 'Before I was born the LORD called me; from my birth he has made mention of my name' (Isaiah 49:1, my italics).

Most importantly, this is also the Christian understanding from the New Testament stories of the birth of Jesus. The incarnation of the Son of God began not with his birth but with his conception. So we say in the Creed: 'He was conceived ...' In so far as Jesus Christ reveals true man (as well as true God), the inescapable conclusion is that life in the womb is human from conception.


Human in What Way?

The fundamental Christian belief is in a God who gives, a God of 'grace'. He 'gave' his only Son for our sins (John 3:16). And human life is a 'gift'. When Job was bereaved he said, 'The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away' (Job 1:21). Human life is 'given'; it is not 'achieved'. That is important. We do not 'achieve' our humanity by reaching certain standards of performance or development.

Nonetheless, in the debate on abortion (and embryo and foetal experimentation) many assume today that the word 'human' (and so the offer of protection) is to be applied only where there are certain 'achievements'. These are in terms of physical performance or psychological or mental development. This, however, is a totalitarian road. And it can go on to exclude from the category of the 'human' also certain physical or racial 'underachievements'. So, for example, Peter Singer, the Princeton Professor of Bioethics, says that mentally retarded children can be dispensed with - he is proposing infanticide; and Hitler dispensed with millions of Jews through the terrible Holocaust of the Second World War.

If humanity is a 'gift', the first 14 days surely cannot be discounted as a period of 'nonbeing', any more than other periods of a person's life. Behind human procreation is the divine creation. Procreation is creation on behalf of God (pro being Latin for 'on behalf of'). Protection is to be offered to human beings not because they 'reach a certain stage of development' but because of the fact that they are all created by God in his image. 'Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man' (Genesis 9:6).

So what are we saying if we say the foetus is 'human'? We are saying that in virtue of its genotype or genetic code it is a distinct being that has been procreated. It may be that God's creative powers, entrusted to men and women, have been misused, but that is not a ground for destroying what has been created. And what is created is a human foetus. It is not a human infant, nor a human adolescent, nor a human adult, nor a senile human being. If a senile person is a degenerating member of humanity, a foetus is a developing member. The boundaries of humanity are death and conception.
The foetus is not simply 'potentially' human either. Yes, the foetus only potentially has the characteristics it will develop in later life. The new born baby only potentially has the characteristics it will develop as a toddler or teenager. But a foetus is more accurately 'a human with potential'. An ovum or sperm - i.e. prior to conception - is 'potentially human'.

We should also not moralize, like bomber pilots, according to size. An embryo may look, and actually be, tiny. A village looks microscopic from 30,000 feet. So it may not feel so bad dropping bombs from that distance, but innocent people are killed nonetheless.

There are many other problems to consider, including the guilt felt by those who have had abortions. The Church, therefore, must not only teach what is right. It must teach also that the good news is about forgiveness at the Cross of Calvary, where Christ bore the sins of the world, including the sin of abortion and the sins of others that lead to abortion. Some reading this may be scarred by having had, or being involved in, an abortion. The gospel is that Christ loves the sinner and forgives, but he hates the sin and always says: 'Go and sin no more.' That is on the pastoral level.

There is also, however, the political level. We have to remember that the health of a nation is not just measured by the growth of its economy, the rate of its inflation, its budget deficit, or its prestige buildings. There are other more important measurements.

You can measure a nation's health by how many families are broken, how many children are suffering because of those breakdowns, the attitude to the sanctity of human life, and whether the vulnerable, the innocent and the unborn are being protected. On all those counts - especially the last one - Britain would seem to be sick. Since the 1967 Abortion Act in Britain we have lost 5 million lives through abortion - one in every five pregnancies. But the real evil, in the words of David Alton, is that 'in the short space of 30 years, a serious crime has become a right; a public question of law and ethics has become a personal choice; and a practice once firmly repudiated by the medical profession has become a tragic, routine medical procedure - so routine that clinics offer a lunch-box service.'

In the Church and the State there is a need to have a consciousness with regard to the facts, and then a conscience over this State-sponsored killing which is a daily occurrence.


Raymond Johnston

The above is an extract from a chapter in my book Church and State in the New Millennium, London, HarperCollins, 2000, pp. 145-151. Let me now extract something else. Last year I had to write up a lecture I had given on the life of Raymond Johnston and it was published as A call for Christian thinking and action, Newcastle, Christian Institute, 2004. Raymond was churchwarden at Jesmond Parish Church when I arrived in 1973. He was lecturing at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne but then left to be the first director of the Nationwide Festival of Light which he transformed into CARE - (whose initials stand for "Christian Action Research and Education"). Sadly he died relatively young in 1985.

In the booklet I included Raymond's views on abortion (pp. 12-14). It may be helpful to include them here as well. So the following is what I wrote. I began by saying that because Raymond Johnston was a "Reformation man", he saw no dichotomy between his Christian faith and social concern.

The doctrine of the Sovereignty of God means that God is concerned for the whole of life, not just life on Sundays in church but Monday to Saturday out in the world as well. Raymond believed that God was creator as well as redeemer; and he believed this created world couldn't be neglected even though our attitude towards it must always be in the light of heaven and eternity. He believed that God had created man in his own image, and that although that image was distorted by sin, it hadn't been destroyed. He, therefore, believed in the sanctity of human life. Believing also that "the archetypal transgression was murder" as evidenced in the sin of Cain, he naturally campaigned against attacks on human life. And the great attack since 1967 he saw coming through abortion, that huge blot on the moral landscape.

Let me give you Raymond's reasoning on this subject in some detail as it is still something to be fought and campaigned against. I quote:

The question that is raised is: is it, or is it not, murder? It is true that the Bible never mentions deliberate induced abortion, so there is no explicit ruling on the matter. Nevertheless, by the end of the first century, one of the Christian ethical distinctives was already that Christians did not practise abortion. The Didache, an early manual of moral teaching and guide to conduct, was probably written before some of the latest epistles in the New Testament: it is against abortion. A prohibition against abortion was among the … canons of the Council of Elvira (c AD 306).By the end of the second century, the influence of Christianity had brought Roman law to forbid abortion, long before the conversion of Constantine and the Christianizing of the Roman Empire. Long before that, under the Emperor Severus, Roman law forbade abortion. This was the influence of Christianity over a hundred and fifty years. And the medical profession has never wavered over the last two thousand years – until our own lifetime … In Britain, for centuries a pregnant woman convicted of a capital offence could not be hanged – because she was bearing another life …The key question [then] is this: is the unborn child (for me as a Christian and equally as a member of the human race) entitled to my brotherly, neighbourly protection? Is it entitled to the same protection I would seek to give to a person I saw being attacked in the street? Is the unborn child my neighbour – or not?

Raymond Johnston offers five considerations to help us answer that question.

First, ignorance points only one way. If our answer is 'I do not know', or if I hold that there must be a point between conception and childbirth when the child becomes worthy of my protection but that I do not know when that point is – in either of these cases of ignorance, it must follow that we have to protect the child from the moment of conception onwards, because you could not accept ignorance as a morally valid defence in any comparable case.Consider the case of a man lying in the street, having been run over or knocked down. You would not say, 'I wonder if he is dead or not? I do not know. So I'll leave him, I won't try to save his life, I won't even call the ambulance.' On the contrary, you would say that because you did not know, you would go straight to that man's aid and help him as much as you could … [similarly] I begin my protection of that child from the moment of conception, simply because I do not know, and because otherwise I could be making a terrible mistake.Secondly, human life is genetically complete at conception.Admittedly, at the beginning you did not look much like a human being, though we now know that after a few weeks in the womb, you did. In any case, the fact that a person does not look like a human being is not an argument for not protecting him. If you are a doctor called to a major disaster, you do not discuss whether somebody looks enough like a human being before being treated. You just give the treatment …Thirdly, no criterion of 'full humanity' will justify induced abortion. There is no point at which you can say that you are fully human …Fourthly, human life is a continuum in which birth is only one event. What is natural birth today could have been induced childbirth yesterday … Indeed, the baby born by natural birth today could have been delivered by caesarean section a month ago …Fifthly, the teaching of Scripture. When we look to the Bible for guidance on this subject we find that the biblical writers are conscious of God's hand upon them long before birth. Think of the birth stories that go back long before conception: how many individuals – such as Samuel, Samson, Jacob and Esau and Jeremiah – were either called by God, or were spoken of in advance, long before the moment of their natural birth. This does not make the case unanswerable, but it is an important factor …But what does, in my opinion, conclusively resolve the issue is the use of the Greek word brephos in Luke 1.41. It means 'the child'. 'The child leaped in her womb' – it is the same word as is used for a child after birth. And, more than leaping in her womb, the child apparently was filled with the Holy Spirit. Elizabeth spoke of the pregnant Mary as the 'mother of my Lord'.This brings us therefore to the Christian affirmation of the incarnation, which leaves us no room for escape at all. If you are an orthodox, well-taught Christian who is asked, 'When did God become man?' you will respond with the Apostles' Creed: 'conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary'. That is when he became man [at conception].But if that is true, then manhood [or human existence] begins at conception. And if the proper man – that is, Jesus – began his earthly existence as a human being at conception, then so do all human beings. It is inescapable.

Raymond's desperate concern over abortion was ultimately from his understanding that God has created men and women in his own image.


Postscript

I quoted earlier that in 1994 there were 156,539 abortions. The latest figures are for 2003 and there were 181,582 abortions. And now not one in five but one in three pregnacies end in abortion. Things are getting worse. We are now reverting to the Greco-Roman pre-Christian ethic. The Greek philosopher Plato would have abortions mandatory for all women conceiving over forty and Aristotle was not much better. But once the Christian gospel had taken root, immediately there was change. Raymond Johnston mentioned the Didache. It is blunt: 'Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born.' May we follow in that Christian tradition.

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