"Keep your laws off my body!" scream the words on one placecard. A woman in an opposing group carries a sign with a picture of an aborted baby. The caption reads "Who imposed their morality on this one?" The news programs run story after story, pro-life and pro-abortion forces hold endless debates, and courts and legislatures are all but paralyzed over this most heated social issue: Abortion.
Obviously, this is not a simple, one-demensional issue. Besides the central problem of whether or not it is ever right to take the life of an unborn person, there are related issues of parental consent for girls under 18 who want to have an abortion; legalizing abortion up to a
Abortion - Where does the Bible fit into this great debate?
2 Chronicles 26; Psalm 139
certain age of the fetus (e.g., three months); "harvesting" fetal tissues to help people with diseases like Parkinson's disease; and many more. While these concerns complicate the issue, there is one question that cuts across all of them: who can say what's right? If a person (a judge, a doctor) or a human institution (The Supreme Court or the Senate) make a decision in this matter, there is always potential for another person or institution to turn on that decision later on. It has happened countless times. What is needed, it would seem, is a judgement or ruling from someone or something higher than human opinion.
For 2,000 years, Christians have turned to the Bible for such input. Believing the bible to be God's own words on matters such as this, Jesus' followers have historically looked to the scriptures for answers to life's most important- and most difficult- questions.Unfortunately, there is no verse of Scripture that says, "Thus saith the Lord: abortion is wrong [or right]. If there was, it would be an open-and-shut case for believers. There are, however, passages that give principles that apply to this difficult topic. In Psalm 139, David praises God for overseeing his life starting before he was born. David thanks God first for the fantastic way the human body is DESIGNED AND CONSTRUCTED and then for the fact that every day of his life is "scheduled" and "recorded in God's book".
If indeed God is the Creator and Designer of human (and all other forms of) life, it is a logical conclusion that no one should treat that life lightly. If we are God's workmanship, who has the right to tamper and destroy that workmanship? Yet, tragically, that is what has happened in contemporary society. Abortion has become simply a means of birth control, of removing an unwanted complication. For those who take seriously the SANCTITY OF LIFE as an expression of God's handiwork, this can be seen only as an abomination, a sin of the most serious kind. As such, we as a society desperately need to cry out to God in repentence and ask his forgiveness in what we have allowed to be done to millions of little ones.
There are a number of of related topics (sexual morality, etc) and Scripture passages (e.g., Exodus 21:22-25; Leviticus 24:17-22, Jeremiah 1:4-5) that are closely related to the abortion issue. Concerned Christians should think through their stand on the rights of the unborn in relation to these other issues and in light of the whole counsel of God, bot just the one passage. (One principle which should always be kept in mind when considering abortion or any other moral problem is Forgiveness.) Psalms is a good place to start.
