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How Does Your Church View Abortions?

ON January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of liberalized abortion laws. Other countries have taken a similar course.

How do you view such changes? Do you believe it is right to destroy a developing, though unborn, child? Does your church?

Many churches do. For example, in a resolution adopted on May 31, 1968, the American Baptist Churches of the U.S.A. urged “that legislation be enacted to provide: That the termination of a pregnancy . . . be at the request of the individuals concerned and be regarded as an elective medical procedure.”

Also, the General Council of the United Church of Canada affirmed “that abortion is morally justifiable in certain medical, social and economic circumstances, and should be a private matter between a woman and her doctor.”

Hundreds of clergymen took a lead in seeking to liberalize abortion laws. For example, an appeal to vote for abortion law reform appeared in the Jackson, Michigan, Citizen Patriot of November 6, 1972. Signed by 178 clergymen, it said:

“We believe that abortion​—like religion—​is a personal decision, and that the State should not prevent a woman from following the dictates of her conscience.”

Following the long list of clergymen’s names, the paper said:

“The clergy listed above have ecclesiastical standing in 14 denominations whose national bodies have issued statements supporting abortion law reform.”

Among the many churches endorsing liberalized abortion laws are the United Church of Christ, the United Presbyterian Church, the Lutheran Church in America and the United Methodist Church. The New York City Council of Churches, which includes some twenty-three denominations, said in its paper Metropolitan Church News:

“The news of the Supreme Court’s decision favoring women’s rights to determine whether or not to have an abortion was received with deep appreciation by the officers and staff of the Council.”

True, top Roman Catholic leaders voice displeasure. Yet some priests support abortion. And the National Catholic Reporter of September 15, 1972, said: “Fifty-six percent of the nation’s Catholics, according to the latest Gallup Poll on abortion, believe that the decision to terminate pregnancy should be made ‘solely by a woman and her physician.”’

Justifying its revolutionary decision, the Supreme Court noted that the unborn are not “recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense.” Thus the Court permits terminating the life of the unborn up to the twenty-eighth week of pregnancy.

However, most abortions are performed earlier, usually before the thirteenth week of pregnancy. And so the Supreme Court overruled all state laws that prohibit or restrict abortions during this thirteen-week period. The Court contended that such abortions, for the woman, are relatively safe.

But, of course, the developing child inside the mother is destroyed. Of what does the unborn child really consist? Is it simply an indistinguishable blob of tissue?

Commenting on this, Dr. Denis Cavanaugh noted in Ob. Gyn. [Obstetrical Gynecological] News:

“At the end of the second week [of pregnancy] differentiation of the cardiovascular and nervous systems begins. At the end of 6 weeks [which is about the time a woman usually becomes certain she is pregnant] all the internal organs of the complete human being are present . . .

“By the end of the eighth week the skeleton has begun to form, and the eyes, fingers and toes are evident, so that the embryo is now called a fetus. . . . After the eighth week, no new major structures will be added, and further growth will consist of maturation and development of the existing structures rather than the creation of anything new.”

Thus Dr. P. G. Coffey wrote in the Toronto Daily Star:

“There is no essential difference biologically between an unborn infant and one that has been born, or if you want a specific example, between a two- to three-month-old fetus and a newborn baby, except that one is more mature than the other.”

Clearly the developing child that is destroyed is not an indistinguishable blob of tissue! Some children aborted within the time period permitted by law move and breathe; some even survive the abortion process. The New York Times of February 1, 1972, noted:

“Nurses in delivery rooms had been accustomed to every conceivable effort to save babies, even those of one to three pounds, and they found that sometimes they were ‘salting out’ [aborting] bigger babies than those they had worked to save. . . . Recently a baby emerged from the salting out process still alive.”

Is it not understandable, then, why Dr. George C. Manning wrote that abortion is “murder just as certainly as it is murder willfully to turn off the heat in the incubator of a 1-1/2 pound premature baby”? Some persons worry what the next possible step may be. As Sir John Peel, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, asked:

“If society gives sanction to the destruction of life for one set of circumstances for what it claims to be the good of society, why should it not sanction the infanticide of the abnormal neonate [newborn child], the mental defective, the delinquent, the incurable, the senile?”

Could you approve of killing a helpless newborn infant? But is it not just as wrong to kill a baby before it is born? According to God’s law given through Moses, the human embryo or fetus was considered a life, and God’s law protected that life. (Ex. 21:22, 23) Should we not have similar regard for the unborn? Yet many, many religions take a stand contrary to what God’s Word says. Where does your church stand?

[Picture on page 420]

When the U.S. Supreme Court approved abortions that would kill infants such as this one, many churches applauded the decision. How do you think that God views such churches?