Abortion is a hot button issue and is directly or indirectly on the ballot this election season.
Unfortunately, in this particular election, it seems that neither party is unabashedly pro-life---even though the Declaration of Independence says the Creator has endowed us with the right to life.
However, there are major differences in degree between the two parties. I cannot in good conscience support the widespread killing of unborn babies. Here are three reasons why I vote pro-life:
- I believe the Bible is the Word of God. I believe an honest reading of the Bible leads to a pro-life conclusion.
Life is a precious gift from God. The Bible makes this clear.
For example, David writes in Psalm 139: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works.” A friend of mine from church says that “Psalm 139 is the world’s first ultrasound.”
In the New Testament, in Luke 1:41, the Greek word “brephos” is used to speak of the yet-unborn John the Baptist. The word means baby---born or unborn.
- Abortion today is like the child sacrifices to Moloch and other false gods in the Bible.
One aspect of the pagan nations that surrounded Israel in those ancient days was the common practice of child sacrifice.
In the ancient world, child sacrifice was a common phenomenon. Archaeologists have unearthed ancient cemeteries, near pagan temples, of babies that had been sacrificed.
For example, Halley’s Bible Handbook states this about notorious Baal-worship, repeatedly condemned in the Old Testament: “Prophets of Baal and Ashtoreth were official murderers of little children.”
And then there was the notorious god, named Moloch. The worshipers of Moloch would sacrifice their babies to this god---placing live babies on the burning hot arms of the statue of Moloch. We look back at that and think, “How horrible. Boy, it’s great we’re so civilized now.” But in its own way, abortion is basically child sacrifice—a sacrifice to the false gods of convenience and “self-realization.”
- The selling of abortion is based on a series of lies, one after another.
Perhaps, the biggest lie to promote abortion is that the baby is not human. The Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade (1973) said, “[T]he word ‘person,’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.”
But ultrasound images reveal the humanity of the unborn more and more. Generally, the abortion industry tries to keep pregnant women, would-be-clients, from seeing these moving images---lest they change their minds.
Carol Everett was a part-owner of some abortion facilities in the Dallas area, until her Christian conversion. She revealed that in the front of the facility, the girl asks, “Is it a baby?” Abortion facility staff tell her, “No, it’s just a blob of tissue. It’s a POC—a ‘product of conception.’”
But after each abortion, in the back of the very same facility, someone is assigned the grisly task of piecing the parts back together after each abortion. The head, the spine, the arms, the hands, the legs, the feet. It is a baby. (If anything is left inside the womb, this could cause an infection.)
Abortion is sold as if it’s pro-choice. But studies show that the majority of women who abort didn’t think they had much choice in the matter. OB-GYN Ingrid Skop, M.D., writes: “A recent peer-reviewed study conducted by [Charlotte Lozier Institute] scholars found that only one-third of abortions are ‘wanted.’” But she says the rest were coerced. While abortion was inconsistent with the pregnant mothers’ values, they faced dire consequences from their parents or “significant others” should they not abort.
Abby Johnson, former Planned Parenthood employee of the year, dramatically left abortion behind after witnessing the sonogram of a 15-week old unborn boy being obliterated by an abortion in her own clinic. She wrote the book, along with Cindy Lambert, Unplanned.
In her follow-up book, The Walls Are Talking: Former Abortion Clinic Workers Tell Their Stories, Johnson quotes a former abortion worker, who noted: “I can’t deny that the business of abortion is a lucrative one. Its laborers are well compensated with enviable benefits packages and perks. [But] I now understand that life is God’s most precious gift. It is light. And there is no darker place on earth than one that profits from the death of innocent children.” [Emphasis added]
No wonder Mother Teresa once noted, “Abortion is a crime that kills not only the child but the consciences of all involved.”
How can so many professed Christians stand on the sidelines and not vote in a pro-life way when so many babies’ lives and the well-being of their mothers are at stake? Surely, this is not an election to sit out.
Dr. Jerry Newcombe is the executive director of Providence Forum, a division of Coral Ridge Ministries, where Jerry also serves as senior producer and an on-air contributor. He has written/co-written 33 books, including (with D. James Kennedy), What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? and (with Dr. Peter Lillback), George Washington’s Sacred Fire.