The Sanctity of Life: Abortion and the Human Conscience

"The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good 
conscience and a sincere faith."-  1 Timothy 1:5

 

Today, thousands of churches in the US are celebrating what has come to be known as "Sanctity of Life Sunday". President Ronald Reagan designated January 22, 1984 as the first National Sanctity of Human Life Day. That day was chosen to coincide with the 11th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court that legalized abortions in the nation. Beginning in 1984, coinciding with the 11th anniversary of the ruling, the third Sunday of January was designated as Sanctity of Human Life Day, the closest Sunday to the original January 22 date.

This morning, I was blessed to hear our pastor Ryan Fullerton preach a great sermon on the human conscience, particularly as it applies to abortion. This post is almost entirely based on the sermon he preached this morning. I know there will be some reading this who have had an abortion, and others who have been involved in an abortion decision. Others still might be considering abortion and some could never see themselves getting an abortion. This post is meant to proclaim again the necessity of continuing to speak for the unborn and the power of the gospel in renewing consciences and giving new life. 

A clear conscience is the softest pillow. The Bible teaches that every person was created with a conscience as a barometer of morality and right living. However, this gift was not untouched by sin. As a result there is such a thing as a bad conscience and we cannot rely on our own Jiminy Crickets perfectly to tell us how we ought to live. We cannot just follow our hearts. The conscience of many has been seared when it comes to abortion in the US and even more so in Canada. In the last 35 years, there have been over 3,000,000 (reported) abortions in Canada. That's roughly the population of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, PEI, and Nova Scotia combined. The truth is that the Canadian conscience in general is not appropriately stirred when it comes to the issue of abortion. 

The Confused Conscience (Romans 2:14-15)
We have all experienced a conflicted and confused conscience. We all lack the clarity we need to make all the proper moral decisions we are forced to make daily. When it comes to abortion, the confused and conflicted conscience has resulted in the deaths of millions around the world. Nicole's testimony was recently published in New York Magazine as part of a series of testimonies in an article entitled "My Abortion". Listen to her conflicted and confused conscience:

"It was this past spring. The due date’s coming up—I’m dreading it. I wanted to keep it. My boyfriend always had football practice, so he couldn’t go to the doctor appointments with me. If he’d gone, he would’ve felt differently. But he said, “No way.” I wanted to show him that I loved him enough to do it for him. When I was thirteen weeks, we made an appointment at the closest clinic in Kentucky, four hours away, but the night before, we decided not to go. At two in the morning, he called and said, “Get dressed.” I said, “I don’t want to go.” We both cried the whole way there. I don’t think abortion is killing, but I’d always been against it. When I told him the credit-card scanner at the clinic wasn’t working, he asked if I was making it up. We went to get $1,000 from a gas-station ATM. I was hysterical, and he said, “Okay, you don’t have to go back.” I was so happy. Then he said, “We drove all this way. Stop crying, act like a woman.” I was angry, but I was so sleepy and tired of fighting. When I had the ultrasound, I asked for the picture and a nurse said, “Seriously?” A month later, he said he regretted it too. When I cry about it, I cry alone. He thinks it would make me sad to talk about, but I don’t want our baby to think we forgot. I’ve never heard of anybody else having an abortion here." [italics mine] 

The Defiled Conscience (1 Corinthians 8:7)
We have all heard the stories of mass murderers and criminals. However, many of us have also been disturbed by their incredibly clear consciences. They are actually convinced that they did nothing wrong. There is no regret, no remorse, no guilt. It takes a great deal of sin to get our conscience that hard and calloused, but the path towards this dead conscience is a conscience that is repeatedly defiled. It is fascinating how much shame and guilt we can feel even if we don't think we should. We can be intellectually convinced that our actions are morally permissible, but we might still experience the defilement of a conscience. Take for example this testimony entitled, "I Am Pro-Choice! Why Do I Regret My Abortion?": 

It was a very early, first-trimester abortion, but nevertheless, I was pregnant and I chose not to continue the pregnancy even though deep down I desperately wanted a child. I made this choice based on my relationship with the baby’s father, who dropped me off at the clinic and I never saw again, despite having a three-to-four-year, on-and-off relationship. He promised me marriage and more children when we were ready for it, i.e. 5 or 10 years from now.His last words to me were, “Don’t worry, I’ll be back.” But that never materialized. I am only 25 (24 at the time of the abortion), but I am now convinced I missed my only chance to have a biological child. Is that crazy? I haven’t dated, least of all had sex with anyone, since that day. It feels like a part of me died that day and will never return. I am no longer upset about the end of our relationship (good riddance!) but I am truly disturbed by the entire experience. I have nightmares about my experience at the clinic, though I know they followed every medical and legal step to the T. I wish I could forgive myself and move on, but I just can’t. I wake up every morning and it is the best minute of my life before the knowledge of what happened returns to me and the cycle of sadness and regret begins all over again. I am a liberal woman and as pro-choice as you can be! Which is even more upsetting! Can you please offer me advice on moving forward with my life and freeing myself from this unending cycle of regret?

The Clean Conscience (Hebrews 10:22)
So what now? The only hope for the misery of a guilty conscience is the death and resurrection of Jesus. You can't deal with your unsettled conscience by trying to be a better person. Turn to the Lord, he died to cleans the conscience and the guilt that leads to death. He died so that defiled consciences could be purified. Taste his sweet conscience-cleansing grace! 

What are the implications of understanding and believing in the sanctity of human life? It's not simply about abortion. It's not simply about thinking carefully about the method of birth control we choose to use (although that is a very important implication too!). Greed, sexual immorality, convenience, financial stability have all led to abortions. It is true that having less children might make your life more convenient. It is true that the raising of children does not come without many hard days and nights. Much in the same way, choosing to speak for the unborn will not be easy, convenient, or appealing most of the time. Genetic disorders are no legitimate excuse for abortion. Neither is teenage pregnancy, rape, or financial situation. How then should you and I live in light of these truths? Here are some suggestions:

1) Do not think yourself too high or too low to speak against abortion
2) Do not think yourself too high or too low to speak positively about all children
3) Financially support and volunteer at a "Women's Pregnancy Center"
4) Increase your political activity
5) Cultivate a culture in which every child is welcomed

Baby 59 - The Moral and Sentimental Antithesis to our Pro-Choice Obsessed Culture

Baby 59 made headlines all over the world earlier this week when a video of his rescue began to circulate. The newborn baby boy, named after the incubator number where he spent the first couple of days of his life, was rescued from a toilet drainage pipe after residents of the apartment building heard cries coming from the plumbing. Initially, authorities thought the baby had been abandoned and said they would be treating the case as one of attempted homicide. However, local authorities have now concluded that the baby was trapped by accident after reports coming from the mother insisted that she went to the shared bathroom when she felt abdominal cramps. She explained that the baby slipped into the sewer pipe and she was unable to free him. It was the mother herself who sounded the alarm for the rescue team to come. She was present during the rescue that lasted well over two hours and explained that she wanted to raise the child herself but had no idea how to do it.

I have found the images and videos from the baby's rescue to be some of the most deeply heart-wrenching and emotionally disturbing I have seen in a very long time. British columnist Jonathan Jones writes, "Some pictures are moving because they make you sympathize with victims of violence. This one exerts a terrible psychological hold because the baby's release from the pipe is a macabre travesty of birth". He then goes on to describe his own emotional response to the images, "For me this poor baby is a figure of ultimate abandonment, a child whose early hours were spent in a filthy claustrophobic tube, with injuries that include a broken skull, fighting for life – and crying, successfully, for help – in the darkness and dirt."

Ultimate abandonment, filth, broken skull, fighting for life, crying for help - that was the state of this Chinese baby when the world first heard of him. The images and sounds that were witnessed can hardly be imagined. I cannot think of one person that was not, at that moment in time, waiting patiently and hoping that somehow this baby could survive.

There was, however, another person present at that rescue who needed help, who needed care and who needed support. It is hard to imagine what the mother was going through. Single, alone, and afraid, she watched as local authorities cut the pipe open to reveal her baby boy still attached to the placenta. Whether or not her story is completely true and regardless of whether or not more details about her circumstances will come up later, there is a sense of sympathy for the mentally and emotionally paralyzed mother.

Nevertheless, at that moment, all efforts were on the baby, all eyes were on the baby, all hopes were on the baby, all prayers were for the baby.

It is hard to imagine that any person at that moment would hesitate to do everything within their power to save the baby's life. We know, however, that in our culture that is exactly what takes place. The moral and natural priorities exhibited in the rescue of Baby 59 to savea baby's life regardless of any circumstances or desires stand in stark contrast to those of our nation, where a mother's choice trumps the decision to keep her baby alive.

To this day, Canada remains the only country in the developed world where there are no laws regulating abortions. In our nation, a mother can legally abort her baby at any point in time during her pregnancy - including up to the delivery itself. It is not a crime for a doctor (or anyone else for that matter) to kill the baby as per the mother's instructions as long as the child is not yet fully born. While there are different provincial and medical policies and regulations whereby a doctor might lose his or her license to practice if such an event were to take place, they would not be charged with a crime.

According to Stats Canada, there were 377,213 live births in Canada in 2010(1). In that same year there were also 64,641 abortions reported nationwide(2). That's more than 1 abortion for every 7 births! However, since the court struck down reporting requirements in 1988, it is difficult to know how accurate these figures are - they are obviously reflective of only a fraction of the abortions that took place.

It is hard to rationalize or imagine an alternate conclusion to the baby's rescue in China. The authorities could have stopped and asked the mother what she wanted to do with the baby prior to beginning the rescue, and she might have said "I'm not ready to have a baby", or "the baby is really sick", or "the baby is an inconvenience to me at this time, please kill it". The rescuers might have then heeded the mother's instructions and proceeded to remove the crying baby from the pipes and done as the mother had asked.

That alternate video would have undoubtedly sparked a warranted debate and protest against what had just happened. The truth, however, is that this alternate story would not be very different from what happens in our city, in our hospitals, in our clinics, in our own backyard every single day - legally, quietly and privately.

This alternate ending to Baby 59's life is not unlike what Alisa LaPolt Snow, a lobbyist representing Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, argued should happen to a live baby of a "botched" abortion. When asked what Planned Parenthood would want to have happen to a child that is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, she responded, "We believe that any decision that's made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician". You can watch the shocking response she gave on behalf of Planned Parenthood during the Civil Justice Subcommittee's consideration of the "Infants Born Alive Act" just a few weeks ago by clicking here. 

The fact that any decision that is made regarding a baby's life should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician is exactly what Canadian laws seem to endorse and support. A mother in Canada can give any or no reason at all for wanting to abort her baby at any point in her pregnancy. While she might find it hard to find a reputable doctor to do so later on in pregnancy, it not something that is illegal and many times it is deemed "understandable". That veto over a child's life in the form of a choice is precisely what pro-choice advocates believe the priorities are. They believe the decisive verdit in determining whether a baby should live or die should come down to a choice, and not the baby's. But that is precisely what we don't see or could imagine seeing when we watch the video of this baby's rescue. When it comes to Baby 59, it is simply unfathomable to think that there could have existed any reason or circumstance given by the baby's mother that would have changed the outcome of the rescue.

Maybe it was the video. Maybe it was actually seeing a baby fighting to survive the only way it knows to fight - through tears and wailing. Maybe we don't really believe that choice trumps  life. Maybe Gregg Cunningham was right, "Injustice that is invisible inevitably becomes tolerable. But injustice that is made visible inevitably becomes intolerable".

(1). Stats Canada, CANSIM, "Table 102-4503: Births and total fertility rate, by province and territory", Statistics Canada, 2013, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/hlth85a-eng.htm

(2). CIHI, "Induced Abortions Performed in Canada in 2010", Canadian Institute for Health Information, 2010, http://www.cihi.ca/CIHI-ext-portal/pdf/internet/TA_10_ALLDATATABLES20120417_EN