Yeshua Explored
Abortion
Is abortion murder?
You shall not murder. (Exodus 20:13)
It has been disclosed that sex-selective abortions may have resulted in the deaths of more than twenty-three million girls around the world. Research from the National University of Singapore, reported in the New Scientist, found that, since sex-selective abortion became readily available in the 1970s, male births dominated in twelve countries. The majority of “missing” females are in China and India, with the deaths more or less equally split between the two. Is it right to call these “deaths”? If so, then surely this is murder on an apocalyptic scale, yet nobody has been brought to book over it.
Have you seen some of the videos on what actually happens with some late abortions and the tools that are employed to perform these procedures? It is beyond horrific and on a par with images of gruesome atrocities that emerge from human conflicts. Out of sight, out of mind?
Just a few inches of female flesh separate the killing fields of the womb from the incubator in intensive care. And the former situation is triggered by a single decision, that of the mother whether to abort the foetus, for whatever reason. A chilling comparison is to those Roman emperors who controlled the lives of defeated gladiators simply through the swivel of a fist and a protruding thumb. This is not to put the basic morality of the mother on par with this Roman gruesomeness, simply to examine the moral climate that makes such decisions possible. It is society and its laws that are in the dock here, whether or not a foetus has the right to live and whether the mother has a right to choose? Both questions are connected because, if a foetus has no right to live, then the mother is free to choose life or death and, conversely, if the foetus has the right to live, the mother has to think long and hard about the decision she is going to make.
Does a foetus have a right to live? Following my opening statement in the previous paragraph, is this governed by mere geography? Surely, in the short distance between womb and mother’s breast, nothing has changed physically, spiritually or morally for that “baby-to-be”? Early in 2019 in the USA, the Republicans put forward a bill called the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection act. Its aim was to ensure that, in the case where aborted babies survive, doctors provide as much care in the well-being of the baby than if it had been a normal birth. Thanks to opposition by some Democrats, the bill was defeated! What does this say about (some in) society’s view on whether a foetus has a right to live?
Can abortion be seen as murder? You decide.
This is an extract from the book, Sinner’s Charter: Are the ten commandments for today?, available for £10 at https://www.sppublishing.com/the-sinners-charter-260-p.asp
