Safe legal abortions - a convenient lie

One more abortion lie unmasked

As I have said the whole pro-abortion movement which from about the 1960's made it socially acceptable to kill our unborn children and almost blasphemous to say otherwise was based on lies and propaganda.

The very idea that somehow women were being “liberated” by being cajoled into thinking that an act that God regards as murder was no sin at all is nothing short of diabolical.

Churches, who had a responsibility to warn against sin, must bear the greatest responsibility. Society at large must bear the rest. That is you and me. We stayed silent while the moral fibre of our society was being whittled away.

One lie about abortion is still trotted out almost whenever anyone dares question our current social mores. It is this:

“Women will die if they are denied safe legal abortions”.

No! They won't.

And the answer is black and white! And once again comes from statistics. This time statistics anyone can access.

As part of my researches in 1990 I read an extract from a U.K. Government statistical service report entitled ‘1983 Abortion Statistics, England & Wales’

Take two periods since abortion was legalised in England and Wales.

In 1969 there were 54,157 legal abortions, and 15 women died following abortion.

Just 14 years later, in 1983 there were 162,161 legal abortions, and only 1 woman died.

Remember in both these years abortion was legal.

So making abortions legal had nothing to do with making them “safe” (for the mother that is – the baby always dies!)

In fact if we go back to the early1800's in America, abortions were legal, but the means used were almost as likely to kill the woman as end the pregnancy.

What reduced the proportion of women dying undergoing abortions was simply advances in medicine – particularly modern antibiotics.

Until we enter another dark age where modern medicine is lost and antibiotics fail to keep pace with the evolution of pathogens, abortions will continue to be as safe as they are at present for women who undergo them regardless of whether they are legal or illegal.

My Adventures with God: Chapter 10

Ch.10:   More Friends & a Foe

Reprieved! I started visiting churches looking for a “catechist” position. This was a very dispiriting experience. Perhaps it was me; perhaps it was them; most likely it was God, but none of the churches I visited made me feel I would ever want to go back there, let alone work there! That is until West Lindfield.

Sue and I went to an evening service at All Saints Anglican Church West Lindfield. Admittedly this was their main service for the day. But in contrast to the others we had visited it was packed. Not only that but packed with young and old alike. Also for me it was a repeat of my experience the first time I visited Turramurra Methodist – something inside me said: “you're home: This is it.”

Naturally after the service we talked to the minister and I told him I wanted to work there as a catechist and I think there must have been a formal interview later that week. In my enthusiasm I did not notice any reticence on the minister's part, but he later told Sue that he really didn't want me – but he gave up and took me in the end because I just wouldn't take the hint and go away!

The minister, Norm Gelding was just “Uncle Norm” to his flock and his wife “Mrs Norm.” They were former missionaries in Tanzania. Uncle Norm was nudging retirement age. He ran a stock-standard (for that time) evensong but with an “altar call” every time. Mrs Norm sat up the back and nothing escaped her eagle eye. Many a young pair having a discreet cuddle during the service got a gentle talking to afterwards.

The church was vibrantly Christian. It was inter-generational to an extent rare in those days. It was also closely bonded together.

For instance the young adults that I was to minister amongst hardly needed it. They met each Friday night in someone's home for a Bible study and prayer – the study leading was done by everyone in turn, and they covered a chapter of the Bible each time. Every Easter (a 4 or 5 day public holiday in Australia) they organised a camp with brilliant military precision which saw a hundred or so young people and chaperoning adults under canvas at some interesting holiday destination. At these discipline was strict. The boy found with a packet of cigarettes had his parents called and asked to take him home. Everything was thought of. In the camping area even the 'casual' arrangement of the car parking was thought out to block any would-be intruders. Sue commented one time we were all at a swimming pool how the young girls were innocently unaware how much effect they were having in their bikini's on the local boys. But their safety was assured by “big brothers” from the youth group who while unaffected, kept a watchful guard.

Uncle and Mrs Norm were also great. Every Sunday night after the crowds had finally dispersed we went back to the rectory. Here over coffee and Uncle Norm's customary ice-cream and chocolate topping we just talked. It never seemed particularly “religious” we just talked about everything. But bit-by-bit we were learning. They shared their experiences as missionaries. How they dealt with family crises. In everything we were like apprentices just seeing and learning how mature Christians did things.

We also learned more of Sydney Diocese politics. From amusing stories of Uncle Norm, the current Archbishop and Bishop Kerle having wrestling matches when they were all students together in Moore College to explanations of Sydney's doctrines vis-a-vis the rest of Australia.

As with the Kerle's I have no doubt the Geldings prayed a great deal for us. We undoubtedly needed it. We certainly benefited from it.

But I was still annoyed at the diocese for neglecting the theological students that were supposed to be training to be ministers in that diocese. We formed a plan. What if we could have a dinner for our year of students and get the Archbishop to come and meet them. Most of them had never even spoken to the Archbishop, only to college lecturers and the star chamber of assistant bishops.

Sue talked this over with Mrs Norm, who pointed out that Mrs. Kerle's sister was the Archbishop's wife. So Sue talked to Mrs. Kerle about the plan. The answer came back: “The Archbishop has never done so before and will never do so again, but just this once if he is officially invited he will come to a dinner with his ordinands.”

Now It was my turn to ask permission from Dr Knox, the principal of Moore College. He smiled his usual vague smile when I asked him and replied: “Of course you can have a year dinner and oh, you can invite the Archbishop if you wish: Of course he won't come.”

The Dinner was a huge success. The students catered for it (I nearly ruined our contribution by misreading “tbs” in the recipe for “lbs” pounds instead of tablespoons; luckily the it still tasted good even with six pounds of tomato paste!) The staff had to dig out their dog-collars to look suitably clerical, and the Archbishop was most gracious and socialised freely with his student ministers.

Bob, one of the more extrovert students in our year played Master of Ceremonies. The students, although a bit nervous really enjoyed it both as a social event and also seeing the archbishop in person.

The principal needless to say was not amused. But he hid his chagrin – he could afford to wait.

End of year came, the bishops wanted to move me to another church because I was plainly popular where I was. Uncle Norm and his churchwardens went in to bat this time and I was left at West Lindfield for the coming year.

With start of term just a few weeks away disaster struck. Not on me but on Bob who had so ably MC'd the student dinner. He was expelled and told that he and his wife must vacate their campus house. I think they were only given a week or so to be out – something so harsh that no secular landlord would be allowed to do it.

The pretext was that he failed his Greek exam. Their biblical sleight-of-hand was to quote the text “And the Lord's servant must be … able to teach” 2Timothy 2:24 and then add “obviously one is not able to teach the things of God without being fluent in biblical Greek”

By chance or by Divine providence just after I heard their sad news I was walking through the University grounds next door to Moore and noticed a billboard. It advertised a talk to be given the next day by Leon Morris, a noted Evangelical scholar and as it happened the principal of Ridley College in Melbourne. I told Bob and we both went to it and took the opportunity to speak to Leon and ask for his help after the talk. He was as gracious as Moore was brutal and within the week Bob and his wife had all their worldly goods loaded onto a friends ute and trailer for the trip to Melbourne.

People should stop and consider when God goes out of his way to confound their predictions. Bob did the final year of theological studies at Ridley (without Greek!) was ordained, was a highly successful parish minister and at the time of writing is an archdeacon (a sort of mini-bishop) and in charge of guiding Melbourne diocese's theological education programs.

My year passed uneventfully as far as college was concerned. No, that is not quite true. We all had to do trial sermon in the college chapel. It was video recorded. Later that day a reference group would go through it with the student and show them the error of their ways – not so much in style since that was unimportant but certainly in theology, which was.

I did my trial sermon. Being quite nervous the style was probably quite bad. But there was no review of it. The video had been accidentally erased. There had, I heard, been a very heated debate about my sermon in the staffroom over morning tea.

On the personal level Suzie and I (well she did the difficult bit) had our first baby – a boy who we named David.

Being 30 years old and having a baby I qualified to skip the usual 4^th year at Moore and to be ordained if I passed the external exams at the end of 3^rd year. I wanted to be out of college and doing something useful, so I naturally applied for this. Having been careful to keep out of trouble as Uncle Norm and Mrs Norm kept reminding me to I fully expected to be assigned to a church as a curate and ordained.

Year end came, tentative curate positions were announced. I was not among them. The 'second tier' of curacies was announced: I was not on that list either.

Uncle Norm made enquiries. Dr Knox the principal of Moore, he was told, had not recommended me for ordination and no one was ordained without his personal recommendation.

Abortion as Murder

Let's call it a 'Decalogue Rule'

Since the term 'Absolute Rule' as something different to a blanket rule has been hijacked and made to mean 'blanket rule' I need a new word for a rule that brooks no disobedience where it applies, but may not apply in every conceivable situation. So let's try this one: the Ten Commandments are commonly known as the Decalogue (Ten Words) – so I'll coin the tern “Decalogue Rule” and I will start with our current project of applying “No Murdering” to abortion begin to work out how a Decalogue Rule operates.

Looking at the Decalogue Rule: No Murdering.

First what is its extent as far life-forms are concerned

To put it another way, are we forbidden from killing any and every form of life.

No! Definitely not. Even a quick reading of the first dozen chapters of Genesis leaves no room for doubt that the big moral divide is between humans and animals. By chapter 9 this has crystallised into :

“The beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air … will be food for you.

So we humans are not out of step with the rest of the natural world in this regard. We too can kill animals for food.

Genesis 9 also institutes a ceremonial pouring out of the blood of animals killed for food – it seems to be a simple but dramatic acknowledgement that the animal's life belongs to God and the hunter or herdsman has only killed “under licence” so to speak.

I believe this 'licence to kill' regarding animals extends beyond food to what is necessary for our beneficial management of the earth – exterminating locusts, rodents and feral pests for instance. But I shall not pursue that here.

Secondly what is the extent as far as human life is concerned?

Once we have established that 'No Murdering' is about killing humans, the next logical step is to establish which humans.

The passage quoted from Genesis 9 continues “ … Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed for in the image of God has God made man.”

So in contrast to the situation with animals, no licence is given for one human being to terminate the life of another whose continued existence is inconvenient. God reserves that permission to himself. So serious is God about not giving humans licence to wantonly kill other humans that he orders the death penalty (a killing that then is specifically “licensed”) for murderers.

To me this seems to say that all life belongs to God, who alone has the absolute moral right to kill. Humans are permitted to kill animals “under licence”. Humans are precisely not licensed to kill each other at at will.

Us humans being what we are, we will naturally want to reduce this scope. We will be happy for it to prohibit killing “one of us” but not “one of them”. “No murdering other members of our tribe; but members of the next tribe are fair game”. “No murdering people of our religion; but killing heretics and unbelievers is OK (or even a sacred duty)”. “Look after your comrades, but death to the aristocrats” and so forth.

So a Nazi SS trooper might have said “Jews are sub-human so this is not murder” as he herded whole families into the gas chambers. But ironically, the Nazi regime – the very epitome of evil - was still sufficiently aware that they really had committed murder to try to obliterate all evidence of their death camps.

Uncle Tom's Cabin made its readers empathise with black slaves as human beings. Once that mental jump had been made our treatment of them appeared before us for precisely what it was.

My point is that historically the human tendency has been to try to excuse a whole swath of killings by claiming that the human life in question falls outside the scope of the command. It was always a lie and one later generations generally scornfully condemned.

In the abortion debate this particular evasion of the command has been at the forefront.

Academic pro-abortion moralists tried to get away from “human” to some qualification like “person-hood”. “A foetus is undoubtedly at all stages human but it is not, in the moral sense, a person” they said. Indeed one noted philosopher was quite happy to advocate killing unwanted children on a similar pretext. This whole line of argument was never more than a poor ruse by so-called philosophers who while posing as fearless thinkers were really only propagandists for the mores of their social group.

In my earlier works I engaged with their arguments as though they were worthy of serious debate. Not now. I see now that heir ideas were and are just pathetic excuses for the bad morals of their group.

Pro-abortion polemicists of the more populist variety consistently play the “its my body” card to imply the life they are terminating is not a human life. Once again one only has to stop shouting this mantra and think for a moment to see the inescapable truth that it is complete rubbish! Of course it is a human life – with DNA from a mother and a father what else could it be. And since the whole point of abortion is to avoid giving birth to a live baby it is utterly perverse to claim it is only “my body”.

A foetus is human rather than animal therefore killing a foetus is within the extent of this Decalogue Rule

Thirdly, does the Rule prohibit killing in all situations

.

No. The rule does not prohibit killing in all circumstances. We dealt with this in an earlier post, but to re-cap:

Capital punishment is specifically exempt.

War is in general specifically exempt. Killing your enemy in battle was never considered murder.

Protection of self or loved ones from real threat of death. eg. Killing a thief is murder; but killing the intruder during a home invasion in the darkness is not. (Exodus 22.2)

So in the case where an abortion is necessary to save the mother's life the answer is simply that this is a situation where taking human life is not prohibited.

Fourthly, is there a roughly similar situation the Rule is specifically declared to cover

The paradigm case is set out in Exodus 21:14, where after excluding accidental killing the text cites “... but if anyone schemes and kills someone deliberately” as murder. This would seem to cover the most common case of modern abortion. However to be certain let us look further.

We would not expect to find direct reference to modern abortion practice. The reason is blindingly obvious once you think about it: children were immensely valued. Think about the conversations recorded between Abram and God about Abram's longing for a child. Or Rachel's desperation at being childless. An outstanding one is Tamar, widowed without children she resorts to pretending to be a prostitute to get pregnant by dead husbands' father and he declares “She is more righteous than I”. Having children was hugely important.

Socially children were important, economically they werevital – there was no social service – if you did not have children to support you in your old age you starved. Killing one's unborn child would have been so absurd as to be totally incomprehensible in Biblical times. Even prostitutes valued their children – remember Solomon's display of wisdom settling a case where two prostitutes each claimed the same baby as theirs.

So to make anything of an absence of rulings about abortion as we know it in the Bible would be so stupid as to be simply perverse.

But were there predicaments or actions which we could legitimately use by inference? Indeed yes. Here are just two examples:

1. King David after he committed adultery with Bathsheeba. The problem was that she became pregnant. Her husband Uriah was away at the war against the Ammonites.

David tried recalling Uriah on a pretext and scheming to get him to go home and have sex with his wife so the child could be passed off as his and the adultery concealed.

When that failed David had Uriah placed in the most dangerous position in an attack so that he was conveniently killed by the enemy.

We know what God thought about this because the Bible records the prophet Nathan confronting David.

2 Samuel 12 records Nathan's beguiling story to David about a rich man taking the pet lamb of a poor man …. when David's anger is engaged and he bursts out: “This man deserves to die!” Nathan springs his trap with: “You are the man!” …. “You killed Uriah with the sword of the Ammonites”

David was in a position of even greater temptation than most women seeking abortions. The child was going cause him great political damage by exposing his adultery as well as placing Bathsheeba at great risk. Many men were dying in the war, why not this one in particular? All David's problems would go away.

The “why not” was because it was murder.

In actual fact it did not make David's problems go away – it multiplied them – and three thousand years later we are still talking about his crime. We should pause and consider that while many women seek an abortion thinking it will make their problems go away they may be just as mistaken as David was about the solution to his problems.

2. Human Sacrifices. This was part of Ancient Near East culture, but was not meant to be part of the religion of ancient Israel. However it did creep into popular worship – particularly of the pagan god Molech. The parallel to abortion is that children were being killed on the supposition that this was necessary for economic benefit – perhaps in people's distorted thinking even necessary for survival by ensuring abundant crops. We should not forget that the common people lived very close to the prospect of starvation if crops failed.

So the supposed benefits of sacrificing children to Molech were every bit as great if not greater than the supposed benefits of the vast majority of modern abortions.

Jeremiah 7:20ff “The people of Judah have done great evil in my eyes, declares the Lord … They have built the high places of Topheth in the valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire – something I did not command nor did it enter my mind!”

2 Kings 23:10 “(King Josiah) desecrated Topheth, which was in the valley of Ben Hinnom so that no-one could use it to sacrifice his son or daughter in the fire to Molech.”

Child sacrifices are condemned by the Bible, and condemned for their own evilness as well as being part of pagan practices. If anyone tries to get around this by maintaining that the condemnation is just of a pagan practice one could say of modern abortion practice that it too is part of the forbidden worship of idols – in our case we are sacrificing our unborn children to the idols and false gods of our culture!

Conclusion:

If we leave aside the tiny proportion of abortions where there is real risk to the mothers life – because in that case taking another human life to save hers is justified; If we also leave aside the “hard cases” because there is at least argument for making an exception; we are left with this:

over 96% of current abortions are what the Bible calls “murder”.

As I wrote at the beginning of this section, the only reason I dare say this is because I can put it side-by-side with a message of redemption!

There is redemption, there is forgiveness, there is healing, there is an antidote for guilt, there are new beginnings.

BUT

there is also the moral necessity to warn people against taking this path.

THAT

is precisely where modern moralists, radical feminists, and preachers who care more for what people think than what God thinks of them, have failed the women and men our our time

My Adventures with God Ch.9: Bullies

Ch 9:  at Moore College Pt 2 : Bullies

I was about to get right up the noses of some powerful people. Meanwhile God was a few steps ahead and was turning up some very supportive friends.

I don't like bullies. I was bullied at school. That may be behind it. I also think the strong should protect the weak, not prey on them. I would like to think that is part of why I stand up to bullies.

I mostly just suffered in silence when I was bullied as a youngster. Twice the bully went over some line invisible even to me and I found hidden strengths.

First occasion was in sixth grade. The bully in question was going to beat me up in front of a crowd during playtime. I only know this because I remember even after all these years the sea of kids parting as I stood there and he advanced towards me. I landed the first and only punch of the bout and he went down howling and clutching his eye. That landed us both in the headmaster's office.

The second was a couple of years later. High school, but I don't remember which grade. The bully had me backed against a brick wall that had just been built. There was a stack of bricks beside it and he made the mistake of picking one up and making as if to hit me with it. In those days we all wore neck-ties. I reached up and tightened his – the results were really dramatic, and landed me in another headmaster's office.

Moore College, and much of Sydney Diocese was strongly Calvinist and Calvinism is one of the many -ism's that provide a haven for bullies. Sydney diocese had its share of 'hard-men' who found they liked feeling they were really doing God a service while being mean to people.

Moore trained ordinands for a couple of dioceses as well as the Presbyterian Church and some independent students. The Sydney diocese candidates had no contact with the diocese from one year's end to another. Candidates for Armidale diocese were much better treated. Their bishop, although he lived five hundred kilometres from Sydney – was a frequent visitor to Moore. He visited his trainees in their campus homes, he was often seen in the street talking to students who found him a source of encouragement.

But, at each years end Sydney candidates were summoned one-by-one to an inquisition. This was not a friendly chat. This was a grilling before three assistant bishops and two representatives of the evangelical party which controlled the diocese. We had been warned by more senior students what it would be like. We also knew that many would be rejected and told to remove themselves from their college houses forthwith. The rejects would be left feeling that as Christians they were scrap-heap material.

Fore-warned is not always fore-armed. I saw the man who had been interviewed before me come out in tears. A grown man! A man with a wife and children. A man who had sacrificed his career to offer for the ordained ministry. A man I knew as a fine human being and a devout Christian. A man in tears because he had been worked over by bullies.

I thought: “You bastards! I am going to give you as good as I get!” and I did.

I would have been out but for Bishop Kerle. He had allowed to return to Sydney from being bishop of Armidale on the condition that he would stay out of diocesan politics. He was our minister at St Swithun's Pymble. But he was also known throughout the diocese as a powerful man of God. He stepped up and interceded with the archbishop on my behalf. So a stay of execution was granted.

There were conditions. We had been living in my old family home in leafy Pymble, we had to move onto campus and rent one of the college houses in grimy Newtown. I had been attending St Swithun's as a parishioner. Now I had to find a new church that would take me on as a 'catechist' – a theological student who worked in the parish on Sundays, and generally one session during the week.

God was to use this to bring us new friends and allies. I was going to need them.