Under Francis Schaeffer’s tutelage, Evangelicals like Chuck Colson learned to see life through the lens of a Christian worldview. Join Chuck as he celebrates a life well lived.

______________

These posts are all dealing with issues that President Obama did not help on in his first term. I am hopeful that he will continue to respond to my letters that I have written him and that he will especially reconsider his view on the following important issue. President Obama should be protecting unborn children!!!!

Article ID: DA375

By: Hank Hanegraaff

The following is an excerpt from article DA375 by Hank Hanegraaff. The full article can be found by following the link below the excerpt.

Pro-Life VS Pro-Choice- R = RAPE AND INCEST

An emotional appeal designed to avoid the serious consideration of the pro-life platform, rape and incest are the hard-case “what-ifs” pro-abortionists raise in almost every public forum: “How can you deny a hurting young girl safe medical care and freedom from the terror of rape or incest by forcing her to maintain a pregnancy resulting from the cruel and criminal invasion of her body?” The emotion of this argument often deflects serious examination of its merits and is commonly used as a pretext for abortion on demand.

It is important to note that the incidence of pregnancy as a result of rape is extremely small (one study put it at 0.6 percent).¹⁷ As philosopher Francis Beckwith astutely points out, “To argue for abortion on demand from the hard cases of rape and incest is like trying to argue for the elimination of traffic laws from the fact that one might have to violate some of them in rare instances, such as when one’s spouse or child needs to be rushed to the hospital.”¹⁸ If we had legislation restricting abortion for all reasons other than rape or incest, we would save the vast majority of the 1.8 million preborn babies who die annually in America through abortion.

Furthermore, one does not obviate the real pain of rape or incest by compounding it with the murder of an innocent preborn child; two wrongs obviously do not make a right. The very thing that makes rape evil also makes abortion evil. In both cases, an innocent human being is brutally dehumanized. The real question that must be answered is whether or not preborn children are indeed fully human. As has been already documented, the answer is a resounding Yes.

Pro-Life VS Pro-Choice- T = TOLERATION

Serving as the “great commandment” of the pro-abortion movement, the argument from toleration is perhaps the most common argument pro-abortionists level against their opponents. For example: “We’re not making you have an abortion, so why can’t you be tolerant of those who choose to?” Translated: “Don’t impose your antiquated morals on me!” At first blush this argument may seem reasonable, but on closer examination its inherent weakness becomes readily apparent. Imagine applying this line of reasoning to the issue of rape by saying, “Don’t like rape? Don’t rape anyone. Just don’t impose your morality on me!”

This false standard of tolerance is frequently supported by an appeal to religious pluralism. In this context, pro-abortionists argue that government should not take one theory of life and impose it on others. The obvious problem with this line of argumentation is that not only is the pro-abortion position forced on Christians, but they are required to fund it as well. Incredibly, pro-abortionists fail to perceive their violation of this ridiculous standard: they’re intolerant of those who think tolerance is less important than preserving innocent human lives!

Yet every society has the obligation to universally impose morals on its citizens. Toleration works in the world of expressing opinions, not in a crowded movie theater when someone chooses to yell “Fire!” We may be tolerant of one’s religious views, but not if they include enslaving grandmothers or cannibalizing teenagers.

Separation between church and state does not extend to divorcing all moral values from the state. If this were the case, we would need to eliminate all legislation that has anything in common with a religious point of view — including the very idea of social law itself.

Remember, tolerance when it comes to personal relationships is a virtue, but tolerance when it comes to truth is a travesty.

Pro-Life VS Pro-Choice- I = INEQUALITY

Inequality between the sexes is one of the most bizarre arguments put forth by the pro-abortion movement. “Women who are forced to be pregnant,” it is said, “can’t compete in employment with men and so cannot be truly equal unless they have an escape from unwanted pregnancy.” Translated, this is like saying, “Women can’t be equal to men without reconstructive surgery”! How much more sexist can an argument become?

Imagine, however, applying this standard to children outside the womb. Following this “logic” would mean that women should be permitted to abandon their children whenever they pose a threat to the mother’s opportunities for advancement.

Another form of the “inequality argument” is graphically portrayed through the image of a rusty coat hanger. Prior to Roe v. Wade, pro-abortionists claimed that because of financial inequality, women who could not afford to fly to another country to get an abortion were condemned to performing abortions on themselves with rusty coat hangers. To add credibility to this assertion, statistics ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 deaths per year due to illegal abortions continue to be widely circulated.¹⁹

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a former leader of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), had this to say about these preposterous statistics: “I confess I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too . . . But in the ‘morality’ of the revolution, it was a useful figure” (emphasis added).²⁰

According to the U. S. Bureau of Vital Statistics, the true figure of the women who died from illegal abortions in 1972 — the year prior to Roe v. Wade — is 39. It is also questionable whether any one of these 39 women died as a result of using a coat hanger. As unpleasant as it may be, consider for a moment the dexterity needed to dislodge a conceptus from a uterine wall using a crude tool like a coat hanger. The truth of the matter is that the pro-abortion argument from inequality is not only illogical, but deliberately deceptive as well.

Pro-Life VS Pro-Choice- O = OPERATION RESCUE

The no. 1 straw-man argument of the pro-abortion lobby, Operation Rescue has been unfairly condemned for using the same lines of argumentation and social protest popularized by the civil rights movement — a movement pro-abortion advocates usually extol. Furthermore, Operation Rescue has been grossly misrepresented, presumably to dismiss all pro-life activities as “extremist.” The truth, however, is that just as abolitionists harbored escaped slaves in defiance of the laws before the Civil War, compassionate Europeans hid Jews from the legally sanctioned extermination of the Nazis, and civil rights marchers violated segregation laws, so Operation Rescue members believe their nonviolent, peaceful interventions to protect preborn children are obeying God rather than man (see Acts 4:19). Nonetheless, it needs to be recognized that many of the mainstream pro-life groups do not approve of using civil disobedience and do not identify with Operation Rescue. Thus pro-abortionists cannot fairly cite Operation Rescue as a reason for rejecting the entire pro-life movement.

While it might be argued that the tactics of Operation Rescue are not the most effective means of stemming the tide of abortion, it is patently false to caricature members of Operation Rescue as social terrorists or worse. Any unbiased evaluation of the principles and procedures employed by the leadership of this organization must conclude that they have consistently advocated nonviolent civil disobedience. It is therefore inexcusable when pro-abortionists attempt to tie Operation Rescue and pro-lifers generally to the few tragic instances in which pro-life extremists have resorted to violence and murder.

On a personal note, I am grateful to God for the documented evidence of lives that have been saved through the self-sacrifice of dedicated men, women, and children involved in this movement.

Pro-Life VS Pro-Choice- N = NONPERSONHOOD

The emerging embryo may not have a fully developed personality, but it does have complete personhood. Nonpersonhood is perhaps the trickiest of the contemporary pro-abortion arguments. Pro-abortionists once argued that the preborn baby was not fully human. Now, however, advances in science have forced most people to concede that the “product of conception” is truly human. As a result, a new version of this argument goes something like this: “The preborn child may be a human life, but it does not possess personhood.”

Dr. Francis Beckwith exploded the latest version of this myth when he wrote, “From a strictly scientific point of view, there is no doubt that the development of an individual human life begins at conception. Consequently, it is vital that the reader understand that she did not come from a zygote, she once was a zygote; she did not come from an embryo, she once was an embryo; she did not come from a fetus, she once was a fetus; she did not come from an adolescent, she once was an adolescent.”²¹

The abortion epidemic ravaging America today is the tragic consequence of a decadent society that no longer values the individual human worth of each member; that worships the idol of “Selfism”; and that replaces the objective Word of God with subjective preferences and social morés.

One-third of the children conceived in America this year will be savagely slaughtered before they are born. Yet this horrifying holocaust can be halted if those who value human life, worship the true God, and obey His Word will become informed, committed, and involved.

NOTES:

¹⁷Charles R. Hayman, M.D., and Charlene Lanza, “Sexual Assault in Women and Girls,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 109 (1971): 480-86; cited in Beckwith, 241 n. 69.¹⁸Beckwith, 69.¹⁹Bernard Nathanson, M.D., Aborting America (New York: Doubleday, 1979), 193; quoted in Beckwith, 55.²⁰Ibid.²¹Beckwith, 43.