The Decision-Making Process

   Having examined the important biblical and medical facts, we are now in a better position to face the practical questions of decision making on abortion. When, if ever, would abortion be ethically justified for the Christian? What about cases of rape? Are anticipated birth defects grounds for abortion? What about unwanted pregnancies?

   Other questions surface at the level of public policy. Would a return to restrictive abortion laws mean an increase in illegal abortions and maternal deaths? In a pluralistic society, should Christians seek laws that reflect their moral convictions? These and other difficult questions arise when Christians try to apply biblical convictions to public life. This chapter will first examine decisions regarding personal ethics and then consider questions of public policy.

Abortion and Personal Ethics

Rape

   During the late 1960s pregnancy due to rape was often cited as

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cause for liberalizing the then-restrictive abortion laws. Does rape constitute legitimate ethical grounds for an abortion? An answer to this question must take into account a number of important facts.

   Notwithstanding the trauma of rape, studies have shown that pregnancy due to confirmed cases of rape is extremely rare. In Buffalo, New York, there was not one pregnancy from a confirmed case of rape in 30 years; a report out of Washington, D.C., indicated only one pregnancy in over 300 rape victims.[1] Medical research indicates that there may be physiological reasons for the low incidence of pregnancy in cases of rape. The psychological trauma tends to inhibit normal ovulation, and men who commit this crime are frequently infertile because of other aberrant sexual behavior, such as frequent masturbation.[2] When promptly reported and treated with a spermicidal agent, rape need not result in conception.

   Recent history indicates that legal provisions for abortion on the grounds of rape are easily abused. In the years 1967 through 1971 some 290 abortions were performed in Colorado on the grounds of alleged rape, even though during this same period no rapist was even charged with the crime, much less convicted. [3]

   But what of those rare occurrences when pregnancy does result from rape? Is it fair to expect a woman to suffer the inconvenience and hardship of carrying a child to term when the conception was without her consent? Such cases are obviously both emotionally and ethically difficult. A Christian answer will involve the more basic question of the personal status of the unborn child: Is the unborn a potential or an actual human being? It is not difficult to imagine how the hardship to the woman might outweigh the value of a merely potential life and therefore justify abortion. But if the newly conceived life is an actual human being, that would take precedence over the possible hardship and inconvenience to the woman, and abortion would not be an option.

   I am convinced that the biblical and medical evidence favors the latter view. Since there is no clear biblical evidence that the developing child is less than a person, the Christian's decision must presume the personhood of the developing human life. The Christian may rest assured that even in the most tragic circumstances God can

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sovereignly bring good out of evil and cause blessing to his people (Rom. 8:28; Gen. 50:21).

Expected Birth Defects

   Another focus of recent discussions has involved anticipated birth defects. When there has been a history of genetic abnormality, or if the mother has been exposed to dangerous drugs or radiation during pregnancy, would that justifiably call for an abortion? The question involves a complex network of ethical and cultural factors. Parents today, especially in the middle class, have come to expect more perfection in their children. The appearance of a defective infant is more emotionally traumatic to such parents than in an earlier time, when children were not so clearly regarded as extensions of parents and their aspirations.[4] In contemporary American culture, where social acceptability is increasingly measured by physical attributes and intelligence, many parents are unwilling to face the difficulties of raising a handicapped child.

   Pushing the question into sharper focus is the newly developed technique of amniocentesis. In this diagnostic technique a hypodermic needle is inserted into the uterus, and a sample of the amniotic fluid is removed. The sample is then analyzed in order to detect possible genetic abnormalities. One disease believed to be detectable by this method is Tay-Sachs disease, a rare but fatal genetic disorder found almost exclusively in Jewish children. The disease causes blindness, deafness, progressive deterioration of the nervous system, and ultimately death by the second or third year. Sickle-cell anemia, an incurable and ultimately fatal disease usually found among Blacks, is another condition subject to prenatal diagnosis. Down's syndrome (Mongolism), which occurs once in 600 to 700 live births, is also thought to be detectable through amniocentesis. As research progresses, the number of diseases detectable prenatally will continue to grow. The increasing sophistication of such medical technology will bring society face to face with the real possibility of large scale genetic screening and programs of "positive" eugenics to "weed out" the potentially unfit. [5]

   Personal decisions on these matters should reflect a full awareness

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of several important medical facts. Among pregnant women with a previous history of genetically related birth defects, the probability that the newborn will be abnormal is never greater than 50 percent.[6] This means that a program of selective abortion could well destroy more normal than abnormal children. Furthermore, an increasing number of defects can be adequately treated after the child is born. For example, most cases of hearing loss and heart defects resulting from maternal contraction of rubella (German measles) are medically correctible. Some 80 to 90 percent of women are immune to rubella because of exposure in early childhood and thus are not even at risk during pregnancy. [7]

   Then too, diagnoses based on amniocentesis are subject to error. Dr. Hymie Gordon, chief geneticist at the Mayo Clinic, reported a case in which Tay-Sachs disease was diagnosed. Amniocentesis was performed, the fluid examined, and the disease appeared to be confirmed. But after an abortion was performed, the baby was examined and found to be perfectly normal. Dr. Gordon also noted a case reported in the British medical journal Lancet, in which a pregnancy was terminated because of an alleged extra chromosome in the cells, apparently indicating Mongolism. The baby destroyed in this case was discovered to have been perfectly normal. [8]

   Mistaken diagnosis is also possible in women exposed to potentially hazardous radiation during pregnancy. Dr. R.F.R. Gardner, a British gynecologist, has reported the following case:

A thirty year old woman had been married eight years and after a spontaneous miscarriage had never again conceived. She had irregular periods and was ordered x-ray treatment to her pituitary gland (at the base of the brain) and to her ovaries. On the third weekly treatment she was found to be eight weeks pregnant. The radiologist said there was no choice but to perform an abortion; all the obstetricians agreed. The patient, however, insisted that the pregnancy was something of a miracle and that 'with God's will' it would proceed to term. It did. At six years the child's physical and mental growth were above normal. [9]

In this case the decision to abort would have meant the destruction of a perfectly normal child.

   The thalidomide tragedies of the early 1960s made the public

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sharply aware of the dangers of taking powerful drugs during pregnancy. Dr. C. Everett Koop, former surgeon-in-chief at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, now Surgeon General of the United States, has drawn attention to the following letter, which appeared in the London Daily Telegraph on December 8, 1962, when abotion was being discussed in European newspapers as a means of eliminating children born defective because of thalidomide:

Trowbridge
Kent
Dec. 8, 1962

Sirs:

We were disabled from causes other than Thalidomide, the first of us two having useless arms and hands; the second, two useless legs; and the third, the use of neither arms nor legs.

We were fortunate . . . in having been allowed to live and we want to say with strong conviction how thankful we are that none took it upon themselves to destroy us as useless cripples.

Here at the Debarue school of spastics, one of the schools of the National Spastic Society, we have found worthwhile and happy lives and we face our future with confidence. Despite our disability, life still has much to offer and we are more than anxious, if only metaphorically, to reach out toward the future.

This, we hope will give comfort and hope to the parents of the Thalidomide babies, and at the same time serve to condemn those who would contemplate the destruction of even a limbless baby.

Yours faithfully,
Elaine Duckett
Glynn Verdon
Caryl Hodges [10]

This testimony indicates that people with such disaabilities consider their lives worth living and may well appreciate the routine aspects of life more than "normal" people do.

   Again, the fundamental question is the personhood of the unborn. The Christian who, on the basis of the biblical and scientific data, concludes that the unborn child is to be treated as a person will

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not opt for abortion in cases of anticipated birth defects. While in extreme cases ("monstrous births") the line marking personhood may be vague, the vast majority of anticipated defects are not that problematic. The Christian can recall from Scripture the sovereign power of God to bring glory to himself through the handicapped (Exod. 4:11; John 9:1-3). God's glory and grace are manifested very clearly in human weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). The ministry of Jesus demonstrated God's compassion and concern for the sick and the handicapped. As it was prophesied, he would not "break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick" (Matt. 12:20).

   Many Christian parents testify that the birth of a handicapped child has drawn them closer to God. Dale Evans Rogers provides an example:

Our baby came into the world with an appalling handicap. . . . I believe with all my heart that God sent her on a two year mission to our household, to strengthen us spiritually and to draw us closer together in the knowledge and love and fellowship of God. It has been said that tragedy and sorrow never leave us where they find us. In this instance both Roy and I are grateful to God for the privilege of learning some great lessons through His tiny messenger, Robin Elizabeth Rogers. [11]

Abortion as a precaution against birth defects short-circuits the biblical witness to the triumph of God's grace in human suffering and tragedy. It fails to recognize what the experiences of others have confirmed -- that a severely handicapped child can be used of God to show his love and bring a deepened spiritual growth into a family.

Unwanted Pregnancy

   What about unwanted pregnancies? Can the Christian consider abortion as a "back up" to other means of birth control? Recent figures indicated that for many American women abortion is used not only as a "back up" method, but as the primary means of avoiding unwanted pregnancies. According to recent figures provided by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, of women who have abortions in America, 79 percent are unmarried, 70 percent are white, and 33 percent have already had one abortion. Teenagers constitute

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30 percent of all American women having abortions.[12] These striking figures call into question some commonly held assumptions about who seeks abortions. First, the women are predominantly unmarried. Nearly four of five abortions are sought by women who want to avoid the consequences of sexual intercourse outside of marriage. Second, better than two-thirds are white, which falsifies the assumption that abortions are predominantly sought by poor black women on welfare. As recent studies show, abortion finds its heaviest support not among lower or lower-middle class women, but among white upper-middle class women for whom childbearing may conflict with career goals.[13] In a study conducted by the Bowman Gray Medical School on poverty-level Blacks, 79 percent of 776 poverty-level black females and 70 percent of 215 low-middle income black females were found to be "not in favor of abortions under any circumstances." When 990 urban black females were studied, 77 percent were found to oppose abortion under any circumstances, and this opposition was manifested in their carrying their children to term. [14]

   The figures on the number of teenagers having abortions are especially disturbing. In 1980 over 460,000 abortions were performed on teenagers. Statistics indicate the rising incidence of premarital sex among teens. Johns Hopkins researchers conducted a study that showed a 30 percent increase in teenage sexual activity in only five years. By age 16, the study found, 25 percent of these young women had experienced premarital sex; by age 17, 40 percent. [15]

   The result has been a wave of teenage pregnancies. According to figures released by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, some one million American girls aged 15 to 19 were pregnant in 1976. Teenagers account for one-third of the national birth rate and for half of the out-of-wedlock births. Of teenagers who engage in premarital sex, only one in five uses contraception regularly. [16]

   These figures are disturbing, because history has shown that periods of sexual anarchy in a culture are more often than not correlated by social, economic, and military weakness and the decline of that culture. That is borne out in the histories of ancient Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Greece, Rome, and modern Europe.[17] Sexual disorder, of which the present abortion ethos is a symptom,

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undermines the strength and stability of an entire society. [18]

   Unwanted pregnancy is no legitimate ground for abortion. Inconvenience or even personal hardship would not justify taking the life of the unborn child. Even Norman Geisler, an evangelical scholar who believes the unborn represent "potential" rather than "actual" human life, agrees that abortion is not justified under such circumstances. Once conception has occurred, argues Geisler, ". . . it is too late to decide that it should not have been done. There are some morally one-direction decisions in life and intercourse leading to conception is one of them. . . . Taking a potential life is not morally justifiable simply because one does not want to suffer the social or physical discomforts which come from their own free choices." [19]

Socioeconomic Hardship

   What of the cases where the pregnancy may add to socioeconomic hardship? Perhaps the woman is already burdened by a large family, and the situation is aggravated by an irresponsible husband who is an alcoholic. Such circumstances are indeed tragic and should call forth Christian responses of sympathy and active support. Even then, if the unborn child is seen as a person in God's sight, the decision will rule out abortion. Though meant to alleviate the woman's plight, abortion may in fact do otherwise. As we noted earlier, the experience of one British medical social worker showed that:

. . .the woman's feeling that she cannot tolerate bringing a child into the world may be a symptom of a situation such as an inability to cope with married life, and by making abortion too readily available we do little but relieve the patient's immediate suffering for a short time and thus do her no real service, producing in her a sense of guilt which she can redress only by becoming pregnant again as quickly as possible." [20]

A more positive approach is to provide counseling and financial services that would allow the woman to carry the child to term. In cases of extreme hardship, the child could be given up for adoption. Although an emotionally difficult course of action for the woman, it

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gives others the satisfaction of parenthood and is far preferable to taking the child's life. The present shortage of adoptable babies in America can be traced mainly to the prevalence of legal abortions. Prices for adoptable Caucasian babies on the illegal market now run as high as $20,000. [21]

   In the light of Scripture, even an unplanned pregnancy can be a gift from the Lord (cf. Ps. 127:3). God's sovereign purposes and providential control of human affairs often transcend conscious human intentions (cf. Gen. 50:20). The child born as a result of an unplanned conception may have a strategic contribution to make to the work of God's kingdom. There is no more striking example of this than the Lord Jesus, whose conception was, by human standards, unplanned.

Threat to the Life of the Mother

   Are there any conditions, then that justify abortion? The position I have reached is that abortion is morally justified in those relatively rare medical circumstances where the life of the mother is threatened by the continuation of the pregnancy. This is the official position of the Roman Catholic Church,[22] as well as Protestant leaders such as Paul Ramsey, Harold O.J. Brown, Francis Schaeffer, C. Everett Koop, Bruce Waltke, John Frame, and Charles Ryrie. Medical conditions falling into this category would include an ectopic (tubal) pregnancy and cancer of the uterus during pregnancy. Since under present circumstances it may not be possible to save both lives, intervention is performed with the intent of saving the life that can be saved, i.e., the mother's. If nothing is done, then both mother and child would presumably perish. The situation is analogous to that faced by a physician arriving at the scene of a catastrophic train wreck. Given the circumstances, the physician cannot salvage all the endangered lives. He must therefore use his best judgment and abilities to salvage the lives that have a real prospect of survival. Rarely is there a tragic conflict between the mother's life and the child's, and such circumstances should occur even less often with the progress of medical science.

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Abortion and Public Policy

Population Control

  Discussions of abortion as public policy often concern "the population explosion." During the 1960s, scientists such as Paul Ehrlich, author of Population Bomb, compared the current population growth to a cancer, in that "a cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells," and "the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people."[23] In 1962 Newsweek warned that "the current rate of growth, continued in 600 years, would leave every inhabitant of the world with only 1 square yard to live on. By the year 3500 the weight of human bodies on the earth's surface would equal the weight of the world itself. By the year 6000, the solid mass of humanity would be expanding outward into space at the speed of light."[24] Such predictions fueled arguments that legalized abortion was necessary to control unchecked population growth.

   Subsequent history has shown those predictions to be overstated. In 1976, 14 years after its 1962 report, Newsweek concluded that the "population explosion" of the 1960s had become the "population implosion" of the 1970s. "Just a decade ago, demographers were predicting that by the year 2050 the earth's population would have tripled, creating a planet suffocated in its own humanity. . . .Now, due to a plummeting birth rate in many nations and a sharp rise in deaths in others, . . . the world's population growth is tapering off, and . . . the threat of an eventual world population of 12 billion has now faded."[25] In a more recent study Lester Brown, director of the Worldwatch Institute, reported that the world growth rate fell from 1.9 percent in 1970 to 1.64 in 1975. Dr. R.T. Ravenholt, population director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, projected that the world population growth rate would fall below 1 percent by 1985. This would mean that the earth's present population of some 4.6 billion would rise to only 5.4 billion by the end of the century -- not to the 6.3 billion predicted in 1970. The shortfall of some 900 million between the two predictions equals the present combined populations of North America, Latin America, and Europe. [26]

   There has also been a sharp decline in the population growth rate

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in the United States. The rate declined by 33 percent between 1970 and 1975, a drop largely due to a decrease in the marriage rate and an increase in female employment; women now make up approximately 40 percent of the labor force.[27] Since 1975 the fertility rate for American women has remained constant at 1.7 children, the lowest rate in the nation's history. If current trends continue, by 1990 the United States will have more people over 55 than children in elementary and secondary schools.[28] The postwar "baby boom" has suddenly become a "baby bust" in the United States.

   Declining fertility rates and the aging of America carry some ominous implications. At present there are some 23 million Americans over the normal retirement age. By the turn of the century, nearly 31 million will be 65 or older. Three decades after that, their number should swell to almost 52 million -- more than twice the current total.[29] This growing proportion of the elderly in the American population will place increasing burdens on the already strained Social Security system. In 1945, the ratio of wage earners to recipients was 35 to 1. Today, with 33 million people drawing social security payments, the ratio has fallen to 3.2 to 1. By the year 2035, the ratio may be less than 2 to 1.[30] In an inflationary economy with rapidly rising medical costs, this means an increasingly large tax burden will have to be assumed by a decreasing proportion of younger workers. Since the average elderly person has higher medical and drug expenses than the average young person, the shift in the age distribution foreshadows higher tax burdens for all Americans as we move toward the twenty-first century. The increased social and economic strains may be too great for a society already showing signs of moral and economic weakness. In retrospect, plummeting fertility rates in the United States during the 1970s may prove to be a curse rather than a blessing.

   Many of the assumptions held in the 1960s about the relationship of population growth to other social problems were very questionable. It was thought, for example, that population growth contributed directly to economic stagnation, crime, and environmental pollution. Such assumptions were overly simplistic. The economic history of the United States shows that periods of economic expansion correspond with periods of population growth.[31] European

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nations such as England and the Netherlands, with population densities many times greater than the United States, have considerably lower rates of violent crime. Environmental quality is more a matter of the proper management of waste disposal than of population density. In developing nations effective contraception, better medical care, and improved employment and educational opportunities -- rather than abortion -- can make population growth manageable. [32]

   Thus the severity of the population problem and the need for abortion as its solution were overstated in the 1960s. The facts of recent history have shown that population concerns do not support legalized abortion. If anything, concern in the United States should now focus not on a "population explosion," but on plummeting fertility rates, which will produce serious imbalances in the proportion of elderly people in our population.

Illegal Abortions

   One of the most common arguments for legalized abortion is that permissive laws reduce the number of illegal abortions, thereby reducing maternal deaths in so-called "back-alley" abortions. It is estimated that prior to the Court's 1973 decisions, illegal abortions numbered anywhere from 200,000 to over one million a year.[33] The oft-quoted figure of 10,000 maternal deaths annually from illegal abortions, based on an estimate by F.J. Taussig in his 1936 book, Abortion Spontaneous and Induced, is a very dubious statistic, as we shall see.

   It is, of course, true that changing the laws reduces the number of illegal abortions, since by definition most abortions once considered criminal thereby become legal. A New York Planned Parenthood official estimated that prior to permissive abortion in that state, between 80 and 90 percent of illegal abortions were done by physicians.[34] The typical "back alley" abortion was really performed in the physician's back office. Legalization simply allowed physicians to perform them more openly. Thus the revealing title of a recent article in one of the opinion magazines, "Suddenly, I'm a Legal Abortionist." [35]

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   The experience of other nations casts doubt on claims that permissive abortion laws solve the problem of illegal abortions. Dr. Christopher Tietze, a well-known population expert and advocate of abortion, has concluded that permissive laws have not significantly reduced the incidence of illegal abortions in the Scandinavian countries.[36] Many women still seek abortions outside the authorized channels, perhaps to circumvent the remaining medical and administrative provisions of the Scandinavian laws. The experience of Japan also suggests that permissive abortion laws have not eliminated illegal abortions. Even in countries like the United States, with very permissive abortion policies, women who wish to have no records made of their abortions still seek clandestine ones in significant numbers.

   There are good reasons to question the figure of 10,000 maternal deaths annually from illegal abortion, based on F.J. Taussig's estimate in 1936. That estimate presupposed a 1934 study by M.E. Kopp of women who had attended the Margaret Sanger Birth Control Clinic in New York between 1925 and 1929. The Sanger Clinic sample from which the figures originated was hardly representative of the population as a whole, since 41.7 percent of the women were Jewish, and 26.1 percent Catholic. More recently Dr. Christopher Tietze has estimated that there may be some 500 maternal deaths annually in the United States from all abortions, legal and illegal.[37] Coming from a prominent advocate of abortion, this estimate casts serious doubt on Taussig's earlier figure.

   Dr. Andre Hellegers, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Georgetown University Hospital, in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments, presented figures on confirmed (as opposed to estimated) maternal deaths from abortion. In 1942 there were 1,231 deaths from abortion. By 1968 the number had fallen to 133, showing a steady decrease since 1942. Even before the 1973 Supreme Court decisions, such deaths were relatively rare. A change in the laws, Dr. Hellegers observed, would not materially reduce this figure, since "as a condition becomes rare it becomes difficult to reduce the number even further." [38]

   The argument that legalized abortion removes the public health hazards to American women is open to serious question. Some

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sources claim, based on statistics from Eastern European nations such as Yugoslavia and Hungary and from the United States, that legal abortion is safer than childbirth. Besides ignoring the status of the unborn child, the statistics themselves are doubtful. After a careful review of the Eastern European statistics, Dr. Thomas W. Hilgers, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine, concluded: "The claims that abortion is x-times as safe as childbirth is a fabrication invented to sell abortion. Certainly it is not justified on the basis of available information."[39] There is simply no assurance that all maternal deaths actually due to legal abortions are being reported as such.

   Another problem often overloooked are serious post-abortion complications. As we have already seen, research done in Czechoslovakia, Japan, and other countries with long experience with abortion shows that abortion increases the risks of the following: accidental perforation of the uterus, injuries to the cervix, increased frequency of miscarriages, prematurity, tubal pregnancies, and menstrual irregularities. Swedish and Norwegian figures cite an incidence of accidental sterilization following abortion of about 4 percent, notes Dr. Andre Hellegers. With some 1.5 million abortions annually in the United States, 79 percent of them performed on unmarried women, the real danger is that some 45,000 unmarried women are accidentally sterilized each year by abortion. Seldom are women who seek abortions warned of such hazards. Such medical evidence indicates that large numbers of American women can be expected to sorely regret having opted for abortion.

Discrimination Against the Poor?

   There are several problems with the common argument that laws restricting abortion funding discriminate against the poor. As we have already noted, the greatest pressures to change laws come not from people in poverty, but from upper-middle class professionals. Poverty level Blacks, for example, are among the strongest opponents to abortion. Of women having abortions, 79 percent are unmarried, and 70 percent are white. The typical seeker of an abortion is not a poor black woman on welfare with a large family, but an

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unmarried white teenager or professional woman pursuing a career. The desire among poverty level Blacks is not for more government subsidized abortion, but for better employment, housing, and educational opportunities. Some Blacks cynically see subsidized abortions as an attempt by white liberals to find a quick technological "fix" to the problem of poverty and burgeoning welfare costs.

   More fundamentally, the focus on funding reduces a moral issue to the more pragmatic one of distribution. If abortion is an intrinsic evil, then the ability of the rich to have one is no reason for ensuring that others may do the same. The vices of the rich are not the standard for social and legal policy. Arguments from "fairness" and "equality of opportunity" are valid only where the thing in question is itself a social good. In this case justice calls for equal protection of the unborn, whether of the poor or of the rich.

"Imposing" Morality?

   Some argue that a return to restrictive abortion laws would amount to an "imposition of morality" by the force of law. They charge that opposition to abortion represents a Christian conviction that should not be legislated in a pluralistic society. Often they assume, implicitly or explicitly, that such opposition is a peculiarly Roman Catholic concern.

   Thoughtful Christians should subject such arguments to careful scrutiny. First of all, as we have already noted, opposition to abortion is not limited to the Roman Catholic Church. Evangelical Protestant leaders such as Billy Graham, Harold O.J. Brown, Bruce Waltke, C.C. Ryrie, C. Everett Koop, John Frame, Donald Bloesch, Francis Schaeffer, and R.C. Sproul oppose the present abortion policies in the United States. Other scholars have come to oppose abortion on purely secular or philosophical grounds. A notable example is Professor Baruch Brody, a Jewish scholar who began as a pro-abortionist but was led by his research to the opposite conclusion.[40] Respect for the sanctity of life is not an exclusively religious concern.

   The charge of "imposing morality" reflects confusion about the relationship of law and morality. All laws, insofar as they reflect a

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community's sense of fairness and justice, necessarily have a moral component. To remove this moral component would make law an arbitrary instrument for the control of the weak by the more powerful elements of society. The "positive" laws of the Third Reich were contemptible precisely because they lacked grounding in universal standards of justice and morality. The civil rights legislation of the 1960s was based not merely on social expediency, but on a fundamental sense of moral rightness. The real issue is not whether laws will reflect a moral point of view, but rather, what type of morality they should reflect. There is simply no compelling reason why moral insights drawn from the Judaeo-Christian tradition should be disqualified from legal and public policy debates. At stake in the abortion debate is not some narrow sectarian distinctive such as the mode of baptism or style of sabbath observance, but the fundamental moral principle of the sanctity of human life. This basic principle, taught by the Bible and all the world's historic religions, has until now been one of the pillars of Western civilization. Christians do their society no service by acquiescing to the secular humanists' arguments that would undermine human life according to some sliding scale of value.

   Discussions of law and morality often betray misunderstanding regarding the separation of church and state. The relevant language of the First Amendment states, "Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The intent of the amendment was clearly to prevent Congress from instituting one denomination as the established national church. At the time the amendment was passed, two states, Massachusetts and Connecticut, still had established state churches. The intent of the framers of the amendment was clearly not to prevent Christians from expressing their convictions in matters of public policy. The cruel irony of history is that this amendment, originally enacted in the name of religious freedom, is today interpreted to mean that only secular humanists may express moral convictions in matters of public policy. The "separation of church and state" is now taken to mean the separation of nearly all Christian influence from American law and public life. Christians should recognize this ploy for what it really is -- the establishment of secular

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humanism as the de facto religion of America. Rather than allowing themselves to be disenfranchised, Christians should vigorously affirm their rights to express their deepest moral convictions in public discourse.[41] The sanctity of innocent human life, a principle deeply embedded in the Judaeo-Christian tradition and the fabric of Western civilization, needs again to be vigorously championed by the Christian community, particularly in reference to the contemporary abortion debate.

   This discussion of public policy leads naturally into the concluding chapter on recent legal developments in the American abortion scene. There we will focus on the hotly debated matters of public funding of abortion, and the drive for a Human Life Amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's 1973 abortion decisions.

Chapter 4  ||  Chapter 6  ||  Table of Contents