Church of Christ Articles

God Hates Abortion

(Warning:  This article will contain descriptions and pictures of aborted infants which are quite gruesome.  Please do not read this article if you are easily offended or physically sickened by unedited pictures of violence done to human beings, or while in the presence of small children or those who have weak physical constitutions.)

When the American Medical Association was formed in 1847, abortion was commonly practiced.  However, the efforts of the AMA joined with anti-obscenity crusaders and (ironically) feminists would make abortion illegal in this country by 1900.  This would change in 1973 and then again in 1976 when the Supreme Court ruled that abortions done by licensed physicians were constitutional and could be performed in minors without the knowledge or consent of their parents and on mothers without the knowledge or consent of the father.  Thus, abortions are currently legal and widely practiced in this country…and our God is very angry about it.

Why do I say that?  God is our Creator.  He formed us while we were in the womb (Ps. 139:13-16; Job 31:15).  He did not “knit” together a mere chemical activity, cellular growth, or other vague force like pro-abortionists claim the fetus to be.  The Hebrew for the “unformed substance” in Ps. 139:16 that God saw has to do with the embryonic state, the first eight weeks after conception.  So long before even the mother can feel life in her womb, God knows…and cares.  He formed us in the womb, human beings in his own image.  Jehovah was and is personally involved in our development while we were inside our mothers, so do you think he is pleased when we go out of our way to destroy the work that he made and cares for?

Exodus 21:22-25 gives us the answer to that question.  God decreed that if a man harmed a pregnant woman who later gave birth and it was proven that any harm came to that unborn child due to the man harming her, then that man would pay back wound for wound that was inflicted upon the unborn child.  And if the unborn child had died while in the womb and was delivered as a stillborn, then that man would pay with his life!  “Life for life…”  How could God say that if life doesn’t begin until birth like abortion proponents claim?  You see, there is life in the womb, before birth…and so any taking of that life is an abomination before God.  Babies, both while in the womb (Rom. 9:10-13) and after birth (Ezek. 18:1-20), are innocent…and God hates hands “which shed innocent blood” (Prov. 6:17).

So what is happening in our nation today – the mass killing of innocent life which takes place through abortion – is an irreverent assault on the unique work that God performs.  It is an abomination to him, something that he hates not only because it destroys the work of his hands and the life that he gives, but also because of how it destroys that life.

Do we look at this atrocity in the same way?  It’s something to think about.  We react with horror and disgust when we read about parents like Brian Peterson and Amy Grossberg who gave birth to an infant at a hotel only to then kill the baby by shaking it and bashing its head in and stuffing the corpse in a nearby garbage can, or Melissa Drexler who gave birth in a bathroom at her high school prom only to then suffocate her son and stuff his body in the bathroom trash can before going out to the dance floor…but where is our horror and disgust for what happens when a baby is aborted?

Forgive my sarcasm, but what if Brian, Amy, and Melissa had realized what proponents of abortion are saying, that there are other “more civilized” ways to get rid of a baby?!  If they had only possessed the “dignity” to have their babies “professionally” killed, they could have avoided arrest and bad publicity!  When Amy and Melissa had first learned they were pregnant, they could have hired a “doctor” to employ a vacuum tube with a sharp blade attached to it, and he could have sucked the child from the womb, dicing it up into several pieces.  Or, in their seventh and twelfth week of pregnancy, a “doctor” could have entered their wombs with a loop-shaped steel knife and sliced the placenta from the walls of the uterus and cut the baby’s tiny body into pieces.

Or, between the twelfth and eighteenth weeks of pregnancy, they could have had a “doctor” take an instrument very similar to sharp-toothed pliers and dismember the baby part by part until all parts were removed from their wombs.  Brian, Amy, and Melissa could have also chosen in the sixteenth week of pregnancy to hire a “doctor” to insert a long needle through the mothers’ abdomens into the babies’ sacs and inject a solution of concentrated salt.  The babies would have breathed in the salt and been poisoned by it, and the corrosive effect of the salt would have burned off the outer layer of their skin.  An hour after those injections, their babies would have been dead, they would have then delivered dead children about a day later, and it would have been the “doctor” rather than the parents who would have thrown the corpse into a trash can.

You know, it wasn’t that long ago that Amy and Melissa could even have had a partial-birth abortion, and that with the approval of the president of the United States!  In March of 1996, Congress gave final approval to a bill to ban partial-birth abortions, except when necessary to save the mother’s life.  However, President Clinton vetoed the bill, thus allowing partial-birth abortions to continue to be performed without restriction!  Thankfully, Congress was able to pass the bill banning this heinous act in 2003, and President Bush signed it into law.  But before then, Amy and Melissa could have killed their baby via partial-birth abortion with the permission of the President and Supreme Court, and thus avoid the indictment of murder!  A partial-birth abortion would have been their ticket to freedom from the baby and freedom from legal action!

Here’s how it happens.  A “doctor” – while watching the infant’s heartbeat which is clearly registering on the monitor– actually delivers the baby’s body and arms, everything but his little head.  Then, while the baby’s feet are still kicking, the “doctor” jams scissors into the baby’s skull.  He then opens the scissors to enlarge the hole in the baby’s head.  Of course, the impact of the scissors causes the baby’s arms to jerk out in a flinching, startled reaction, like a baby does when he thinks he might fall.  However, the pain wouldn’t last too long, because the doctor would then stick a high-powered suction tube into the baby’s head and suck the baby’s brains out!  The limp and lifeless body of that body would then be disposed of, leaving the parents free to leave the hospital and pursue their hopes and dreams!

Do you see the inconsistency here?  Why are these people found guilty of crimes for killing their babies in gruesome ways outside of the womb…but not if they had hired “doctors” to do pretty much the same thing to those same babies a few months earlier while inside the womb?  Where’s the consistency?  Where’s the outrage?  (Is. 5:20)

Reader, are you outraged by what you just read and saw?  Are you sickened?  Are you unhappy that you just read of and saw such terrible things?  If you are unhappy for reading about them, I am sorry…but I made the decision to write so plainly about what happens in abortion procedures and show the gruesome results because there are too many of us, especially those in their 30’s and 40’s like me and the younger generation of teens and 20’s, who have not truly been told about what happens to a baby when it is aborted.  If we are told, it is usually in a way that is extremely edited for content in order not to disgust.  While this is understandable, what happens as a result is that too many of us look at the abortions of today in the same way that we look at the Holocaust of the Jews in the previous century…as a mildly unpleasant historical fact that we are far removed from.  That needs to change if abortion is to stop in this country and in the world.  We must hate abortion just as God hates it, and for the same reasons.

What can also help us hate the terrible deed of abortion like God hates it is when we understand why it is happening.  James gives us one reason when he said, “You desire and do not have, so you murder…” (James 4:2).  What do the parents of aborted babies desire that would lead them to murder their children?  More financial security?  More leisure?  More education?  More unrestrained sexual activity?  More career options?  Avoiding a child who may be handicapped?  Less hassle for the next 18-25 years?  All of us desire things and have goals…but may we work hard to never be so self-absorbed and covetous that we miss out on – or even purposefully kill – the most important things in life!  (Heb. 13:5)  When we love the world rather than God, we follow Satan rather than resisting him (Eph. 2:1-3; James 4:7).  So let us work to have a heart that is deeply submitted to God, that reverences his word and work above all worldly self-enhancement (James 4:6).  This will help us to look at things differently, react differently, want different things, and hate different things…the same things God wants and hates (Rom. 12:1-2).

God hates abortion, and so must we.  We must not hate those who practice it, nor treat them in sinful ways (Rom. 12:17-18)…but we must hate the terrible deed itself, and do our best to not support in any way those who would practice or condone it (Rom. 1:32).