Innocents Lost

The Wise Men from the East came to worship the Christ Child. They stopped first in Jerusalem to ask for help in finding the babe. As I mentioned a few weeks back, Herod feigned belief in the Messiah, saying, “that I, too, may worship him.” What Herod really believed in was Herod. He soon proved what he believed with his actions. When the Wise Men didn’t return to Herod with the location of the baby, Herod was furious. He took out his anger on the newborns of Bethlehem. He had them all killed, in the vain attempt that one of them might be the child in question. He killed what has been conservatively estimated at maybe, thirty-five babies, because he feared one baby. Herod killed these babies because he could. He was the law of the land.

If you think we live in better or more civilized times, think again. What is the law of the land in our own very religious country?

According to the Supreme Court of the United States, when is it permissible to abort and unborn child?

Is it only in the first trimester of a pregnancy? Or does the law allow for it for serious reasons in the second trimester, and forbids it at all in the third?

Sociologist James Hunter says this is the commonly held view among the public in its understanding of the law of the land. Hunter calls this “mass legal illiteracy.”

In fact, Roe v. Wade and its companion decisions constitute the law as presently imposed by the Supreme Court. And that law allows abortion at any time for any reason up through the fully formed baby emerging halfway out of the birth canal.

As Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon has written, it is the most permissive abortion regime in the Western World. The result of this permissiveness is a lot more than thirty-five babies killed a year.

When asked when abortion should not be permitted, a great majority of Americans lists reasons for which 90 percent of abortions are done. Mostly, abortions are done as a means of birth control. That is a point no one can argue against. Our society uses abortion as birth control and makes human beings disposable objects – the remains to be thrown out with the trash. When occasionally, but predictably, we read about a young girl who abandons her baby in a dumpster, everyone is dutifully outraged. But it’s only a matter of timing isn’t it? If she would have abandoned her baby a little sooner, no one would have noticed.

Folks, we don’t know what is going on.

In our recent presidential election there was the usual talk, and then some, among Christians that maybe we shouldn’t be “single-issue” voters. In other words, don’t make your opposition to abortion alone determine how you vote. I agree that there are many important issues to consider leading up to an election. But being pro-life isn’t just one issue among many, it is a fundamental issue.

It’s been said that you can gauge the moral temperature of a society by how that society treats its very young and its very old, its oddities and its infirm, its members without a voice. How a society in fact cares for the unborn determines the foundation upon which a house of justice is built. Show me a society confused about when life begins and I’ll show you a society on its way to euthanizing its elderly and mentally challenged members as well.

There are many admirable qualities in President-elect Obama, and much nonsense was said about him in the campaign race, but this much is fact – by his own voting record as a state senator he is the most consistent supporter of legalized abortion ever nominated by a major party.

He summed up his rationale for the unlimited abortion license by saying he “didn’t want young women punished with a baby.”

When asked at the Saddleback forum hosted by Rev. Rick Warren the question when does life begin, Obama answered lamely that the decision was “above his pay grade.” Well, then, let’s consider this:


“Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you. . .” Jeremiah 1.5


According to the Bible, God is clear when life begins, and it begins well before a child visibly forms in the womb, let alone when the child is coming out of the womb. Presumably, this decision is in line with God’s pay grade.

As a Christian, President-elect Obama should know this. I’m not questioning his faith. I suppose on this issue he is a thorough product of his political culture. He makes Bill Clinton look very pro-life, and that’s saying something. What this means for our country in the days ahead is not known, but you can take an educated guess. The Freedom of Choice Act is currently before Congress and may be as extreme a measure as the nation has ever seen. If enacted it would invalidate for the entire country all restrictions on abortion before viability that any states currently impose. These restrictions include – parental notification, waiting periods, and partial-birth abortion bans. Obama was one of the sponsors of this bill in the Senate and has vowed that one of the first things he would do as president is to sign the Freedom of Choice Act.

The Hyde Amendment, named after the late Senator Henry Hyde, currently prohibits federal funding of abortions. This Congress and president may sweep that away as well. A new health care reform proposal will almost certainly try to include provisions that mandate abortion training for doctors and abortion services for hospitals.

As I’ve suggested, we, the American public have been ignorant of our own laws and practices. It’s time we wake up. I think the majority of Americans will want to oppose many of the changes I have suggested. On the question of when does life begin, the science is so very clearly in favor of the pro-life position. For example, I received an email a few months ago from friends who are pregnant. The email included the picture of the sonogram they had just received. I didn’t need to ask them when doyou think life begins. It’s a given. People like my friends make up a silent majority that is the pro-life movement today.

But even if this were not so, would it matter? If you took a poll and it said that ninety percent of folks say abortion is ok, would that make it ok?

As Bishop Will Willimon of the Alabama Conference has stated in regards to abortion, “Since when did believers ever care about opinion polls? We are not making this stuff up ourselves. We are declaring a truth that has been revealed to us.”

Yes. We are proclaimers of a revelation, the Revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. We believe that life is not a “burden” but a gift, even when that gift comes upon us at inconvenient times, finding us under-prepared. Isn’t this always how life comes?

“How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given.”