CHRISTIAN PATRIOTS
FOR LIFE
- Education Series -
A Matter of Life & Mass Murder
- Ending "Legal" Abortion -
Toward a Constitutional Remedy
The Biblical - Ethical Argument
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Image from:
Whatever Happened to the Human Race?
by Francis A. Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop, M.D.
1979 p. 119
The caption under the image in the book reads: "How could we convince the people
of our generation to realize that they will be held accountable? We constructed a
thirty-foot monument and placed it on an isolated beach. It becomes a reminder
that history does not forgive or forget."
The Bible confirms that human life begins in the womb.
The Bible demonstrates that God values life before birth and states that anyone who induces
an abortion or miscarriage is to be punished. The Bible Regards Abortion as Murder - 8/30/99 - Covenant News
"Abortion is murder, plain and simple." Rabbi Yehuda Levin
"The source most often cited by the founding fathers in their political writings (1760-1805)
was the Bible, which accounted for 34% of all citations. Deuteronomy was the most
frequently cited book of the Bible."Liberty Fund, Inc.
Universal (natural) Law
Judeo/Christian Theology for those who are neither Jewish or Christian.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.), the Roman Stoic philosopher, said this
concerning the natural law:
There is in fact a true law--namely, right reason--which is in accordance with nature,
applies to all men and is unchangeable and eternal. By its commands this law
summons men to the performance of their duties; by its prohibitions it restrains
them from doing wrong. Its commands and prohibitions always influence good
men, but are without effect upon the bad. To invalidate this law by human
legislation is never morally right, nor is it permissible ever to restrict its operation,
and to annul it wholly is impossible. Neither the senate nor the people can absolve
us from our obligation to obey this law, and it requires no Sextus Aelius to expound
and interpret it. It will not lay down one rule at Rome and another at Athens, nor will it
be one rule today and another tomorrow. But there will be one law, eternal and
unchangeable, binding at all times upon all peoples; and there will be one common
master and ruler of men, namely God, who is the author of this law, its interpreter and
sponsor. The man who will abandon his better self, and in denying the true nature of
man, will thereby suffer the severest of penalties, though he has escaped all other
consequences which men call punishment.
Francis W. Coker, Readings in Political
Philosophy (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938), 151.
Many godly (Rom.2:15) atheists know abortion is murder while many godless (apostate)
Christians act as if it weren't. One of the chief arguments against Theism is the presence of
pervasive evil. Pro-Choice Sister Christian will have a hard time convincing Pro-Life Brother
Pagan of the merits within the Argument from Pascal's Wager by Peter Kreeft
"Paul wrote in Romans 2:15 that gentiles who know nothing of Moses or Christ may
nonetheless show by their deeds "that the requirements of the Law are written on their
hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now
even defending them."
"Natural law is not in any sense a substitute for divine revelation or saving grace. For a
Christian the Bible is the paramount authority on moral questions, but the Bible itself
teaches that God has a witness (general revelation) to the pagans. Indeed, the heartfelt
admission that there is a moral law and that we have violated it is often the first step that
brings the unbeliever to faith. C.S. Lewis's apologetic in Mere Christianity takes exactly
this approach. Of course the law written on the heart is obscured by what psychologists
call "denial," and modernists far surpass the ancient pagans in inventing strategies for
denial. In Budziszewski's words: "With a head filled with false sophistication that tells him
that right and wrong are invented by culture and different everywhere, the new sort of
pagan mistrusts his own conscience and views guilt as a sign of maladjustment that
therapy will remove."
"Most modern ethical thinking, Budziszewski explains, goes about matters backwards.
Modernists assume that the problem of sin is mainly cognitive -- that we don't know the
moral law and are doing our best to find it out. Unfortunately for us, the problem is mainly
volitional. We know well enough the difference between right and wrong, but we obscure
our understanding so we can do as we please. That is why the primary task of Christian
natural law philosophy is not to prove the existence of the moral law, but to expose the
devices of the heart by which we conceal the truth from ourselves."
Ethic of Reciprocity - Every person shares certain
inherent human rights, simply because of
their membership in the human race.
"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to
them: for this is the law and the prophets." Matthew 7:12, "And as ye would that men
should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." Luke 6:31
Atheist and Agnostic Pro-Life League Homepage - James Matthew (Matt) Wallace,
aka The Compleat Heretic; a Secular Humanist atheist and a pro-life advocate.
A nontheistic and nonreligious opposition to the life-denying horror of abortion"...
because life is all there is and all that matters, and abortion destroys the life of an
innocent human being."
As I contemplate the Declaration of Independence on the anniversary of its
signing, I am chastened by the tragic fact that too many Americans are denied
their "unalienable rights" of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Ironically, these same rights are used as an argument for alienating these
oppressed and persecuted Americans from their rights as human beings. These
Americans are the more than one million preborn children violently killed annually
by abortion.
The day will come when we as a people will live out the true and full meaning of
our dearest creed: All human beings are equal under the law. We will no longer
deny the humanity and the human rights of preborn children. Freedom will cease
being corrupted into the right of a mother to slaughter her innocent and helpless
child within the sanctum of her body. The inhuman and barbarous genocide that
is abortion as birth control will end. On that day, all Americans will be free at last.
In 1976, when she became pro-life, Doris Gordon founded Libertarians for Life "because
some libertarian had to blow the whistle." As libertarians, LFL's interest in the abortion
debate is in everyone's unalienable rights. LFL's reasoning is philosophical, not religious.
Some LFL associates are religious; others, such as Gordon, are atheists.
LFL focuses mainly on two central points: personhood (what "person" means, and why
all preborn children are persons); and parental obligation (how parents incur it). From our
answers we conclude that prenatal children have the right to the protection of the law.
Libertarianism affirms the central, inalienable right of all persons to be free from
aggression (the initiation of force or fraud). Nonaggression belongs in every code of
morality. LFL also affirms that from conception to death, we are persons with the right
not to be killed. The killing of an innocent person, as in abortion, violates this right.
LFL further affirms that, under libertarian principles, parents owe their dependent
children, born and preborn, care and protection from harm. Even if abortion were merely
a case of "abandonment" or eviction, as some wish to rationalize it, it would still be
wrongful death.
Dependent children are like "captives" of their parents, for they are in the parents' control.
This is not voluntary for the children, but it is for the parents. Therefore, when parents
choose not to provide care and the children get harmed, the parents have initiated force,
and they are accountable.
Abortion, then, violates two rights of children: the right not to be killed, and the right to
parental care and protection. Even when pregnancy is due to rape, both parents still have
the general obligation not to kill or further endanger their innocent preborn child.
Rape & Incest
Such social victimization is, at least, one point that all of us, regardless of our positions on
abortion, should recognize as a threat -- against the woman, against the child, against what
it means to be a person with rights. Libertarians for Life
Schwarz, Chapter 10: "Abortion in Cases of Rape, Incest, Health and Life of the Woman?"
"The child conceived in rape is one of us, merely smaller and less developed and more
dependent, and not in full view, but equally a person. Killing her is wrong, just as killing
any child is wrong. We must remember that the child is absolutely innocent of the crime
of her father. She is not a part of her mother's body, and she is not a part of her father's
character. She inherits character traits from both her parents, but in her individual being
as a person, she is absolutely distinct from both of them. Even the character traits that
are received from a parent are now her own traits. The child is totally her own person.
She is not responsible for the crime that led to her conception, and she is untainted by it.1
Seeing her in these negative ways is sheer prejudice, not based on reality, but at odds
with it." www.ohiolife.org/mqa/10-0.asp
Russell E. Saltzman, is pastor of Ruskin Heights Lutheran Church, Kansas City, Missouri,
and editor of the independent Lutheran publication Forum Letter. This is reprinted with
permission from the August 2002 Forum Letter, and is copyright 2002 by the American
Lutheran Publicity Bureau. "Everything Personal: Children Born of Rape or Incest,"
Touchstone Magazine, Jan/Feb 2003. "I belong to an on-line support group (me, in a
sup- port group, there's a picture) composed of adult children born of rape or incest.
There are more of us in the former category than the latter. Jennifer is our webmistress,
organizer, facilitator, coach, head nanny, chief nag (though very nice about it), and the
child of a violent rape. Mostly, I lurk. But for some in the group, I am a kind of unofficial
chaplain and sometime pastoral advisor. There are children born before Roe v. Wade as
well as children born after Roe v. Wade. The handles adopted by some in the group are
evocative: "former fetus," "unawares angel," names like that."
Robert Hart, "Her Mother's Glory: The Hardest Abortion Case," Touchstone Magazine,
Jan/Feb 2003. " She is a young lady who spreads joy wherever she goes. She has a place
in the lives of many, not only her new husband, her parents, and her brothers, but many
who know her well, and many who have met her in passing-a unique place that no one
else could fill. She is happy by nature at 23, married, an avid reader, a good friend, a
serious Christian. This is the person that these well-meaning people were willing to
sentence to death. Oh, not now, not when they can see her; but when she was in danger
the first time, in the womb and hidden from view." Her Mother's Glory by Robert Hart
Pamela Pearson Wong, "Abortion's House of Cards," Concerned Women for America,
Family Voice, January/February 2001. "I, having lived through rape and also having raised
a child 'conceived in rape,' feel personally assaulted and insulted every time I hear that
abortion should be legal because of rape and incest," says Kathleen DeZeeuw in Victims
and Victors. "I feel we're being used to further the abortion issue, even though we've not
been asked to tell our side of the story." We can begin by educating the public and
legislators on what the women themselves-the victims of rape and incest-say about abortion.
"Get Victims and Victors to legislators. Ask them to call for congressional hearings," says
Dr. Reardon. "Urge them not to provide money for abortions resulting from rape or incest
until they hear what the women say." Concerned Women for America - Family Voice
David C. Reardon, Julie Makimaa and Amy Sobie (Editors), Victims and Victors
(San Francisco, CA 94109: Acorn Books, 2000). "In Victims and Victors, 20 women like
the ones quoted above share what it is like to face a pregnancy resulting from rape or
incest. They speak bravely and candidly of the pain of sexual assault, of the sadness and
trauma of abortion, and of the joy and healing of giving birth."
Dr. and Mrs. J.C. Willke, Why Can't We Love Them Both, (Snowflake, AZ 85937:
Heritage House 76, Inc., 1998) Chapter 29, Rape. States that 170 to 340 assault rape
pregnancies occur per year in the United States. Why Can't We Love Them Both?
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