By C. Ben Mitchell
Abortion is an unusually divisive issue in our nation. Why? What is the issue? What is at slake? The answer something larger than abortion alone, although abortion is the present focus of the controversy and is sufficiently heinous to demand such attention.
THE ISSUE IS SACREDNESS
The issue is the sanctity or sacredness of human life. When we distill the controversy over abortion, euthanasia, fetal tissue use, etc., the common essence is the sanctity of human life. Are human beings the unique creation of God? Is human life sacred and inviolable?
Some researchers and ethicists argue that the developing embryo in a mother' s womb is merely a "glob of tissue" and of no more value than the embryo of a guppy. The issue is, then, whether or not human life is unique, sacred, and worth protecting.
Modern secularists, having built their view of humanity on the foundation of their own unaided human reason, have little reason to regard human life as unique, sacred, and valuable.
The question that keeps ringing in the ears of those who are committed to a Biblical worldview is: "What does the Sovereign Lord, the giver and creator of life, have to say about the value of human life? What does God have to say through His Word, the Bible?'
1. The sanctity of human life is rooted and grounded in the Creator Himself. Many Biblical texts affirm that humans are the special creation of God and have been invested with sacredness and unique value over and above the rest of the created order. We humans are, unlike the other creatures of the earth, created in the image and likeness of God Himself.
Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. (Gen. 1:26-27 NIV).
David, the youthful shepherd, gazed into the starry sky and was overwhelmed at the expanse of the heavens. When he thought about the universe and humanity* s place in it, he wondered why God would even care about humans. The answer to that question is rooted in a Biblical anthropology.
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor (Psalm 8:3-5).
Why does God care about human beings? Because He sovereignly chose to create us and invest us with sacred worth and unique value. We are crowned with glory and honor.
WHEN DOES IT BECOME SACRED?
The Biblical revelation everywhere teaches that human life is sacred and has been invested with special worth by the Creator Himself. This is why it is wrong to kilt human beings unjustly. Not only does abortion violate the sanctity of human life, but so do euthanasiaandphysician-assisted suicide. Only God Himself, orthose appointed by God Himself (Romans 13:1-5) have the authority to end human life.
At what point in time does God invest human life with its uniqueness and sanctity? When does human life become sacred?
2. Human life is sacred from the moment of conception. Again, a Biblical anthropology correctly informs science. The tools of high technology medicine make it impossible to deny that the baby in the womb is a unique human being from conception.
Each individual baby has his or her own genetic code. The heart begins to beat at its own rate in the first month of pregnancy. The baby may have a different blood type than the mother. Everything we know about genetics and embryology points to the fact that the fetus is a developing human being รน not a guppy or a glob of tissue.
Only a Biblical view of human life makes sense of what we observe. What is the witness of Scripture about the beginnings of individual human life? Again, it is David the Psalmist who praises God, saying,
For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be (Psalm 1239:13-16).
To Jeremiah, the living God declared, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you a prophet to the nations" (Jeremiah 1:4-5). The God who has invested human life with special value and sacred worth is the same God who frames and fashions human babies in the womb. Human babies don't become human at some variable point in their development. They are conceived human. As humans, created in the image of God, they possess the unique sacredness God invests in all human life.
Over 1.6 million human babies, made in God's image, were aborted last year in the U.S. alone! That would be unimaginable if it were not true. While abortion is the focal point of the attack on the sanctity of human life in America, it is but the leading edge of a wedge that will increasingly divide our society.
If we kill the helpless unborn, then we can kill the helpless disabled. If we can kill the helpless disabled, we can kill the suffering ill. If we can kill the suffering ill, we can kill the unproductive members of society. If developing human life has no value, then perhaps legislators will decide that human life after 70 years of age has no value. What we do to our babies we will do to anyone.
The Biblical witness is uniform and clear. God has invested human life with sacredness and uniqueness from conception onward. The war of world views in our society has many victims, not the least of whom are the unborn babies. May God help us save the babies.
* Mr. Mitchell is the Director of Biomedical and Life Issues, for the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, printed from National Right to Life News, 8/25/92