The BEAUTY of the Insignificant

and the horror of abortion

Psalm 139:13-18

 

          When we talked about the story of the Good Samaritan last week we mentioned three responses to the injured Jewish man: (1) the response of the thieves, “what’s yours is mine and I will take it;” (2) the response of the Priest and the Levite, “what’s mine is mine and I will keep it;” and (3) the reaction of the Samaritan, “what’s mine is yours, and I will share it.”

          Today I want to focus on the theological position taken by the thieves, “what’s yours is mine and I will take it.”  I want to explain how we do that in America by our treatment of what many consider to be insignificant.  How do we take from insignificant people?  We do it to babies.  We have chosen on a national scale to take away the rights of a baby in the womb.  I think it is appropriate to speak on this subject today since tomorrow is the 33^rd birthday of perhaps one of the most horrible rulings that ever came out of our Supreme Court, a ruling that wiped away all protection for the unborn.  We have enabled people who call themselves doctors to say to the unborn, “what is yours is mine and I will take it by force.”  Tomorrow is the national Right to Life march on the mall.

          The lawyer in the story last week asked the question, “who is my neighbor?”  After Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, He asked, “who made himself a neighbor?”  Today the question very well could be asked by a pregnant teen, “is that shape on the Sonogram my neighbor?”  That shape picked up by ultrasound could be our most insignificant, most defenseless, most vulnerable and perhaps, most amazing neighbor.  That which is yet in the womb, which is yet unseen, which has not had a chance to demonstrate its ability and uniqueness to the human eye, is considered by many to be worthless and not entitled to any “rights.”

          I would like to give four reasons why abortion as practiced today is such a crime:

 

I.  Abortion attacks the work of God.  The development of a baby in the womb is an incredible piece of work.  There is no way this could be accomplished by evolution.

 

          A.  David attributes his beginnings to God (13).  God designed the person and the process.

            13 For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb. 14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them. 17 How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them! 18 If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand; When I awake, I am still with You.

             When David said, You formed my inward parts, the “you” is emphatic: “it is YOU who formed my inward parts.”  This isn’t some accidental process of nature, it is a miracle accomplished by God personally.  “You formed my inward parts.”  The reason why I am like I am is because YOU formed, created, my inward parts.  You covered me in my mother's womb.  The word, “covered” is the word, “knit,” or “weave.”  In the NIV it is, “you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”  David’s development in the womb was a weaving process, with many different colors of thread being put together into a beautiful tapestry. 

          WHY does a baby develop in the mother’s womb the way it does?  What tells it to grow what it grows when it grows it?  The medical world can describe what takes place in the development, but cannot explain why. 

          Why does the fertilized egg wander down the fallopian tube for a couple of days and then suddenly implant itself in the wall of the mother’s uterus on day seven?  Who instructs these couple hundred cells, called a morula, to reach out and grab hold of the lining of the uterus?  How could a couple of cells know how to do that and actually be quite proficient at it?

          By the end of the first month, that combination of 100 cells has multiplied very rapidly and has started to develop a brain, a spinal cord, rudimentary vertebrae, tiny arm and leg buds, beginnings of eyes, thyroid gland, lungs, stomach, liver, kidneys and intestines.  By about the 25^th day they have gotten the heart beating 65 times a minute to pump its own blood even though the entire body is only a quarter of an inch long!

          Do you see what is going on?  An absolutely incredible process.  It’s hard to believe that any group of a few hundred cells could get together and start the development of all of these highly specialized and absolutely essential items.  Why?

          By day 35 these cells are working on a nose, eyes, ears, lips and a tongue along with teeth.  Although the arms are only an eighth of an inch long, the hands are already there complete with fingers and thumbs.  Knees, ankles, and feet are already there.  Think of the fact that these couple of cells have only had 35 days at this work.  From where did this incredible ability come?

 

          B.  David was separate from his mother while in her womb.   “You wove me in my mother’s womb.”  David was distinct from his mother.  It wasn’t that God wove his mother so that she could divide herself as a cell would divide and the second part would be the baby.  No, the weaving was of a separate person.  David was separate from his mother, even as he was in her womb.

          Do you know that when the baby is formed in the mother’s womb, it is an entirely separate creation that is dependent on the mother but is not a part of the mother.  The abortionist says to young girls, “it’s your body and you can do with it whatever you want.”  That’s wrong.  The baby is not your body.  The baby is a totally separate visitor, who happens to be “renting space” for a few months until he/she gets strong enough to face the outside world.

          Mother provides what a mother provides – nourishment and a safe and warm place for baby to develop.  But the blood supplies of mother and baby are totally separate; only half of the baby’s chromosomes come from the mother; every other cell in the mother’s body bears the genetic code of the mother, except this one; the chemical activities are different; the mother may be sick and the baby healthy.  At no time does the baby become a part of its mom. 

          The more scientists delve into this relationship between mother and baby, the more incredible it becomes.  Half century ago scientists discovered the human immune system.  That’s what provided some of the understanding of how to transplant tissue from one person’s body to another.  The immune system normally detects any “foreign” tissue in the body and sets up a defense against it (what is called the “killer T cell” mechanism).  Early organ transplants failed because the recipient’s immune system attacked and rejected the donor’s “foreign” organ tissue.  But one of the things observed back then was that the immune defense system didn’t work in the expected way with babies in the mother’s womb.

          Why doesn’t the mother’s body reject that little 100 cell embryo that affixes itself to the lining of the uterus?  Answer: it DOES reject it!  It sends those killer T cells out to attack that little embryo.  But in the last eight years, researchers at the Medical College in Augusta, GA discovered that the embryo itself produced a special enzyme which I can’t pronounce, abbreviated IDO which suppresses the mother’s killer T cells!  And when does the little embryo start producing IDO – this is 100 or so cells producing a chemical that you can’t even pronounce?  On day six.  Because it’s usually on day seven that the embryo attaches itself to its mother’s womb and gets attacked by the mother’s killer T cells.  (From Creation magazine, 27(4) Sept-Nov, 2005, pp. 18-20).  Isn’t that incredible?  What an amazing indication of how God has “knit” us together in our mother’s womb.  It makes me wonder whether the work that God is doing in the womb is a more spectacular work of creation and design than anything else He is doing throughout one’s life.

          The unique development of a baby argues against the theory of evolution.  Let me mention two reasons why it is hard for me to believe in evolution.  (1) The development of the baby is not directed by the mother.  Evolution has to say that the mother comes up with this method of creating a baby.  But the development of the baby is a totally separate package.  Where did the baby get this necessary information?  How did this little embryo learn to start producing IDO on day six so that it could shield itself from the mother’s killer T cells that attack and eliminate every other foreign tissue that tries to enter?  How does it even “know” that it needs to fix itself to the lining of it’s mother’s uterus in order to survive?  This information could not have evolved.  (2) How much time would there be for the birth process to “evolve?”  Think about the first primitive “mammal,” whoever she was.  How much time did she have to experiment with and develop a birth process that would enable her to reproduce?  Do you see the problem?  If that first mammal doesn’t have the birth process figured out, there goes the hope for the mammal family.  Evolution doesn’t have millions of years.  Mammal “Eve” has to be able to reproduce; she can’t wait a million years to develop a uterus and ovaries.  Mammals have to have the entire package or goodbye mammals.

 

          C.  The result of God’s work is beautiful (14).  The Psalmist glories in God’s marvelous work.  The incredible body that you possess is God’s WORKMANSHIP!  It’s not an accident; it’s a design.  David exclaims, I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  The word “fearful” is speaking of the fragile-ness and precariousness of the human frame.  It seems fearfully delicate given what it faces.  Think of your heart, this little muscle the size of your fist.  All it has to do is stop for a couple of minutes and you are gone.  Your heart has to keep beating.  If it beats, let’s say, 75 times a minute that’s 4500 times an hour, that’s 108,000 beats a day, 3,240,000 times a month, and 38,880,000 beats a year.  And it can’t miss very many beats without you being in serious trouble.  And every beat has to shove a quantity of blood throughout your extensive circulatory system.  Every hour it has to move about 250 pounds of blood.  Delicate, fragile, precarious, and yet, David says, “wonderfully made.”  What a combination, fragile, and yet fascinating, fearful, and yet at the same time, phenomenal.  That’s the work of God.  That’s what He has given you – a piece of that work!

          And David exclaims, Marvelous are Your works,             And that my soul knows very well.

Praise to God arises from the understanding of the brilliance of God’s construction project in the womb.  Are you thankful?  Do you praise Him because the life He has given you is “wonderful” and “marvelous?” 

          Normally as we grow up we have trouble with the body God has given us.  We think our face is too long, or our ears stick out too much, or our nose extends in an inappropriate way.  We only get over those negative feelings as we come to understand what we have.  The package is marvelous!  We are fearfully and wonderfully made!  What a gift.  The spectacular work of God handed to you for you to use!  Have you ever thanked Him? 

          Now imagine someone coming along and saying, “what’s yours is mine, and I am taking it.”  “In fact, I’m going to tear you apart limb by limb, crush your soft skull and sell your parts for cash.”  Imagine if that person is called a “doctor,” and the procedure occurs in a “hospital?”  Do you see the horror?  The crime?  Who in their right mind would ever want to deny someone else the privilege of the life and body they enjoy?  That’s what is so tragic about abortion: it destroys that fearful and wonderful person.

 

          Martha and I were talking this week about some of the recommendations we received when she was pregnant with baby number six.  The wisdom that came from Christians was in the form of, “don’t you think that six is a little too much for your salary?”  “Don’t you think you are tempting God’s plan to provide for you?”  The wisdom that came from the non-Christians was usually, “would you like to have an Amnio-Centisus check so that if it comes back negative, you can choose to not have this baby?”  After all, Martha was getting to the end of her expected child-bearing years, and there was a danger that the baby might be “less” than normal.  Martha’s response was, “even if he were to flunk the test, we are going to have the baby anyway, because he is a gift to us from God.”  And I can remember saying several times in Jonathan’s almost 23 years, “what if we had not had baby number six?”  He was such an amazing blessing, such an incredible kid.  And the more I think about how unique he was, and how special his presence was to us, the more I realize how unique every one of our children are; what a blessing each has been.  And it helps me think about how unique each member of the body of Christ is, how unique every person on the face of the earth is. 

          The point is that God has an incredible design for every one of His creations.  None of them has come about by accident, none of them is just a product of “mother nature,” or another step in the chain of mindless and meaningless reproduction.  Every one of them is unique.  Every one of them is precious.  And to think that people would take it upon themselves to choose to interrupt that process.  To think that it wasn’t worth the effort to let the process continue.  To think that there would be any reason why there would be something more important to do in life than have and hold that baby. Unbelievable.

 

II.  Abortion attacks our young people.

          We are told that abortions are “safe” and quick and a clean way to “get it over with and get on with your life.”  Who talks about the harm that comes upon the young people who get caught by this cruel machine?

          A.  Physical effects.  Abortions can harm the women, even making it impossible for them to get pregnant again.

          B.  Emotional effects.  A teenager said, “looking back, I honestly feel that no woman should ever go through an abortion.  The feelings of guilt will always be there . . . I tried not to think about it but you always think about it. . . . Every time you look at a child you think and then you find yourself counting the years” (Curt Young, The Least of These, 57).

          A 37 year old woman said, “the scars it leaves you with can never be totally healed.  I think the scar that it’s left me with is that there’s a kind of numbness, maybe protectiveness or a blocking out, that to admit or call myself a murderer . . . and sometimes to think that here my other daughter that I gave up for adoption is a grown woman, has met the Lord, we’ve had a reunion, and this other baby would have been grown up too.  I think that when we’re young we don’t realize twenty years passes so quickly.  It’s something I really regret” (Young, 57).

          One of the common emotional effects is “detachment.”  You have to work hard to detach yourself from your surprise pregnancy and the abortion procedure.  The result is that the detachment carries over to other areas of life – like a husband or boy friend, other children, and friends.  When a husband or boy friend encourages a pregnant teen into an abortion, usually afterwards there are feelings of guilt and shame that change the relationship between the two.

          C.  Psychological trauma.  Abortions usually take tremendous amounts of emotional energy.  As a result personality distortion and mental illness may occur. (This list is rearranged from Young’s book The Least of These, 54-65).  I think this is just the tip of the iceberg.  The effects, tragically, are usually lifelong.  As Mother Teresa said, “abortion is a crime that kills not only the child but the consciences of all involved.”

          Matthew Ristuccia, who wrote a piece in World Magazine this week, says, “everyone loses when we start to define a particular human life as a non-neighbor.  In Jesus’ parable, the man on the side of the road, the one declared ‘non-neighbor,’ obviously loses.  But everyone else in the parable does, too.  For the interesting twist of Jesus’ story is that, in defining as a non-neighbor the man who is dying at the side of the road, those who pass by cease to be neighbors themselves.  And as it was then, so it is today: To define the unborn as a non-neighbor forces everyone to lose.  Everyone is diminished” (World, 1/21/06, 51).

          Don’t view an abortion as a safe, quick and clean way to deal with a problem.  It only multiplies the problem in ways that tear at the very framework of life.

 

III.  Abortion attacks life.

          Ronald Reagan said, “abortion concerns not only the unborn child, it concerns every one of us.”  When the Supreme Court declared that an unborn child is only “a potential life” in the Roe versus Wade decision, they created a national posture that relegated the unborn to the status of “non-human.”  In writing the decision, Justice Harry Blackmun offered no definition of the phrase, provided no biological, legal, or ethical evidence to support the phrase, he just arbitrarily excluded all unborn infants from the rights of any human being.  It’s one thing for Harry Homeowner to say this in his backyard, it’s a totally different thing to make it the national policy of the greatest nation on the planet.  The marvelous work of God in the womb deserves zero rights in America.  Our highest court has decided that any woman has a fundamental right to destroy the marvelous work of God in her body because of her constitutional right to “privacy.”  And even though our 14^th Amendment guarantees that “no person . . . shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,” the Supreme court was not willing to accept the simple conclusion that a baby was a “person.”  Consequently the 14^th Amendment didn’t apply to them (Curt Young, The Least of These, 15-16).

          But what happens when you open the door for the legal destruction of life?  What happens when you say, “those people aren’t people; they are non-human, and don’t deserve the normal guarantees of humans?”  The Supreme Court has done that before, in connection with slavery.  The Dred Scott decision, for example concluded that African American slaves were not included under the word “citizen,” and therefore could claim none of the rights and privileges which the Constitution guaranteed to citizens.  Only after 605,000 American soldiers died in the Civil War, the bloodiest in American History, did a change come about in our social values which began to value all people of whatever race.  An expensive price to pay for a change in social consciousness.

          How do we convince people that life is sacred when we allow the destruction of more than a million and a half babies every year?   Commercials on TV?  Introducing “values” into education?  Billboards?  Preaching?   Our problem is that it is almost impossible to teach one thing while you are doing the opposite.  Some things cannot be taught; we only learn them from example.  And the examples we are setting, like the examples under slavery, are only ripping down the value fabric of our nation.

          Imagine parents saying to their son, “we have aborted what would have been your brothers and sisters, because we treasure you and wanted to give you life.”  “And we are going to bring in a Doctor named Jack Kevorkian to help send your old uncle Bennie away to his eternal reward, but, when we get old, we want you to take care of us.”  How important are the words to the son?  Do they affect his life and mind as strongly as the actions?  In the same way our national actions destroy the very quality of life we desire.

          And so we make adjustments to prop up the death trail we have chosen.  Germany, for example, has had a decline in population of 3.2 million people in the past 33 years, even though immigration has been high.  As a result, Ursula von der Leyen, a medical doctor and the mother of seven children, has taken the family affairs portfolio in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet, and is arguing for free child care and extensive tax breaks for families with small children.  The Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, next week, will send a welcoming letter to 600,000 Italian newborns that says, “best wishes for your arrival; do you know that the budget has put aside 1000 euros for you?”  Why such work?  The birth rate of these European countries has plummeted.  Italy is spending more than a half billion dollars on these newborns.  Why not just ban abortion?

          Think of the confusing message.  “We kill babies on request because they have no rights, but if they happen to make it to life, we desperately need them because our national policy is causing our country to suffer.”  As Malcolm Muggeridge said, “if we go on tolerating legalized abortion, it will amount to collective suicide . . . what a strange irony it is that the Liberal Mind today is for Herod and the slaughter of the infants in preference to Mother Teresa’s readiness to take in and care for any unwanted baby!” (Introduction to Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation, by Ronald Reagan, 11-12)

 

IV.  Abortion attacks normal human love.

          You cannot practice murder privately.  Every act of violence against another person is an act of violence against the country, against all of us.  Just because an act of violence is conducted under the protection of the law and hidden in a room so no one can see it, doesn’t mean that the act doesn’t spread.  Violence that stabs at the incredible work of God is an act that multiplies in the same way that the baby was multiplying, only in the opposite direction.

          A.  Abortion breeds fetal experimentation.   Businessmen from the USA and Europe have found a variety of uses for fetal corpses.  Cruel experiments on live aborted infants are being performed.  We are talking about aborted babies that are alive, that live for days only to become guinea pigs in laboratories.  I read of babies that lived for five days while undergoing “medical torture.”

          B.  Abortion breeds infanticide.  What happens when an aborted infant comes out alive?  You kill him.  Way back in 1973 in an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Raymond Duff acknowledged that 14% of the babies that died in the intensive care nursery at Yale-New Haven Hospital expired through physician choice (Curt Young, The Least of These, 110).  When doctors have the power to choose who lives and who doesn’t the question moves to whether a less-than-perfect child should be permitted to live.  In 1981, the Hartford Courant ran an expose entitled “Defective Newborns are Dying by Design.”

          Do you see what is happening?  Because infants are declared “non-humans” we can do with them whatever we want.  They can be torn apart in the womb, with their heads crushed in a D & C abortion, they can be cut up and experimented on and treated any way anyone wants to, because THEY ARE NOTHING OF VALUE!

          Have you heard the name, Gianna Jessen?  She testified before the Constitution Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee on April 22, 1996.  Here’s part of her testimony:

          I am adopted. I have cerebral palsy. My biological mother was 17 years old and seven and one-half months pregnant when she made the decision to have a saline abortion. I am the person she aborted. I lived instead of died.  Fortunately for me the abortionist was not in the clinic when I arrived alive, at 6:00 a.m. on the morning of April 6, 1977. I was early, my death was not expected to be seen until about 9 a.m., when he would probably be arriving for his office hours. I am sure I would not be here today if the abortionist would have been in the clinic as his job is to take life, not sustain it. Some have said I am a "botched abortion", a result of a job not well done.

          There were many witnesses to my entry into this world. My biological mother and other young girls in the clinic, who also awaited the death of their babies, were the first to greet me. I am told this was a hysterical moment. Next was a staff nurse who apparently called emergency medical services and had me transferred to a hospital.  I remained in the hospital for almost three months. There was not much hope for me in the beginning. I weighed only two pounds.

          I eventually was able to leave the hospital and be placed in foster care. I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy as a result of the abortion.  My foster mother was told that it was doubtful that I would ever crawl or walk. I could not sit up independently. Through the prayers and dedication of my foster mother, and later many other people, I eventually learned to sit up, crawl, then stand. I walked with leg braces and a walker shortly before I turned age four. I was legally adopted by my foster mother's daughter, Diana De Paul, a few months after I began to walk.  I have continued in physical therapy for my disability, and after a total of four surgeries, I can now walk without assistance. It is not always easy. Sometimes I fall, but I have learned how to fall gracefully after 19 years.

          I am happy to be alive. I almost died. Every day I thank God for life. I do not consider myself a by-product of conception, a clump of tissue, or any other of the titles given to a child in the womb. I do not consider any person conceived to be any of those things.  I have met other survivors of abortion. They are all thankful for life. Only a few months ago I met another saline abortion survivor. Her name is Sarah. She is two years old. Sarah also has cerebral palsy, but her diagnosis is not good. She is blind and has severe seizures. The abortionist, besides injecting the mother with saline, also injects the baby victims. Sarah was injected in the head. I saw the place on her head where this was done. When I speak, I speak not only for myself, but for the other survivors, like Sarah, and also for those who cannot yet speak ...

          There is a quote which is etched into the high ceilings of one of our state's capitol buildings. The quote says, "Whatever is morally wrong, is not politically correct." Abortion is morally wrong. Our country is shedding the blood of the innocent. America is killing its future.  All life is valuable. All life is a gift from our Creator. We must receive and cherish the gifts we are given. We must honor the right to life.