Murder: A Matter of Inches?

By Andy Alexander

The Child Unborn

God cares for all the children who never see the light,

Who never experience sadness or feel the dark of night,

Who never smell the flowers or climb trees great and small,

Who never see the sun set or gaze at towers tall,

Who never feel the chilly wind or tread on snowy hill,

Who never hear the birds sing like other children will,

But they’ll see heaven’s glory the streets all paved in gold.

They will feel peace forever just like we all were told.

They’ll be there long before we will,

They’ll never feel the scorn.

These are the little souls of God who never will be born.

-Leah McJunkins

There has been a concerted effort among many of the politicians of our land to ban an abortion procedure called partial birth abortion. The abortionists call it an intact dilation and evacuation (IDE). The object that is intact is a baby. The baby is delivered alive, except for the head, then a pair of blunt scissors are inserted into the back of the baby’s skull and opened to expose the brain; then a high-powered suction tube is inserted into the baby’s skull and its brains are sucked out. If the baby’s head were to be moved just a matter of inches (just outside the birth canal), the legal procedure known as an abortion would be the criminal act of murder. Those supporting abortion insist that life does not begin until the actual birth of the child; therefore they reason that as long as the baby is in the womb it is not murder to kill it and remove it. However, in partial birth abortions, the baby is partially delivered, then murdered. Again, if the same procedure were carried out two or three inches from where it now occurs, it would be classified murder. It used to be, “if you can’t see it, it’s not murder!” Now, the idea is changed to “if you can’t see all of it, then it’s not murder!”

It’s a sad time in the history of a nation when discussion of such a topic is even taking place. This is the result of the hedonistic lifestyle that many Americans have chosen to lead. We do not want to accept responsibility for our actions or we want to eliminate the consequences of our sinful ways.

The Bible plainly teaches that the babe in the womb is a living being and recognized by God as an individual person. David said in Psalm 139:12-16:

For thou didst form my inward parts: Thou didst cover me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks unto thee; For I am fearfully and wonderfully made: Wonderful are thy works; And that my soul knoweth right well. My frame was not hidden from thee, When I was made in secret, And curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see mine unformed substance; And in thy book they were all written, Even the days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was none of them.

To the prophet Jeremiah, God said, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee; I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations” (Jer. 1:4-5). Language could not be plainer, the babe in the womb is a living human being known by God and to willfully destroy it is murder. “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: For in the image of God made he man” (Gen. 9:6).

It is not just the wholesale slaughter of babies that is taking place. The present administration lifted a ban on fetal tissue research which Presidents Reagan and Bush both signed and up-held. This lifting of the ban has increased the pressure to perform partial birth abortions, because the older the aborted baby, the more value it is to those in research (“Cures From The Womb,” Article on Fetal Tissue Re-search, Newsweek Magazine, 2-22-93; 49-54). The number of these partial birth abortions during the last year of record was 17,000, a far cry from the number (300 to 400) that some politicians report.

Experiments on human beings takes place by those who do not believe in God or believe the fact that man is made in the image of God. Secular humanists and atheists pro-mote this type research as a means of making life better for those who are living. Baby tissue is particularly valuable to those in research who are looking for the elusive fountain of youth. Cell growth in babies is much more rapid than in adults and researchers are running experiments on aborted babies in an effort to discover why. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out why they want to know this secret.

Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, the world’s largest abortion promoter and provider, learned her humanistic ways from German philosophers in the early 1900s. These same philosophers likely had an influence on Adolph Hitler, one of the cruelest men that ever lived. Sanger, like Hitler, believed the way to achieve a utopian society was by weeding out the un-desirable, the poor and certain races deemed as unnecessary and a burden on society. (Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood, a book by George Grant, contains much documentation.) It is not difficult to understand why abortionists do not want this type of information being distributed.

The gruesome and inhumane methods of murder they use to destroy life, and the use they make of the remains is enough to turn most people against such an evil. However, many Americans, and not a few Christians, are isolated from the carnage that takes place and believe that what they do not know cannot hurt them. But, God’s word teaches differently. Nations that destroy the innocent and do not up-hold the rights of the poor and less fortunate are headed for destruction. Ancient Israel was destroyed, not be-cause of a poor economy, but because of the innocent people who were abused and killed (2 Kgs. 21:16; Jer. 5:28-34).

Let us awake from sleep, get off our beds of ease, and teach those around us the principles of righteousness that can save the soul and preserve the nation (Eph. 5:14; Amos 6:1; Prov. 14:34).

Guardian of Truth XL: No. 24, p. 6-7
December 19, 1996