Dr. Wayne Grudem: An Example from Scripture

There’s a significant passage regarding abortion in Exodus 21:22–25 that says:

When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

Two men are struggling, and they apparently unintentionally collide with a pregnant woman causing a premature birth, but the baby and mother are both okay. Those men are still fined for endangering the life of the unborn child and its mother. But then the text goes on to say “but if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”

If there is harm, the penalty is life for life. Capital punishment was imposed as the penalty for accidentally causing the death of an unborn child. The reason that’s significant is that in all the laws in the Mosaic law code, accidentally causing the death of another person normally was not a cause of capital punishment. You had to instead flee to a certain city and wait there a certain amount of time until the high priest died and then you would be free. It was a kind of house arrest. But you could not receive capital punishment for accidentally causing the death of another person.

Accidentally causing the death of an unborn child is the only case in the Mosaic law code in which accidentally causing death is punished by capital punishment—which I think means that God is placing a higher premium on protecting the life of the unborn child and the child’s mother than on protecting the life of anybody else in Israelite society. That’s a significant and weighty consideration, indicating we should value the protection of the life of an unborn child very highly.

In addition to that, this was a punishment for accidentally causing the death of an unborn child. How much more serious it must be in God’s sight to intentionally cause the death of an unborn child?

Why It Matters How We Treat Unborn Children from Crossway on Vimeo.

I am proud to call these two men (Jeff Durbin and Chris Arnzen) very good friends of mine. They have put together a very vital and useful show here, full of information about a Christian worldview and how to engage our culture. Abortion is a plague in our society, wherever it is found. The show can be found (at this link).

“Excellent rebuttal to the pro-abortion “unanswerable argument”. Having said that , the pro-life twitter responses are mostly pathetic and do not address the challenge. This article stays with the question and does so logically. Ben Shapiro does so too in a more popular fashion on You Tube. Read the article and learn how to answer this pseudo intellectual & his minions. Defend life.” – Joe Godal

Article by Robert P. George and Christopher O. Tollefsen (original source here)

Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, and Christopher O. Tollefsen is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina. They are co-authors of Embryo: A Defense of Human Life, from which this essay is adapted.

Both human embryos and human five-year-olds are human beings equal in fundamental worth and dignity. But there are differences between the embryos and five-year-olds that are or can be morally relevant to the decision concerning whom to rescue.

Errors and bad arguments abound on Twitter; it is simply impossible to respond to all of them.

Yet when the errors and bad arguments concern the value of unborn human lives, and when those errors and arguments have, apparently, been so rhetorically persuasive as to generate many thousands of retweets, then perhaps they should be addressed.

This seems to be the case with a recent series of tweets by Patrick L. Tomlinson, who writes, “Whenever abortion comes up, I have a question I’ve been asking for ten years now of the ‘Life begins at Conception’ crowd. In ten years, no one has EVER answered it honestly.” He then offers a scenario, proposed earlier by Michael Sandel at a meeting of the President’s Council on Bioethics, and even earlier by George Annas. Sandel asks us to imagine that a building is on fire and Jones, who is trying to escape, can save ten frozen embryos or one five-year-old girl, but not both (Mr. Tomlinson’s example substitutes 1,000 frozen embryos, on which more later).

Now, by saving a crate of embryos, Jones would, on the “Life Begins at Conception” account, be saving many human beings (virtually every embryologist or developmental biologist would agree; this is easily verified by a look at the relevant textbooks). Yet it seems plausible that most reasonable people, among whom we will include Jones, would save the five-year-old girl. Can we agree that this choice is reasonable, given our view not just of the nature of the frozen embryos—they are human beings—but also of their value, for we hold that they are beings equal in fundamental worth and dignity to those other human beings currently reading this essay? Does our willingness to accept Jones’s choice as morally legitimate show that, in truth, we do not regard human embryos as we regard children at later stages of development, namely, as full members of the human family?

We agree that considering the case as described by Sandel, most people in Jones’s circumstances would choose to rescue the girl. However, this by no means shows that human embryos are not human beings or that they may be deliberately killed to produce stem cells, or in an abortion.

The first thing to notice is that the case as described is not, in fact, analogous to the suggestion that we should perform embryo-destructive research for the benefits it might provide us, or to the suggestion that it is permissible to abort an unborn human being. In both such cases, we are being invited to kill, or authorize the killing of, human embryos or fetuses in order to provide benefits to others. But in the fire scenario, there is no killing; the deaths of the embryos who are lost when Jones opts to save the girl are not killings—no one is acting to destroy the embryos or cause their deaths—but rather are the kind of death we accept as side effects in various cases in which, for example, acting to save one or some persons means that we are unable to save another or others. Continue reading →

When I worked at Planned Parenthood, I was trained to be a POC technician. POC stands for “Products of Conception.” Sometimes, if the staff were feeling funny, we would say that it stood for “Pieces of Children.”

Inside every abortion clinic across the country, someone is tasked to be the POC technician. Their job is to take everything suctioned out of the uterus during an abortion and reassemble the parts of the baby. We did this to ensure that the uterus was empty of all fetal parts. If something was left, it could create a potentially fatal infection for the woman.

— Abby Johnson

This is actual footage outside of Planned Parenthood in Tempe, Arizona. On the public sidewalk, Jeff Durbin, of Apologia Radio and TV, spoke with a Planned Parenthood supporter. There was also a film crew present filming a documentary on The Red Door Ministry (Apologia Church’s ministry at abortion mills).

thank you for your prayers, they are so vital and instrumental. These are brutal slayings that are happening at Planned Parenthood. This is not healthcare. That’s why we show the awful pictures. We hate seeing them too…but that is what is happening inside. We can’t deny it, nor should we hide it. Babies are dying!

They are now trying to deny the holocaust, to try and say it never happened…but the pictures are proof.

A dear friend said, “We don’t show pictures of beautiful Jewish people to depict the holocaust. We show the pictures of their broken battered bodies…that’s the holocaust, and we can see beautiful babies in the grocery store… but that is not what abortion is.”

She’s right! Don’t get me wrong, we have some beautiful baby pictures out there too, but abortion needs to be exposed for what it is—HEINOUS MURDER of the smallest most vulnerable people group—the unborn.

“Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.” (Romans 12:9)

I have long ago repented to the Lord for one time being pro choice (death) in certain circumstances. Later I had to repent of my wishy washy pro life stance that is so prevalent today. I had fallen for the lie…..

All you need is love…wah, wah, wah, wah, wah…all you need is love, love, love is all you need.

You’ve heard the song, in fact it may be playing in your head now…sorry. It seems to be the call of many in the pro-life movement. In fact, as I said… at one time (God forgive me) I believed some of this same rhetoric that says, “Ultimately it’s a woman’s choice and you can’t tell her what to do. We just love on her, show her the love of Jesus, and educate her about her ‘options’ then let her know that we are here for her, and will support her no matter what she decides.”

To that I say….HOGWASH!!!!

The love of Jesus???? Where’s the part about go and sin no more?

As Christians our love must be without hypocrisy. We CAN…SHOULD… and are COMMANDED to tell her what to do… OBEY GOD…DO NOT MURDER YOUR BABY, GOD COMMANDS YOU NOT TO MURDER!

We should be preachers of righteousness. We should love by telling the truth. WE WILL HELP YOU!! GOD HAS PROVIDED A WAY OF ESCAPE BUT YOU MUST NOT DO THIS!

The difference is we can’t MAKE her do anything. But we can certainly tell her what she should do, and what the consequences are. We should educate her….through the fear of the Lord men depart from evil. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Therefore there are only 2 OPTIONS—Parenting, or Adoption. Abortion is NOT an option, it is an EVIL. It is SIN! We will not support you in that. Abortion is murder—God commands you not to murder…that’s real education.

Please my friends, be in prayer. We need to be bold. We need to tell the truth. We must do it in love…but it must be done. If we don’t tell them the truth, then it really is hate speech. I know that sounds hard.

We need to get it through our heads that the world is not going to love us…They hated Jesus and if we follow Him and look like Him they will hate us too. He told us they would. So why are we trying so hard for them not to?

These are mommies and daddies who have arrived at the killing place to kill their children…it IS a matter of life and death. We don’t change our message to appear more loving. The truth is the most loving thing we can share. We don’t take away the graphic images to appear more loving—we need to expose what they are about to do, we don’t tell mommies and daddies killing their babies that we will support them no matter what they decide in order to appear more loving. We don’t need to, nor should we… apologize for the holiness of God.

Would you do that if your child or someone else confided in you that they were thinking of raping someone, or murdering a person who stood in the way of them achieving their dreams?….Well I can’t tell you what to do, but I’ll be praying for you sweetie (hug them), and I will support you no matter what you decide. Oh by the way if you do go through with it, there is help available for you afterwards.

RIDICULOUS!!! You can see that it is ridiculous. It paves the road to destruction with sloppy agape and helps her justify her sin.

This is not about a woman’s body, her choice. There is another person’s little body inside her body… that is not her body, not her choice.

I don’t fear ISIS. I FEAR that we have no FEAR OF GOD in this country and that many of us who claim to know CHRIST have more fear of man than we have of GOD.

And I said; “Oh my God, I am too ashamed and humiliated to lift up my face to You, my God; for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has grown up to the heavens. (Ezra 9:6)

Oh LORD, please help us to follow hard and wholeheartedly after You. Let us not be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Help us to be bold and courageous, to love You more than our very own lives, to speak the truth, no matter the cost, and trust You with the results. Forgive us for our apathy and complacency. Strengthen us in this battle for life and souls and be glorified I pray!

by Tim Challies

…because the pre-born child is a human being, elective abortion is always a moral wrong.

Rebecca Rizzi was five weeks pregnant and desperately looking for a way out — any way out. Read her story here.