Society faces many weighty issues, especially in the moral realm. They are looking for leadership and the church is uniquely placed to offer it – on the natural and spiritual levels. One of those contentions issues is abortion: should we have a blanket ‘pro-life’ stance or does a woman have a ‘right to choose’ whether to continue her pregnancy or not? Even if they have such a right, should there be limitations on timing and reasons (e.g. sex selection abortion, late term abortions)?
In Part 01, this author spoke about how his progressivist, millennial niece in the United States asked for his opinion on abortion. He could say anything he wanted for as long as he wanted. Parts 01, 02, and 03, are his answers.
For a long time, abortion was illegal because it was considered murder. It was occurring anyway illegally and dangerously. In the United States, like in Australia, abortion is a state issue, not federal. On 22 January 1973, the US Supreme Court give its ‘Roe versus Wade’ decision, giving women in America the right to an abortion. It overturned the laws of 31 states immediately. Though considered a ‘compromise’ versus a ‘blank cheque’ for ‘abortion on demand,’ around 60 million abortions have been performed in the United States since the passage of Roe.
Roe Explained
Roe vs. Wade cited the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (ratified in 1865, just after the Civil War), which guarantees Americans the right to ‘life, liberty, and property.’ Then the court applied ‘substantive due process’ (SDP) to the 14th Amendment, and somehow created a ‘woman’s right to privacy,’ though this is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. SDP can mean that, according to the 5th and 14th amendments of the US Constitution, a law can be struck down simply because the court doesn’t like it – a ridiculous notion.
What it really means is that neither state nor federal governments can deny life, liberty, or freedom to US citizens without substantive or significant due process by the courts.Thus, the 14th amendment, which was meant to protect life was now used as justification to terminate the life of a future American citizen. As one person put it, the US Supreme Court created a constitutional right to privacy ‘out of thin air.’
Ben Shapiro in his article No, Abortion Isn’t a Constitutional Right,[1] counters the progressivist argument that abortion is a constitutional right.
This, of course, is a lie. There is no ‘right to abortion’ in the Constitution. The founders would have been appalled by such a statement. The Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade (1973) is a legal monstrosity by every available metric: As legal scholar John Hart Ely wrote, Roe ‘is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.’
Shapiro also highlights how the left-wing, pro-choice elites, speak about the ‘constitutional right’ to an abortion – of which the Constitution says nothing – yet deny the clearly written, truly constitutional rights of ‘free speech,’ ‘freedom of religion,’ and freedom to ‘bear arms.’
Abortion Justified: If you can successfully deny that the foetus is a ‘person’ and worthy of legal protection, or at least, be ambiguous about its personhood, then abortion goes from being ‘murder’ to merely a ‘reproductive right,’ ‘women’s health issue,’ and/or ‘medical procedure.’
One high-profile retired US politician, with universal name recognition, says he is an evangelical Christian, claimed to search the Scriptures on this issue. His conclusion: The Bible does not say when the human spirit enters the body. Once the spirit enters the foetus, it is a person, he reasons. Needless to say, this politician is ‘pro-choice.’ Perhaps this politician could look at:
Jeremiah 1:5: Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations or
Psalm 139:14-16:I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;marvellous 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.
TO BE CONTINUED
[1]https://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2019/05/22/no-abortion-isnt-a-constitutional-right-n2546661/print