To People of the Christian Faith:
A Short Essay In Defense of Life
by Vanessa Amundson, Camas, WA

This essay appeals to any person of faith who has respect for God and His Word.  I hope you will consider very carefully these thoughts, especially when you decide which candidate(s) for political office you will choose to support in the coming election. 

Abortion is a blight on America.  It is indefensible from several different standpoints: 

Scientific Standpoint – The overwhelming body of scientific evidence today proves definitively that human life begins at conception.  Consider with me the definition of life in the dictionary: 

“the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.”[1]

As you can see, even the newly-formed cells of the embryo meet this definition from the dictionary.  But there is other proof.  The unborn baby has been shown to have the ability to feel pain much earlier than was previously thought.  A baby begins to develop “pain fibers” as early as 6 weeks’ gestation.[2]  Consider this excerpt from the testimony (before Congress) offered by Dr. Jean Wright, Chair of Pediatric Medicine at Mercer School of Medicine: 

 “Studies at 16 weeks and beyond show hormonal responses to painful stimuli that exactly duplicate the responses that the infant and adult possess. The critical difference is that the unborn lacks the ability to modulate itself in response to this pain. Therefore, the responses of hormones to painful procedures show a 3 - 5 x surge in response. This ability to down-regulate the response in light of painful stimuli will not exist until the unborn child is nearly full term in its gestational age. Further studies demonstrated that the magnitude of pain response reflected the magnitude of the stimulus and blocking the pain receptors with narcotics, blocked the hormonal surge…”[3] 

In other words, not only can the baby feel pain at a very early period of gestation, but the evidence strongly suggests that the pain can be felt 3 to 5 times more strongly by the unborn than in infants and adults.  This fact casts a chilling shadow over the implications of what the baby actually experiences during the most common methods of abortion. 

During these methods, the baby might experience dismemberment or will burn to death from the salt used in intra-amniotic instillation (injecting liquids that contain large amounts of salt into the amniotic sac).[4]  Of course, the most gruesome method devised has been the now-outlawed “partial birth abortion” in which the baby is delivered from the mother feet-first, with all except the head outside her body.  The abortionist then jams surgical scissors into the base of the baby’s skull, opens the wound, inserts a powerful suction tube, and vacuums out the brain tissue while the baby is still kicking and obviously in pain.[5]  These descriptions are terribly graphic, but we must not turn a blind eye to the terrible things that are happening to real people every day in “clinics” across our nation. 

Another aspect of the scientific case against abortion is the fact that the unborn baby is a person with his or her own DNA.  DNA is the substance which identifies all living creatures.  The DNA of a human is different than that of a dog or a monkey.  And DNA differentiates one human from another; so much so that DNA evidence is now commonly used in criminal trials to either convict or exonerate people accused of crimes.[6]   

When I carried each of my children in my womb, although they had some DNA characteristics in common with me, they had their own DNA from the moment of conception.  They were their own separate human life as identified by their unique and distinctly separate DNA.  So when abortion proponents assert that it is about a “woman making a choice about her own body”, it is simply not true.  The life she carries within her is a separate and living human being as we have seen from the evidence above.  If she chooses to have an abortion, she is choosing to end the life of another person who has no choice at all in the matter, and who is not even given the protections a common criminal receives under the U.S. Constitution. 

Constitutional Standpoint  - The “Due Process” clause of the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be deprived of their life without due process.[7]  This includes people who are either citizens or non-citizens.  Even Harry Blackmun, the Supreme Court justice who authored the notorious decision striking down state laws prohibiting abortion[8] himself stated in that very opinion that the state has a “legitimate interest” in “protecting… the potentiality of human life” which he said actually rises to the level of “compelling interest” depending on how close the woman is to delivery.[9]  He went on to establish the “trimester” system of deciding the level of the state’s interest, based on his own personal definition of the viability and definition of life.  But when the Supreme Court is forced to review the definition of life in the light of the scientific evidence of today, Roe v. Wade is going down under the auspices of the 14^th Amendment.  The state will be forced to admit it has a compelling interest in “protecting the potentiality of human life”. 

Scriptural Standpoint – For any person who names the name of Christ, this standpoint must take precedence even if the compelling logic of the other viewpoints discussed here did not exist. 

Psalm 139:13-16 (NKJV) tells us:

For you formed my inward parts; you covered me in my mother’s womb…Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.  And in Your book they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. 

So we see that God has purpose and plan for us even when we are still being formed in our mother’s womb.

Genesis 1:27 (NKJV) also says, “So God created man in His own image…”  What was God’s “image”?  In John 4:24 Jesus tells us that “God is Spirit…”  The thing that makes a human different from other creatures is that God made us in His own image.  So if God is Spirit, then that means we humans have a spirit which sets us apart from all other creatures. 

To prove that the spirit exists in the child even while it is still in the womb, we see the picture of Elizabeth, wife of Zacharias, mother of John the Baptist, and cousin of Mary the mother of Jesus.  In Luke 1:44 Elizabeth exclaims, “For indeed, as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.”  A baby in the womb can leap for joy?  Evidently so. 

Jesus – and not man – is  the one who has been given authority over death and hell.  We have been given authority to have dominion in the earth and over all the other creatures (Genesis 1:26-28), but it does not say we have been given authority over death.  Jesus has the keys of Hades and of death as it says in Revelation 1:18.  It is our job to live and have dominion.   

God gave us the mechanism for taking life when it becomes necessary, as in the case of capital punishment or war.  We should not do these things in secret.  In Deuteronomy Chapter 19 we see some of the guidelines for taking life.  The Founding Fathers used this process when they established the principle of “due process” described in our discussion of the 14^th Amendment. 

There are countless other examples in Scripture that prove God is a God of life and not death, and he expects his children to be good stewards of the earth and of the life He has provided for us.  In fact, the pagan civilizations He instructed the children of Israel to eliminate were most often infant-sacrificing cultures, such as the Ammonite culture which worshipped Molech.[10]  Our methods of infant sacrifice are more “civilized” today in that abortions are performed in private rather than in public.  But we are still sacrificing our children to the gods of Convenience and Selfishness.  God’s judgment against these ancient pagan cultures was unequivocal.  Will God judge us in America any less harshly if we do not stop this slaughter? 

Closing Thoughts – A very dear loved one who believes abortion should remain legal made the point that because some children will live to be abused or mistreated, we should keep them from this terrible fate by keeping abortion legal.  But is it really logical to kill a person to keep them from being abused?  As we have seen in the preceding paragraphs, the methods of abortion are very abusive indeed.  We do have an obligation to care and provide for the mothers and the babies who are alive; and do it as diligently as possible.  But our sin in failing to protect those who have already been born does not justify abortion.   

On May 2, 1979 I chose to end the life of my unborn child.  I was single and still in college, and did not tell my parents until after it was over.  I have lived to regret that choice every day since then, and will continue to do so for the rest of my time on earth.  I say this so that you will know that I do not “sit in judgment” of other women who have made that choice or others who have participated in abortion.  But my regret has little to do with the depression or other effects I have suffered.  My regret stems from knowing that my selfish and sinful choice extinguished the life of another person who was made in God’s image and for whom God had a plan.  The Lord Jesus Christ has forgiven me for my sin, and I rejoice to tell you that He is good! 

I write to ask you to consider that each person is made in God’s image; they are precious to Him (and should be to us as well!) even if they are born severely disabled or live only a short while on this earth.  God has His purposes for each person conceived, and God is the only One who can confer rights on people. 

The Founding Fathers of our nation recognized this truth.  The Declaration of Independence tells us that we have been endowed by our Creater with certain unalienable rights – the first of which is life[11].  We have tried to put a mask on our sin by calling it “a woman’s right to choose”.  But we must not take upon ourselves what only God has the right to confer. 

We must not support abortion any longer, either by our indifference or our complicity.  Neither should we support politicians who promote abortion, or someday we will be held accountable by a God who does not take kindly to the slaughter of the innocents.