small bit about abortion

From the Evangelical Outpost

We convince ourselves that they simply don't realize what they're doing. If only they could see the pictures. If only we could convince them that the "fetus" is a person. If only they knew it was a human life they were destroying. If they only knew, they wouldn't -- they couldn't -- go through with the abortion.

But they do know. And the abortions continue. Not because we live in a culture of death but because we live in a culture of me.

John Piper has many sermons on the topic of abortion. I found the below to confirm the danger and irony of the point made by Evangelical Outpost.

... in Minnesota in 1987, a teenage girl 6 ½ months pregnant went with her boyfriend on a suicide pact into the woods. She shot herself in the head, and he changed his mind and covered her over with brush and walked away. He was apprehended and charged with assisting a suicide and "inadvertently murdering the fetus during the commission of a felony." The fetal homicide law carried a stiffer penalty than assisting in a suicide. The verdict was upheld in 1991.

and

Minnesota , along with 33 other states, has a fetal homicide law. A crime against a mother that injures or kills her unborn baby will be treated as a crime with two victims, not just one. We have seen several remarkable cases in Minnesota . In one case a man was convicted of assisting the suicide of his girlfriend and “inadvertently murdering the fetus during the commission of a felony.” The fetal homicide law caries a stiffer penalty than aiding a suicide, and could have required 12 years of prison for the fetal homicide. What was astonishing in this case is this sentence from the StarTribune : “The law makes it murder to kill an embryo or fetus intentionally, except in cases of abortion.”

That is an accurate sentence and should make us tremble. Why? Because it shows that in a world without God, the will of the strong creates (or nullifies) the personhood of the weak. How can there be a fetal homicide law that is not broken by abortion? Why is abortion not fetal homicide? There is one essential answer. In the case of the fetal homicide, the mother wants the baby. In the case of abortion, she does not. The will of the mother is god.

And the awesome thing is that we endow her will not just with sovereignty over her unborn baby, but with the authority to define it: If she wants it, it is a baby, a person. If she does not want it, it is not a baby, not a person.

In other words, in our laws we have now made room for some killing to be justified not on the basis of the rights or crimes of the one killed, but decisively on the basis of the will, the desire, of a stronger person. The decisive criterion of personhood and non-personhood, what is right and wrong, what is legal and what is illegal, is the will of the strong. Might makes right. Might makes personhood. Might makes legal. This is the ultimate statement of anarchy. It is the essence of the original insurrection against God, and against objective truth and right and beauty.

No culture can survive this kind of anarchical thinking indefinitely. Part of the remedy is to spread the truth: Might does not make right. Desire does not define duty. Wanting does not create worth. All of us know intuitively that if someone desires our destruction, that desire does not justify our murder. We know this. We should say it over and over again.

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