“Abortion brings into the public arena a Van Tilian fact of life: an aborted baby is either dead or alive. There is no neutral ground, no halfway condition, in between dead or alive. The abortion issue was the wedge of Van Tilian self-consciousness for millions of Christians. They gained the first glimmer of awareness regarding a Van Tilian truth applied to civil law: the State is not neutral.
“We began to see placards: ‘Abortion is Murder.’ But then … that terrifying judicial question: ‘What is the proper civil penalty for murder?’ The answer was obvious: execution. The anti-abortionist leaders all began to waffle, and they have waffled ever since.”
– Gary North
Chalcedon Report
I concur.
I used to own a house across the street from an abortion clinic, before it was closed and then bulldozed. We have an extensive web site dealing with pro-life happenings from the mid-1990s until present.
See: https://www.forerunner.com/fyi/
I conceived the site as a way to identify a “mystery abortionist” who wanted to keep his identity secret. Meredith Raney now runs the site and has added volumes of information. Mademoiselle Magazine wrote a critique of the web site a few years ago. The abortuary owners used to accuse the local pro-lifers of being responsible for cutting their business in half. They even filed four federal lawsuits against us as a group claiming that the existence of the web site was a tortious (yes, that’s actually a word) offense.
I wrote an “Open Letter to the Pro-life Community” a while back, making the same point North makes above.
https://www.forerunner.com/abortionwars/abortionwars.html
Pro-life activists have done a lot to stop individual abortions from occurring. But if we want a permanent solution, that we do have to come to grips with the fact that although abortion has been restricted in American history, we are one of the few nations on earth that has not ever criminalized abortion.
There IS a lot we can do in the meantime. I chronicle some of these in my “Open Letter.”
But few want to deal with the weighty question of what criminal sanctions need to be enforced.
While it is widely held that abortion was legalized in 1973 through Roe v. Wade, this idea is absolutely wrong. While abortion was restricted in various places, abortion has never been nationally criminalized in American history. We must begin to create the kind of tension in the minds of people that will help them to extend beyond the current debate over the morality of abortion versus a woman’s right to choose. We must change the argument. Should abortion be restricted by the state in the same way that the FDA puts restrictions on food production? Or should an abortionist be tried as a murderer and executed?
See my “Open Letter to the Pro-life Community” for more details.
- Jay Rogers
2 Comments
please try to help me understand. it would be greatly appreciated.
http://forerunner.com/abortionwars/abortionwars.html
I write in part:
In 1988, I participated in my first rescue in Brookline, Massachusetts. I understood that the purpose was threefold -- repentance, spiritual warfare, evangelism. Rescue was a way of waking the heart of a sleeping church and gaining media exposure. Before long, people would see that abortion was murder because here were Christians who were finally acting like it was murder.
Over the next few years, I noticed that there was a wide difference in what some pro-life activists were saying about the abortion issue and the biblical authority of the law of God. On either side, there were two extremes. On one side, there were a few who would advocate violence. On the other side, there were some who were so extreme in their sanctity of life view that they would deny that capital punishment by the state is a proper biblical punishment for the murderer.
There is inherent in all human beings the sense of good and evil. We all know deep down that murder is wrong, theft is wrong, adultery is wrong. According to Romans 1:18-21, natural revelation testifies of the nature of God, His power and the nature of His creative acts. Man recognizes the existence of the power of God and His creative acts even without knowledge of the Bible.
Obviously, natural revelation teaches us that abortion is wrong. But this knowledge will not alleviate the evil of abortion. In most cases, knowing that abortion is murder will only sear the consciences of the unconverted. Such is the depravity of man. This is why I believe extravagant forms of street activism designed to grab media attention are actually counter-productive in the long run. We would do well to remember that the natural man siting in front of his television set is not basically good. He is intrinsically evil.
The greatest error the pro-life movement made early on is that it was not law-based. That is, abortion is not simply wrong. Abortion is murder. If we believe abortionists and the fathers and mothers who kill their little boys and girls in the womb are murderers, then we must treat them like murderers. There is not a single pro-life organization that is currently lobbying to criminalize abortion. This must now change. We must now begin a movement, by the grace of God, to criminalize abortion with capital punishment as a penalty for murdering children in the womb. We must also advocate criminalizing the actions of those who act as accessories to murder. The mothers and the fathers who pay to kill their babies are also guilty.