Question: If a woman has already decided to have an abortion, shouldn’t we walk with them when they go to have the abortion and show them love and compassion through this difficult experience?
The correct pro-life answer is: No!
* If you help someone obtain an abortion, then they become a murderer and you become an accomplice to murder.
* The question shows a wrong understanding of ‘love’. Love is not just an emotional feeling. A person who loves does what is best for all concerned. That does not include helping them murder their own baby. If you even offer emotional support and encouragement for someone contemplating a sin, then you are helping promote that sin by making it more pleasant. Rather, you should be making the sin a more unpleasant option. If you love someone you will help them avoid sin and God’s judgement. The Bible doesn’t permit things simply because the motive of ‘love’ is claimed. Homosexuals also claim to ‘love’ eachother, but God forbids such relationships.
* Even from a selfish perspective, an abortion doesn’t help a mother. She will have to live with the trauma and guilt for the rest of her life. She may suffer physical injury.
* People who think this way ignore the baby as a person. Should we not also show love for the baby by helping them to avoid death. Surely the baby’s interests are in this case more important than that of the mother?
* Such thinking concentrates on ‘mercy’, without the balancing doctrine of the justice and judgement of God. God will punish sin. Those who help others sin will also be judged – as will those who teach others to sin by promoting such liberal views of abortion.
* The question gives up hope of saving the baby too easily. Lots of things can be done to discourage a person from having an abortion ‘after they have decided’?
- You can talk to them;
- Talk to their friends, family and pastor to ask them to help persuade them to save their baby;
- You can offer them help if they don’t kill the baby – if they keep the baby or offer for adoption. Support can include emotional support; material possessions; connections to others who can help.
We must not give up until the baby is dead. Then only can the focus shift back to mercy and try to help them to repentance to find God’s forgiveness.
* If we take such a liberal attitude, then where are Christians supposed to find the courage to fight and stop abortion in the rest of the culture? How can we have one Christian demonstrating outside an abortion clinic and another one leading them into the clinic? Surely this is not compatible? What are abortionists going to think? They will see Christians helping their work and think they have God’s blessing or at least his tolerance.
* If the baby was an adult and a gangster ‘hit-man’ asked you to go with him when he went to assassinate someone to help him overcome his stress and nervousness – would you go? Would you comfort him with his crime? Why then for the baby? Wouldn’t you rather do your best to talk the ‘hit-man’ out of his crime or try to warn the person in danger to be careful or run away?
* In the case of a health worker, if you will offer emotional support by helping walk someone through an abortion, what is to stop you or someone who sees you taking the next step of assisting in some other way with the killing of the baby such as by filling in forms, washing them, taking blood samples etc. If you help with that, then what about also giving abortion drugs? It is the start of a slippery slope towards themselves becoming a baby-murder. Where do you draw the line? You do nothing that will help kill the baby. Rather help the mother by referring her to those who offer alternative help; telling her about the risks involved and about the development of her baby insider her.
If you answered ‘Yes’, then you are not ‘pro-life’. Your views are ‘pro-choice’, because you were saying that we must respect the choice of the mother to kill her baby rather than fight for the life of the unborn. If you thought you were pro-life and answered ‘Yes’, then it is time to do some serious thinking, reading and Bible study on the sanctity of human life and the judgement of God against sin.
UCT Students for Life 