Sermon Tone Analysis

*The Abortion Epidemic: America's Silent Holocaust*

Sanctity of Life Sunday, January 20, 1999

(A  message adapted from the above article by J. Carl Laney,

Associate Professor of Biblical Literature, Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, Portland, Oregon; BSac—V139 #556—Oct 82—342)

 

Abortions terminate at least one-fourth of all pregnancies in America annually.

More than 50% of the pregnancies among American women are unintended – ½ of these are terminated by abortion.

90% of women at risk of unintended pregnancy are using a contraceptive method, which says much about the ineffectiveness of contraceptives and much more about the need for abstinence as the only sure means of protection from moral danger.

Since the Supreme Court’s decision of 1973 (Roe vs. Wade), the annual number of abortions performed in the United States has risen from 744,600 to 1.5 million.

That is a grand total of 35 million abortions in the U.S. from 1973-1996.

Each year, 3 out of every 100 women aged 15-44  have an abortion, 47% of them have had at least one previous abortion and 55% have had a previous birth.

At current rates, an estimated 43% of women will have at least 1 abortion by the time they are 45 years old.

In Illinois, 52,300 abortions have been reported, based on 1995 figures.

In the six county area around and including Chicago, 36,769 abortions were performed, with 85% being performed in Cook County.

60% of the abortions in Illinois are performed in Cook County.

Illinois has the 4th highest number of abortions in this country.

55% of U.S. women obtaining abortions are younger than 25.

Of those, women aged 20-24 obtain 33% of all abortions and teenagers obtain 22%.

26 states currently enforce parental consent or notification laws for minors seeking an abortion, but Illinois is not one of them.

Abortion is legal up through birth if the “life or health” of the mother is in jeopardy.

This legal definition is very broad and includes such considerations as social, psychological, and even economic health.

Nontherapeutic abortion has become the 20th-century form of birth control.

It has become the second most common surgical procedure, circumcision being the first.

Abortion on demand is without question the greatest moral issue facing America today.

(Running a close second is assisted suicide based upon the same faulty presumptions as abortion.)

No other contemporary moral problem in this country results in the deaths of over 1½ million innocent, unborn children each year.

To repeat, since 1973, 35 million unborn babies have purposefully put to death in hospitals and abortion clinics throughout America.

Many Christians today are not sufficiently informed about abortion to form a scripturally based opinion on this issue.

Others would like to remain neutral.

They do not advocate abortion, but would not prohibit a woman from having one.

In an interview on abortion, a California physician stated, “I feel I have the obligation to take care of patients.

I don’t feel I should enforce my own personal views, especially since I’m not so convinced that [abortion] is ungodly or unbiblical.”

Still others would identify with the “Pro-Choice” crusaders who contend that abortion is a right that women must have.

They would argue that all other rights—social, economic, political—depend on the fundamental right of a woman to control her own body.

Abortion is a contemporary moral problem which must be addressed scripturally.

There is significant scriptural support against it, even though there is the current publication of a Pro-Choice Study Bible that misguidedly argues scriptural reasoning in support of allowing abortion.

The purpose of this message is to provide sufficient biblical truth and factual data to enable us to formulate not only a scriptural view on the abortion issue, but also a plan of action to help end this silent holocaust.

Even if you have historically claimed to be opposed to abortion, we constantly run the very real risk of being slowly conditioned into a different way of thinking by the popular culture around us – to the extent that we may eventually say, “Did God really say ---.”

 

*What Is an Abortion?*

Abortion is the act of bringing forth young prematurely.

A spontaneous abortion, or miscarriage, is one which takes place naturally—a situation over which the mother has no control.

An induced abortion is one which is brought about by medical means.

In the hospitals and abortion clinics in America the term is used to refer to the destruction of the unborn child in the womb or the extraction of the immature child from the womb in order to end its life.

Induced abortion is a violent act that not only destroys the life of the child but also endangers the life of the mother.

The methods of abortion include the following:

 

! Suction-Aspiration:

 

Developed in Communist China, this procedure is used in 90 percent of the abortions up to the fourteenth week of pregnancy.

The mouth of the cervix is dilated.

A hollow tube with a knifelike edged tip is inserted into the womb.

A suction force 28 times stronger than a vacuum cleaner literally tears the developing baby to pieces and sucks the remains into a container.

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*Dilation and Curettage:*

 

Dilation and curettage (commonly called D&C) is a procedure which involves dilating the cervix with a series of instruments to allow the insertion of a curette—a loop-shaped knife—into the womb.

The instrument is used to scrape the placenta from the uterus and then cut the baby apart.

The pieces are then drawn through the cervix.

The tiny body must then be reassembled by an attending nurse to make sure no parts remain in the womb to cause infection.

This method is also used up to the fourteenth week of pregnancy.

*Saline Injection:*

 

Saline injection, also known as “salt-poisoning,” is an abortion procedure which involves removing some of the amniotic fluid surrounding the baby and replacing it with a toxic, saline solution.

The baby then breathes and swallows the solution.

In one or two hours the unborn child dies from salt poisoning, dehydration, and hemorrhaging.

The mother goes into labor about 24 hours later and delivers a dead (or dying) baby, hiseously burned by salt.

This is the second most common method and is performed after 16 weeks.

*Hysterotomy:*

 

Another method used after 16 weeks and even during the last three months of pregnancy when chemical methods fail, is abortion by hysterotomy which involves opening the womb surgically and removing the baby as in a Caesarean section.

However, the purpose of this procedure is to end the infant’s life.

Instead of being cared for, the baby is wrapped in a blanket, set aside, and allowed to die or killed by a direct act if necessary.

*Prostaglandin:*

 

This newer abortion procedure involves the use of chemicals developed by the Upjohn Pharmaceutical Company.

Prostaglandin hormones, injected into the womb or released in a vaginal suppository, cause the uterus to violently contract and deliver the child prematurely—too young to survive.

A saline solution is sometimes injected first, killing the baby before birth, in order to make the procedure less distressful for the mother and medical staff.

This also is used after 16 weeks.

*Partial Birth Abortion:*

 

          This is the extremely controversial procedure that Pres.

Clinton will not outlaw even though Congress has.

It removes the baby from the womb in a breach position until all but its head is delivered.

The doctor performing this abortion stabs the base of the skull to make an opening into which a suction device removes the brain of the infant and then the head is removed from the womb – performed after the third trimester.

*RU 486:*

 

          This requires at least 3 visits to the abortion facility.

The woman is given the pills at the first visit which block the action of progesterone, the natural hormone vital maintaining the rich nutrient lining of the uterus.

The developing baby starves as the nutrient lining disintegrates.

At the second visit, 36 to 48 hours later, the woman is given a dose of artificial prostaglandins, usually misoprostol, which initiates uterine contractions to expel the body of the embryonic baby.

A third visit determines if the abortion has taken place.

This procedure is done before 14 weeks.

A similar multiple set of procedures may be used with the drug, *methotrexate*.

*Emergency Contraceptive Pills:*

 

          This last method, 75% of the time, is not an abortion procedure, but an emergency prevention procedure using oral contraceptive pills to either inhibit fertilization or implantation depending on the particular status when the pills take effect.

A woman may use this method up to 3 days after unprotected sex.

The immorality, violence, and insensitivity of these methods should cause moral outrage in the souls of God’s people.

The abortion procedures described above are not pleasant.

But Christians need to know that when someone exercises “freedom of choice” with regard to abortion, these are the choices involved.

It is remarkable that the law protects animals from cruel deaths.

A person can kill his dog or cat, but he cannot kill it with cruelty.

He would be subject to arrest if he cut off his pet’s limbs, dissolved its skin in acid, or starved it to death.

Yet the law allows for these kinds of atrocities to be carried out against the most defenseless members of the human family.

Do the unborn feel pain during these abortion procedures?

Yes, they do.

Dr. A. W. Liley, world-renowned professor of Fetal Physiology at the National Women’s Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand, has shown that the unborn child can feel pain and is sensitive to touch, light, heat, and noise as early as eleven weeks after conception.

Using closed-circuit TV cameras, he has shown that if the unborn child is pricked with a needle, the infant will recoil in pain.

But if a beep sounds before the prick, and this is repeated several times, the tiny baby will begin to recoil at the beep in anticipation of the pain he knows will come.

In addition to ending the life of the child, abortion endangers the life of the mother.

The popular opinion that abortion is safer than childbirth is absolutely false.