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On Abortion, Value, and Life

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On 23 January, Mary Elizabeth Williams put forth a fairly short article titled, “So what if abortion ends life?” The subtitle gives only a hint at content of the article: “I believe that life starts at conception. And it’s never stopped me from being pro-choice.”

Feel free to read it before you go through the rest of my piece here. However, what I’m writing now isn’t a review or thorough commentary of the article. I will only touch on a couple vital points.

At the very core of what Ms. Williams said, the fundamental element to her argument, is so clear: “Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal.”

The belief that all life is not equal is why she values one life over another. It’s why she can “put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time,” and can call the baby “a life worth sacrificing.” It’s why she and she alone becomes the final arbiter over who’s life is more valuable and therefore who is more worthy of living. She decides who gets to be sacrificed.

That belief circles back not just to self, but to mankind.

Humans, created by God, in God’s image, set the value of life. We, whether individually or within some sort of group, decide who’s life is more valuable than others.

This is purely human-centered, not God-centered. A human, a created being, gets to act like the Creator and decide what value another has. This is where hate lives. This is where racism thrives. This is where arrogance breeds offspring. This is where humans become gods. It is a characteristic of fallen humanity, embracing the results of the sin of Adam.

But this is not where it ends. Before the rest of my progressive, more pro-choice or pro-abortion favoring friends totally cast me aside, and before the applause from the conservative, more pro-life or anti-abortion favoring line of friends becomes too loud, we need to be clear. At no time before this paragraph did I mention abortion (please excuse the use of the word in citing the title of her article). While that was the focus of her piece, and we’ve been talking about a fetus and a baby, this fundamental ideology, that all life is not equal, applies in all cases discussing life.

If we support the death penalty, the execution of a life, we humans are assigning value to that life that is less than our own. If we go to war and seek to kill someone we consider a terrorist, as with Usama bin Laden, we are assigning a value to their life that is less than ours. When we purchase a gun to protect our family, when we have extra change but don’t give it to the homeless man who asked us for some, when we buy the cup of coffee knowing the oppression of a people involved in getting us that coffee, when we buy chocolates for our sweetheart knowing the chocolate was tainted by child slaves, we assign a value to those people that is at some level less than the value we give our own lives.

The very same attitude and ideology that can bring Ms. Williams to the place where she gets to decide who’s life is more valuable and who is worth sacrificing is the exact same attitude and ideology behind the decision to execute another man. Or to go after a terrorist out of vengeance and kill non-participating men, women, and children along the way. It’s the same attitude and ideology that allows us to kill an intruder or someone we consider a threat. It’s the same attitude and ideology behind our disdain for homeless people. It’s the same attitude and ideology underlying our turning away from the evils of slavery and oppression and support them with our appetites and pocketbooks . . . the only vote that makes a real difference.

So many of us who have fought for the so-called pro-life position have hypocritically shown an unequal level of concern and respect for the lives God created among those already born.

So many of us who have fought for the so-called pro-choice position have hypocritically shown an unequal level of concern and respect for the lives God created in the wombs of pregnant women.

We Christians should know better. We must know better. How are we to display the truth to the world when it’s filled to the core with a lie? How can we show them an alternative when we act like those embracing the fallen ways?

If our focus is the Kingdom of God and not the fleeting governmental and political systems created not by God but by fallen, sinful creatures, then we will see everyone not through our selfish, fallen eyes but through God’s perfect, Creative eyes. Then, instead of deciding who lives and who dies as if we created them in the first place, we can be obedient to our Lord, our Master, our Messiah, Jesus, and love everyone.


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