What is the value of a human life?

Are humans just another animal species or are we something special? Your answer to that question is more important than you realize.

About fifteen years ago the London Zoo had a very special exhibit. They brought in some new inhabitants for the zoo for a weekend show. In that setting where they had these new creatures, people stood and watched as they played and interacted even waving at the visitors to the zoo. The only difference between this exhibit and the other exhibits in the London Zoo that weekend was that these inhabitants were humans. It was called the “Human Zoo.” And they set up eight humans who spent three days just going about the normal business of life. They played cards. They listened to the radio. They chatted with guests to the zoo.

The display was designed to make a point that was put into words by one of the zookeepers who was in charge of the exhibit. She said, “Seeing people in a different environment among other animals teaches members of the public that the human is just another primate.” In fact, Tom Mahoney, who was one of the eight members of that display, said this, “A lot of people think humans are above other animals. When they see humans as animals here, it kind of reminds us that we’re not that special.”

In fact, I would make the argument that that’s exactly the problem. In the 19th century, Darwinism combined with liberal theology to produce a rejection of the Bible, the death of the God of the Bible, and as a result an elimination of man’s special place in the universe. As that transition in the 19th century played out, the consequence in the 20th century was man began to see himself as an animal, which meant that life is an accident. It has no meaning. Therefore, it is no longer sacred. And frankly, you can’t even make the argument that it’s all that important. Hence, we have in the 21st century, a real pandemic. A global curse called “Abortion on Demand.” U.S. numbers for abortion… I found these numbers from 2018. They’re about the most recent numbers I could really track down. But I wanted to give you these numbers. The United States statistics for 2018; Causes of Death in the U.S.: Heart disease – 23%, Cancer – (number two) 21%, Abortions 18%. 2018, just in the U.S. alone shows 619,591 abortions. That trend has been downward for awhile but it’s about to go back up with a spike that makes anything COVID related look small.

Let me tell you why. Argentina is an example of one of the South American countries that has not had legalized abortion until just recently. In 2020 they legalized abortion in Argentina for the first time.

New Zealand very recently just passed the most extreme abortion law in the world. In New Zealand abortions are now available all the way up until the moment of birth, nine months plus.

Abortions are allowed for sex selection, meaning you can actually kill a baby if you wanted a boy and you got a girl. Not only sex selection, abortions are available and legal now in New Zealand for disability selection, even disabilities like a cleft pallet. It you don’t have a designer baby that meets all of your perfect qualifications you can discard it and try again. You can imagine the uproar this has caused within the Downs Syndrome community in New Zealand as they have lobbied against this Bill and lost.

Well, not only sex selection and disability selection, they also in this Bill make it not a crime to refuse to offer medical support for babies who are born alive because an abortion procedure was botched. This is horrific.

Here in the United States President Biden has just reinstated what’s called the “Mexico City Policy.” The Mexico City Policy allows U.S. tax dollars, your money and mine, to pay for abortions on an international scale. In other words, we’re now so aggressively exporting the philosophy of abortion on demand that your tax dollars will pay for abortions in other countries. This is clearly an ideological move by the President to satisfy a radical part of his political party. The reason I say that is because the most recent Marist poll shows that 77%... In political terms, pretty much a landslide. 77% of American citizens do not approve of their tax dollars funding abortions internationally.

When Roe vs Wade became law in 1973, since that time we have seen almost 61 million babies executed in the United States alone. Let that number sink in, 61 million. From a historical perspective, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao take a back seat to the United States for mass murder.
Well, those numbers are set to go even higher. Because besides the Mexico City Policy, our President has made an aggressive push to increase funding for Planned Parenthood, an organization that is already radically overfunded with U.S. tax dollars. He has bowed to the radical pro-choice lobby in historic ways.

Well, what’s the church to do? How do we respond? This issue is going to move against our values almost certainly at the Federal level. So let me give you some suggestions. Let me help you frame this so that we don’t stand around wringing our hands wondering what to do.

Our first response should be, we should focus on state initiatives and laws. The most successes that we’ve seen in the Pro-Life movement in recent years have been those laws that have been passed at state levels. That is the legislative target that we can aim for. There is some talk at the Federal level of what they call “Codifying Roe v Wade.” What that means is codifying Roe v Wade they want to establish a Federal law that would overrule all state laws and have every state have the same pro-choice laws across the board. We’ll fight that fight when we get there. But right now we can focus on state level legislation.

But even more significantly than that, we need to donate and volunteer, our money and our time at crisis pregnancy centers. The actual decision, if we move past all the statistics, abortion is decided in one-on-one conversations with women who are facing crisis circumstances in their lives. We need to be in those settings to have the conversations that will allow them to understand that there are more choices than what the radical left offers them in abortion.

Thirdly, and most importantly, we need to speak truth into the lives of women who are considering abortion. Truth that is communicated, not with screams and angry judgmental faces, but truth that is communicated with kindness and gentleness and love.

The Bible is very clear that the pre-born are fully human, that they are created by God in His image. But the Bible’s message of love is often misused when it comes to abortion. People often say, “Well you’re being judgmental if you say that abortion is bad. You should show love and compassion by never questioning somebody’s decision in these difficult moments.” To many people when Jesus said, “Do not judge,” they take that to mean, never question somebody’s choice of abortion. They think that love and compassion means that we should never challenge somebody to explore other options. In fact, many people consider it judgmental even to suggest that abortion is somehow morally wrong.  I’d like to suggest that when people hear of infants found in a trashcan, we understand instinctively that that’s wrong. When we talk about somebody slapping or shaking a baby, there’s a kind of internal rage that wells up in us because we instinctively know that that’s not right. And yet, we’ve been brainwashed for generations to the idea that dismembering a baby in the womb is somehow ok.

It’s true that the Bible tells us that God is love, 1 John 4:16. We know that His followers are to be kind and loving toward their neighbors just as they are to themselves, Mark 12:31. We are to be full of compassion and humility, 1 Peter: 3:8. We also know that we’re not supposed to be self-righteous. We’re not supposed to be hypocritical or judgmental toward other people, Luke 6:37. But believers are also called to speak the truth in love, Ephesians 4:15,25.

Love does not mean saying all choices are equally valid. If that was the case, the God of love that we find in the Bible would never condemn sin, which is something God does regularly from one cover to the other. You see, if all choices were equally valid there would be no sin to speak about. And there would be no forgiveness by the blood of Christ necessary. If abortion truly does harm women and kill children, then we own it to women to gently and lovingly point out the truth while offering grace and help.

One of the false accusations against the pro-life movement is that we only care babies in the womb and we don’t care them after they’re born. That’s categorically not true. There are ministries in churches and alongside churches all across the country and frankly all across the world that give assistance to women as they give life to a child. And that assistance continues well beyond birth. Don’t let people use that trope against us. We do love the children that are born. And we do significant work.

My church is one example of a church that has extensive involvement in both adoption and foster parenting. It’s because we believe that life is sacred.

Well, it’s never loving to help other people kill. Not only because of the psychological and emotional harm, not to mention the physical risk to the women and children that are involved, but because of the spiritual damage that it may cause as well. Women often have an abortion only to find themselves filled with regret and guilt that lasts a lifetime. We must never assist in taking a life thereby creating a situation where we stand on the side of evil. Real compassion is full of both grace and truth just like Jesus Himself.

Find a way that you can make a practical difference in the life of someone who faces this difficult choice. You say, “Well Pastor, what about special circumstances? A pregnancy conceived by rape or something like that?” Let me just say this word. No matter what the circumstances, no matter what horrible thing has happened that may have caused a pregnancy to come about, remember this – no matter what crime has taken place the baby is never the one to blame. We don’t kill innocent by-standers for any other crime.

Let us protect the babies. Let us stand for life. Let us communicate truth with love.

This is TruthCurrents.