The Mentality of Abortion
The gross evil of abortion has strong support in Western Europe, and indeed in many parts of the world. And laws advancing abortion are often passed with shouts of joy and acclamations, as if permission to rip a tiny human being to pieces in the womb were something greatly to be desired.
How can people who otherwise seem reasonably tender and civilised be so utterly brutal in this matter? If a pet dog or cat, or even a mouse, were to be torn to pieces in the same systematic way, many of these people would be outraged. Why then do they set such store by the right to destroy their fellow human beings in the womb, pretending that the liberty to do so is a mark of advanced civilisation?
Many of them obviously do not like the act of abortion, and try to hide the reality of it from their minds. Pictures of what really happens tend to be banned, and people who distribute them are punished. This must mean that the promoters of abortion recognise in their hearts that abortion is vile and shameful and cannot stand the light of day in its true colours. To be palatable, it must be presented as a matter of people’s pretended “right” to control their own lives (and if this control has disastrous consequences for the unborn child, this is shrugged off as part of the sad background of evolution). The rejoicing then is a matter of control: I choose what gender I am; what my “sexuality” is; whether I marry or live with someone; when I divorce; whether I have children and how many; and when I die. They rejoice at the passing of these laws because they think that they have obtained power over their lives. It is the same old temptation that the serpent used in the Garden of Eden: “Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5).
But, as the Scripture says, “while they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption” (2 Pet 2:19). Whatever sinners may fancy, God controls their lives still, and He gives them over to sin, and to Satan, and to the consequences of their actions. He may not give women any further children after an abortion; He may give them up to “vile affections” (Rom 1:26); and He may give their land to others, as the nations of western Europe are discovering. He may also send a coronavirus and change their circumstances completely.
This determination to pursue abortion even when there is no stigma attached to illegitimacy (which was one of the old reasons for abortion); even when the scientific evidence shows that the unborn child has comparable mental capacity to the newborn child; and in the face of all human and maternal sympathy for the weak and helpless, shows the desperate and inveterate depravity of the human heart, and magnifies our astonishment that God should have anything to do with the fallen human race at all. How horrible we are! Any one of us would do this evil if left to ourselves.
If we want freedom, it is not in the direction of getting more power into our hands, but by relinquishing that which we falsely claim, and yielding ourselves to Christ. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (Jn 8:36). Then there will be true and lasting rejoicing and acclamation: “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth” (Lk 15:10). DWBS