Here is an article from Ken Connor titled “Disposing of the Disabled” (HT: kerux noemata). My heart sunk when I read that, according to the New York Times, 90% of babies are murdered once the parent(s) finds out it has Down syndrome.

90%. Let that number sink in.

I appreciated the author’s relating the problem of abortion to the period of time when blacks where not treated as equals in America and his hope that abortion would, in the future, become as equally shameful to us as a horrible period of American history:

There were times in America’s past when neither blacks nor women were regarded as full fledged members of the human family. As a result, they too were deprived of the full panoply of rights endowed by the Creator to those created in his image. Those were not the best of times in America’s history. Thankfully, however, there were other times when Americans were willing to pay the price to see to it that both blacks and women received the protections they were entitled to by virtue of their humanity. Will we be willing to pay such a price for the unborn and the handicapped in our time? Again, only time will tell.

Unfortunately, the main difference between these two time periods is that one group had a leader emerge from its own ranks to fight for justice and reform and the other group’s leaders are taken out before they even emerge. O Lord, forgive us.

There is an opinion post today in the National Post titled, “Why I am an Abortion Doctor.” Apparently, the piece was written by an abortionist, Garson Romalis, who has been in practice since it was legal to do so, and was delivered on Jan. 25, at the University of Toronto Law School’s Symposium. From the article, Romalis writes:

Let me tell you about an abortion patient I looked after recently. She was 18 years old, and 18-19 weeks pregnant. She came from a very strict, religious family. She was an only daughter, and had several brothers. She was East Indian Hindu and her boyfriend was East Indian Muslim, which did not please her parents. She told me if her parents found out she was pregnant she would be disowned and kicked out of the family home. She also told me that her brothers would murder her boyfriend, and I believed her. About an hour after her operation I and my nurse saw her and her boyfriend walking out of the clinic hand in hand, and I said to my nurse, “Look at that. We saved two lives today.”

The entire article reads in similar fashion. The focus of Romalis’ comments are on the reasons why he does what he does. He describes how women are in desperate times and in need of his services. He looks on the work he does as being a good thing, helping others out in “the worst trouble the patient has ever been in in her entire life.” In one situation, Romalis describes how he had just killed a woman’s unborn child when he received a phone call from her mother. Expecting to hear from the stolen-grandmother about a lawsuit, he was surprised when she said to him, “Thank you, Doctor. Thank God there are people like you around.”

Garson Romalis obviously goes right for the emotion to grab his audience. He bypasses any attempt to justify his actions from a right vs. wrong standpoint and, instead, paints a picture of help and compassion for those who have no where else to turn. Never is the question of whether abortion is murder or not taken into account, the desperation and despair of the woman is the only thought considered in this article.

What I really would like you to see though is the comments on Digg, where I found this article. Have a look here. You will find comments like, ” This helped remind why I don’t want religious fanatics running our country” or “i’ve had scares in my life. thankfully they didn’t amount to anything. but at least i know, if it comes down to the worst case scenario, i can keep my life on track.” I think it’s helpful sometimes to read through these comments, Digg is a huge social network so it is a good way to see what people think about a particular topic. Be prepared for some vulgar language and utter nonsense at times though so please use caution.

John Piper preached on Psalm 106 last weekend and related the passage to abortion. You can find the sermon text here. Then Abraham Piper added some great resources on different types of abortion procedures as well as some crisis pregnancy centers.

Piper’s closing prayer:

I pray that the horrors of abortion and the glory of God’s grace will move you to take up the challenge of prayer on the back of the worship folder and to extend yourself in other practical ways for life, both temporal and eternal. Amen.

Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the rights of the afflicted and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
(Psalm 82:3-4)

These past two weeks there has been a lot of news on abortion. I was most excited to read John Ensor’s commentary on the Desiring God blog. He says:

The end of abortion as a business is in sight when the prolife movement is not only joined by, but led by, the African-American and Latino Christian Community. I call it the Third Wave.

So you can see why I was excited at his posting. The article gives a brief summary of how he defines these three waves so have a read to understand more about this.

Here were some more articles in the news:

• Justin Taylor interviews Scott Klusendorf on his upcoming book Pro-Life Christians in the Brave New World. Here is a quick excerpt:
  

  JT: You’ve stated before that many abortion-choice arguments are flawed because they ignores the central philosophical question in the abortion debate: What is the unborn? Can you give us an example of what you mean?

  SK: Certainly. Many well-intentioned people cite rape as a justification for abortion. Aside from the fact that few actual pregnancies result from rape, this argument is a case of using worst-case scenarios and emotion to avoid clear thinking on the matter. That is to say, while the rape objection has rhetorical force, it misses the key moral question: How should we treat innocent human beings that remind us of a painful event? Is it okay to kill them so that we can feel better? True, pro-life advocates must do all they can to lovingly care for victims of sexual assault, but if the unborn are human, hardship does not justify homicide.

• Another interview from Justin Taylor. This time he speaks with Robert P. George on the Roe v. Wade decision.
• This video has been on YouTube for a long time. It very graphically shows the results of aborted children at various stages of pregnancy. I hesitate to even post it due to its very graphic nature, but this is reality and it happens to more than 0 children a year so it must stop.
• Denny Burk posts on Sanctity of Life Sunday.
• The Washington Post has an article on the recent pro-life rally in DC and how encouraged protesters were that abortion rates fell to the lowest they have ever been in the past thirty years.
• Here is a post from the Evangelical Outpost on comparing slavery with abortion.

Please join me in praying for those who are considering abortion as an option and those struggling from regret from their past decisions, please join me in praying for changed hearts.

I recently watched Amazing Grace again on DVD. Every time I see this movie I can’t help but think that one day the idea of murdering a child while in the womb will be thought of in the same way we now think of denying a man his freedom based on his race. Despicable.

There have been a lot of articles on abortion this week, here is a wrap-up:

• NY Times on private abortion clinic workers striking due to “persecution by anti-abortion campaigners and government inspectors.” (HT: Henry Institute Rapid Fire)
• The Telegraph on the story of a Chineese woman who was forced to have an abortion because of an illegal pregnancy to her fiance. (HT: Denny Burk)
• Townhall.com on the most pro-abortion presidential candidate ever. (HT: Justin Taylor)
• Upcoming debate on “Is Abortion Morally Justifiable?”. (HT: Justin Taylor)
• LA Times on “Changing Abortion’s Pronoun”. (HT: Al Mohler)
• Al Mohler on “‘A Rather Unexpected Aspect of IVF’ — Over a Million Human Embryos Destroyed in Britain”.
• Science Daily on “Miscarriage And Abortion Triple Chances Of Future Low Birthweight Babies”. (HT: Evangelical Outpost)

Dr. Mohler has a great post on the fact that many men are experiencing post-abortion trauma and are joining others in speaking out against the death of millions of children per year.

Dr. Moore writes about the realities of abortion clinics and what the Christian response should be.

Russell Moore has a great commentary on the small amount that we know about Joseph, Jesus’ father, titled “Joseph of Nazareth vs. Planned Parenthood”. In it he reminds us that Joseph had every right to abandon Mary and her unborn child when finding out she was pregnant before they were married. In fact, Mary could have been stoned under the Law (Deuteronomy 22:23-24) and her unborn child would have perished with her. But Joseph obeyed God and took on the role of father to our Lord even though he would not be Jesus’ natural father. Dr. Moore reminds us that we have this same opportunity with the “unwanted” and calls for us to be more proactive in our defense against the pro-choice movement. Not to raise our voices and protest and buy the latest bumper sticker, but to fund more crisis pregnancy centers and to follow through by adopting those children who escape an abortion as a result of these centers.

It is difficult to get accurate statistics on the number of abortions performed each year, I’ve seen number ranging from 36 million all the way to 900 million. But it is clear that throughout history there have always been unwanted children. We have a great example to follow after in our Lord’s earthly-father.

Lifenews is reporting that the highest criminal court in Texas has upheld a decision that a man could be charged with two counts of murder after killing a woman and her child who was five weeks in the womb. While this is good news for the case against abortion (it is hard to use the word good when talking about the death of a woman and her child) some alarming quotes are found in the article.

The Supreme Court has emphasized that states may protect human life not only once the fetus has reached viability but ’from the outset of the pregnancy,’” the court said. “The Legislature is free to protect the lives of those whom it considers to be human beings.

God certainly has placed all governing authorities above us and we are to submit to those authorities, but when they overstep God’s clear definition of human life and claim to have sole-power in determining who they consider to be human and non-human, we as Christians should take note of this. This train of thought has had disastrous consequences in that it allows one group to say who should live and who should not live as evidenced in another quote found in the article:

The ’compelling state interest’ test, along with the accompanying ’viability’ threshold, has no application to a statute that prohibits a third party from causing the death of the woman’s unborn child against her will,” Presiding Judge Sharon Keller wrote.

So here we see that, in accordance with the US Constitution as it exists today, one person has complete control on whether or not a child will live.

The logic used in this case is tough to grasp: a man can be charged with murder because he caused the death of a child still in the womb but a woman cannot be charged with murder when she “desires” the death of a child in her womb through an abortion. But, this is our current state of affairs, a woman has the right to take her child’s life while it is in the womb. This is perfectly legal and it happens over 45 million times every year according to WHO.

References on abortion:
Russell Moore Commentary
Desiring God on adoption
Jefferson Davis Book “Abortion and the Christian”
Justin Taylor partially reviews Frank Beckworth’s upcoming book “Defending Life”
Al Mohler weighs in