Position on Partial Birth Abortions
“In the seventeenth year of Pekah…Ahaz the son of Jonathan the King of Judah began to reign…He did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God…He even burned his son as an offering.” 2 Kings 16:1-3
“(Israel) despised his statutes and his covenant…They went after false idols, and become false…they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings.” 2 Kings 17:15-17
“Thus says the Lord. ‘For three transgressions of the Ammonites and for four, I will not revoke the punishment because they have ripped up women with child in Gilead” Amos 1:13
“For Thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in my mother’s womb…Wonderful are Thy words…They eyes beheld my unformed substance, in thy book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me” Psalm 139:13-16
It seems that in the Old Testament our capacity for inhumanity finds its zenith in the treatment of children. Ahaz’s disobedience to God could sink no lower than when he offered his children to pagan deities. Amos gives a list of cruelties that have no relation to Israel’s covenant, yet he well knew that even uncivilized peoples would cringe at the mention of killing pregnant women.
Perhaps it is both intuitive and a deep awareness that how we treat our children somehow “counts” is a binding or universal sentiment. Further, as the psalmist writes, there is wonder and mystery as we note that new life is being “woven together” within a mother.
All of this is surely intuitively behind our natural revulsion at partial-birth abortion. House Bill HR 1833 defines the act as “an abortion in which the person performing the abortion partially vaginally delivers a living fetus before killing the fetus and completing the delivery.” In other words the feet of the fetus are pulled out first while the head remains within the womb. Scissors are inserted in the back of the skull and the brains are sucked out. Most of the time the baby is alive and most of the time the process is done for much less than life threatening reasons.
A registered nurse describes the act thus: “The baby’s body was moving. His little fingers were clasping together…He was kicking his feet. [The Doctor] inserted (scissors) into the back of the baby’s head…Then he stuck the…suction tube into the hole and sucked the baby’s brain out.”
The experts tell us that this procedure is almost always unnecessary. Even a recent advocate, Ron Fitzsimmons confessed to Ted Koppel that the figures he used were actually one-tenth the real number of partial-birth abortions performed annually. In fact there has been much misinformation on this issue.
The 71st General Convention reaffirmed a helpful position on abortion. Unfortunately, it locked itself into an unnecessary absolutism by stating its “unequivocal opposition to any legislature…action…that abridges the right of a woman (to have an abortion).” This sort of absolutism represents a strange unbending commitment to protect a right that hardly existed twenty-five years ago. And now, when the horrifying act of partial-birth abortions are in front of us, will we simply bow before the rule we created?
Our culture is still deeply divided. Some see a basic shift occurring in our understanding of the role of government. It once existed to protect life. Now it exists to enlarge privacy. But what new horrors will emerge in the name of privacy and what new acts will we invent since we live in a fallen world?
In Holy Scripture the measure of our humanity, or better, fall from humanity, was seen in how we treated our children. Evil kings offered their children to pagan gods. Inhuman warriors cut open pregnant women. And now we have a procedure that sucks out the brains of a helpless infant half out of the womb.
There has been a groundswell of horror over this act. There should be. Perhaps our revulsion will be the first step in facing what we are really doing. In the name of the simplest human decency and kindness e must challenge and renounce this ghastly procedure.
THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH
The Episcopal Church passed a resolution at the 1997 General Convention, expressing grave concern about the use in the third trimester of pregnancy of the procedure known as “intact dilation and extraction” (commonly called “partial birth abortion”) except in extreme situations, and further encourages its dioceses and congregations to give necessary aid and support to all pregnant women.
Anglicans for Life
promotes the Biblical view of the sanctity of human life
at every stage of biological development
and seeks to influence our Church and culture
to embrace this Biblical attitude
morally, legally and in practice.
Anglicans for Life and its chapters reach out
to protect life and offer compassion
in communities across the nation.
