By Melody Green
"Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" Micah 6:7
Abortion has become the most common surgical procedure in America.* Over 99% of all U.S. abortions have nothing to do with the life or health of the woman—they are done simply because of her desire for convenience, absence of distress, and her so-called happiness. 1 Doctors perform over 1.3 million abortions per year in the United States alone... that's one for every two live births. 2 Abortion has become so frequent, that population experts say that it has become, in effect, a new form of birth control. But abortion should not be confused with birth control, which prevents a new life from beginning—abortion destroys that new life once it has already begun. Of the women having them, 66% are unmarried, 20% are teenagers,3 and 47% are "repeat” customers.**4
Abortion...An Easy Alternative?
In this age of convenience, abortion is being presented as a "quick and easy" way to get rid of an annoying problem. When women seek advice, most professional abortion counselors just don't tell them the truth concerning what they are about to do to their child and to themselves. First of all, abortion is a major surgical procedure which can result in serious complications—it is not as "safe" as we are led to believe. Statistics show that after a legal abortion, a woman faces increased possibilities of future miscarriages, tubal pregnancies, premature births, sterility, and severe and long-lasting emotional disturbances.
I have personally received many letters from women who must face the fact that they will never be able to have children due to infections and complications from a supposedly safe abortion they have had in the past. Instead of being told this, their fears are made to seem silly—the whole procedure is whitewashed. "Why, it's so simple, " they say, "like removing an unsightly wart from your body. Now you're pregnant . . .now you're not! Just rest a day and you'll feel fine!"
When Does Life Begin?
Just when does an unborn baby become a "real person"? Science tells us that when the 23 chromosomes of the sperm unite with the ovum's 23 chromosomes, a new 46 chromosome cell is formed. When this process (fertilization) is complete, a new human being exists. This cell is a complete genetic package programmed for development into a mature adult. Nothing will be added except time and nutrition. It's been medically proven that the baby's heart starts beating from 14-28 days after conception (usually before the mother even knows she's pregnant), and by the 30th day almost every organ has started to form! He moves his arms and legs by six weeks and by 43 days his brain waves can be read. By eight weeks the baby has his very own fingerprints, he can urinate, make a strong fist, and he can feel pain. Each stage of development from fertilization to old age is merely a maturing of what is entirely there at the start.
Abortion Techniques
The following are the most commonly known abortion techniques:
Dilation and Curettage (D & C)
The cervix is dilated with a series of instruments to allow the insertion of a curette, or sharp scraping instrument, into the uterus. The developing child is then cut into pieces and scraped from the uterine wall. Bleeding is usually profuse. A nurse must then reassemble the parts to make sure the uterus is empty, otherwise infection will set in.
Suction Curettage (Vacuum Aspiration)
The cervix is dilated as in a D & C, then a tube is inserted into the uterus and connected to a strong suction apparatus. The vacuum is so powerful that the baby is torn to bits and sucked into a jar.
Dilation and Evacuation (D & E)
At 12 to 20 weeks, a seaweed-based substance is inserted into the cervix causing dilation. The next day forceps with sharp metal teeth are inserted and parts of the baby's body are torn away and removed piece by piece. At this age the head is usually too large to be removed whole, and must be crushed and drained before taken out. D & Es are promoted by abortion advocates because, unlike other second trimester methods, they insure the baby's death.
Partial Birth Abortion
Performed 20 weeks and later, this procedure involves the breech delivery of the child. When all but the head is delivered, “the surgeon then forces the scissors into the base of the skull. Having safely entered the skull, he spreads the scissors to enlarge the opening. The surgeon removes the scissors and introduces a suction catheter into this hole and evacuates the skull contents.”***
Saline Injection
Used after 16 weeks (four months) when enough fluid has accumulated. A long needle is inserted through the mother's abdomen into the baby's sac. Some fluid is removed and a strong salt solution is injected. The helpless baby swallows this poison and suffers severely. He kicks and jerks violently as he is literally being burned alive. It takes over an hour for the baby to die—his outer layer of skin is completely burned off. Within 24 hours, labor will usually set in and the mother will give birth to a dead baby. (Quite frequently these babies are born alive. They are usually left unattended to die. However, a few who have survived the ordeal—due to the mercy of the hospital staff—have later been adopted.)
Hysterotomy or Caesarean
Used mainly in the last three months of pregnancy, the womb is entered by surgery through the wall of the abdomen. The tiny baby is removed and allowed to die by neglect or sometimes killed by a direct act.
Prostaglandin Chemical
This form of abortion uses chemicals developed by the Upjohn Pharmaceutical Co. which cause the uterus to contract intensely, pushing out the developing baby. The contractions are so abnormally severe that babies have even been decapitated. Many, however, have also been born alive. The side effects to the mother are many—a number have even died from cardiac arrest when the compounds were injected.
Hypocritic Oath?
"I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest such counsel, and in like manner, I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion."
This statement is part of the Hippocratic Oath which doctors have taken for centuries as a moral standard governing their work as physicians. In recent years, it has been changed to read, "I will do nothing that is illegal." (This new oath would have been appropriate in Nazi Germany, where the doctors who helped to kill Jews were well within the limits of the law.)
Dr. John Szenens, age 36, has this to say: "You have to become a bit schizophrenic. In one room you encourage the patient that the slight irregularity of the fetal heart is not important—that she is going to have a fine, healthy baby. Then in the next room you assure another woman, on whom you just did a saline abortion, that it's good that the heart is already irregular . . .she has nothing to worry about, she is not going to have a live baby." Dr. Szenens continues, "At the beginning we were doing abortions on smaller fetuses... and the kicking and heartbeat did not manifest itself as much. I think if I had started with 24-weekers right off the bat, I would have had a much greater conflict in my own mind if this was the same as murder or not. But since we started off slowly with 15-16 weekers, the fetus just never got consideration. Then gradually, the whole range of cases started to become larger. All of a sudden, one noticed that at the time of the saline infusion, there was a lot of activity in the uterus.
It wasn't fluid currents. It was obviously the fetus being distressed by swallowing the salt solution and kicking violently through the death trauma. You can either face it, or turn around and say it's uterine contractions. That, however, would be repressing, since as a doctor you obviously know that it is not. Now whether you admit this to the patient is another matter. Her distress by unwanted pregnancy is to me the primary consideration, ahead of any possible consideration for the fetus. We just have to face it. Somebody has to do it. And unfortunately, we are the executioners in this instance."8
Susan Lindstrom, M.S.W., age 27, puts it this way: "I am having a lot of difficulty with my feelings about late abortions—and all the pain that's there so much of the time after the baby is moving. So one day, in a need to arrive at a measure of clarity, I went into the room where they keep the fetuses before burning them. They were next to the garbage cans in paper buckets, like the take-home chicken kind. I looked inside the bucket in front of me. There was a small naked person in there, floating in a bloody liquid.
He was purple with bruises and his face had the agonized tautness of one forced to die too soon. I then took off the lids of all the buckets and with a pair of forceps lifted each fetus out by an arm or a leg—leaving, as I returned them, an additional bruise on their acid-soaked bodies. Finally, I lifted out a very large fetus and read the label—Mother's name: C. Atkins; Doctor's name: Saul Marcus; Sex of the item: Male; Time of gestation: 24 weeks (six months). I remembered Miss Atkins. She was 17—a very pretty blond girl. So, this was Master Atkins—to be burned tomorrow—for the sake of his mother."9
A Hardening Of The Heart
Then there's the unnamed doctor who shared on a radio show that after he performed his first abortion, he became so violently ill that he thought he would die. He went through weeks of depression and thought of suicide. He said, "The first time I felt like a murderer, but I did it again and again and again, and now, 20 years later, I am facing what happened to me as a doctor and as a human being. Sure, I got hard. Sure, the money was important. And oh, it was an easy thing, once I had taken this step—to see these women as animals and these babies as just tissue."10
It's important to note that all three of these people, in spite of how distressed they were with what they were doing, did not stop. Why? The Bible explains it as a searing of the conscience —a hardening of the heart. It happens when you repeatedly refuse to listen to that small voice inside that keeps telling you "something isn't right." If you keep rationalizing and turning it off, one day you'll wake up and guess what . . . it's gone! Your first reaction may be to breathe a sigh of relief, but you should instead weep bitter tears of sorrow, because a part of your conscience, a part of your communication with God, has just died —and It may never come back again!
What Does God Have To Say?
God makes it clear that these tiny packages of humanity are fully human. "Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, 'Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.'" (Jer. 1:4-5)
God knew Jeremiah when he was in his mother's belly; God sanctified him and ordained him to be a prophet. If by an abortion, the baby should have been killed, it would have been Jeremiah who was killed. Jeremiah's mother would not have known his name, but God had already named him. His mother would not have known he was potentially a mighty prophet of God, but God had so planned it, and would have felt the loss.
The Bible tells us that John the Baptist was: "filled with the Holy Spirit, while yet in his mother's womb." (Luke 1:15 ) God sent His angel to Zacharias to tell him that his wife would bear a son, and even told him what his name was to be. He was told that “. . .many will rejoice at his birth—for he will be great in the sight of the Lord." (Luke 1:11-17 )
It seems like God knew John quite well and that He had a distinct purpose for his life on earth... a purpose for him and him alone to fulfill.
Last but certainly not least, the angel Gabriel announced to Mary,
“Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High... and His Kingdom will have no end." (Luke 1:31-33)
And so you see, God doesn't wait until a baby moves or becomes completely ready for life outside his mother, before He knows him, loves him, and recognizes him as a tiny human being... so why should we?
Let’s Count The Cost
So where do we go from here? Nazi Germany enacted a law permitting the extermination of "useless" members of society. Now we have the same pattern emerging in which a whole category of people, unloved and unborn, are being senselessly slaughtered. What is the next class of humanity to be destroyed? Will it be the aged, the handicapped, the mentally retarded?
God defends the unborn, the innocent, the one who cannot speak for himself... that tiny individual who will never again be duplicated in all of human history!
Only God has the right to bring the innocent home to Himself. (Deut. 32:39) Only He has the right to open or close wombs. But man has taken matters into his own hands. Mothers with their selfish excuses and doctors with their sharp instruments are playing God!
I caution them to think twice because God is not pleased. In fact, He is grieved to the depths of His heart by the mutilation of these beloved children! He says in His word, "Do not kill the innocent... for I will not acquit the guilty." (Exodus 23:7) We cannot break God's laws without suffering the consequences! We deceive ourselves if we think He does not see.
"The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good." (Proverbs 15:3)
The Myth Of The "Unwanted Child"
One of the most frequently heard excuses of the "pro-choice" groups is, "It would be unfair to bring another 'unwanted child' into the world." Actually, there is no such thing. Once a baby is born it will never be unwanted because of the extreme shortage of newborn babies available for adoption. It is obviously not the child's happiness and well-being that is of utmost concern here. . .but that of the parents.
If you are about to make the fatal mistake of ending a life given as a gift of God (Psalm 127:3), then I beg you to reconsider. Please don't do something that you will regret for the rest of your life. Don't destroy something that isn't yours. That baby belongs to God, even though it may be in your womb. If you do not feel equipped to raise a baby at this time, I urge you to take another look at the situation... maybe there is a way... pray about it. If you still feel that this is an impossibility—then BE A GIVER, NOT A TAKER.
The Gift Of Life
There are many families who have been waiting and desperately praying for years for the chance to adopt a child. Your child may be the answer to their prayers! Adoption is a reasonable and caring thing to do if you don't feel you can keep your baby. If you are unable to raise your child yourself, then you have the chance to give the greatest possible gift of all—the gift of life! In fact, you can give it twice... once to your baby and then, if you decide, again to a hopeful family somewhere. You can be a life-giver, or you can commit a crime that will remain on your conscience for the rest of your life! ABORTION IS MURDER—and no matter what anyone tells you, you will not "just forget about it"
You may feel cornered... like things are hopeless, and I want you to know that I am in no way insensitive to your situation or think that your problems are trivial. I simply say that abortion is not the answer. God commands us not to murder (Exodus 20:13), and going against Him will only make matters much worse. Everyone you know may be telling you you'd be a fool to have this baby—but they don't have to live with the guilt and pain of murder... you do. That baby is half yours no matter who the father is. The choice is yours. But don't forget, you are responsible to God for your actions—and after reading this, you certainly are not ignorant of the facts. You will be held accountable for your decision... I earnestly pray that you make the right one. Even though I don't know you, Jesus does, and we both love you (and your baby) very, very much!
Your friend,
If you are pregnant and need help, please call CareNet at 1-800-395-HELP. Remember... God loves you and your baby too!
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* Warren M. Hern, Abortion Practices, Preface
** Alan Guttmacher, Institute www.agi-usa.org
*** Dr. Martin Haskell, M.D. “Dilation and Extraction for Late Second Trimester Abortion, “ Presented at the National Abortion Federation Risk Seminar, September 13, 1992.
- Irvin M. Cushner, M.D., M.P.H., testimony, U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary (The Hatch Hearings), 97th Congress, First Session, 1983, p. 158.
- Scientific American, June 1981, p. 88; Jet, March 19, 1981. p. 6.
- Newsweek, Jan 14, 1985, p. 24.
- Newsweek, June 5, 1978, p. 39.
- Handbook on Abortion, Dr. and Mrs. J.C. Wilke, Hayes Publishing Co., Cincinnati, Oh.©1979, pp. 89-97. Also visit David Reardon and the Elliott Institute, 222.afterabortion.org.
- Voice for the Unborn, Fremont, CA, June-Aug, 1979. Also Handbook on Abortion.
- Abortion in America, Gary Bergel with C. Everett Coop, M.D. Surgeon General of the U.S., p.11, published by Intercesssors for America, Box 4477, Leesburg, VA 20177
- Dr. Magda Denes, “Performing Abortions,” Commentary, Oct 1976, pp. 35-7.
- Ibid.
- The Murder of the Helpless Unborn...Abortion, by John Rice, D.D., Litt., D., Murfreesboro, TN. Sword of the Lord Publishers, p. 31.
©1979, 2001 Last Days Ministries. All rights reserved.