A Tragic Anniversary, an Ongoing Holocaust

baby-743247_960_720The word “holocaust” literally denotes a “situation in which many people are killed.” ((“Holocaust,” Merriam-Webster, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/holocaust (2015).)). When we think of the word “holocaust,” we usually think of the German-led murder of six million Jews and about three million others. But speaking strictly in terms of number of deaths, there is an ongoing holocaust in America that is about six times as severe as the German-led Holocaust of the 1930s and 1940s.

Last week, on January 22nd, the United States marked another anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case, Roe v. Wade, in which the Supreme Court found that pregnant women have a constitutional right to abortion on-demand. Since that case was decided, in January 1973, there have been about 59 million abortions in the U.S. Let that number sink in: 59 million abortions. It boggles the mind. To put it in perspective, consider that the whole U.S. population is now only 323 million, according to the Census Bureau. Consider that about 25 times more Americans have been killed through abortion than through armed conflict ((Hannah Fischer, “American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics,” Naval History and Heritage Command, http://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/a/american-war-and-military-operations-casualties.html (2015).))

Christians must never lose their horror at the frequency of abortions, for Christians believe two fundamental, biblical facts related to this controversy. Consider them in turn:

  1. Human life is sacred, and so the deliberate taking of innocent human life is sinful. This principle goes back to the beginning, when God punished Cain for taking the life of his brother (Genesis 4:1-16). God told Noah, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Genesis 9:6). One of the first commands in the Law of Moses was, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13). In the Law of Christ we find the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12), which forbids murder, and the apostle John wrote, “[N]o murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15).
  2. Elective abortion is sinful, because it is the deliberate taking of innocent human life. A pre-born human being has the right to not be killed just as much as any one of us who has exited the womb, for God regards the pre-born baby with the same moral regard as He ascribes to the born baby. God refers to the pre-born John the Baptist by using the same Greek word that He uses to refer to the already-born baby Jesus (compare Luke 1:41 and Luke 2:12).

What must God think of American society when He sees the mass murder of innocent children in the womb? What must God think of us if we do not speak up for the innocent, endangered, pre-born children of America and the world?

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- 2024

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