Psalm 127:3 — Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord : and the fruit of the womb is his reward.

There are pieces I really don’t want to write. They are the controversial ones — the ones that are bound to offend somebody. This one might even offend everybody, but it is laid upon me that I must address the topic of abortion. I’m not expecting to change any minds — but I need to say what I believe.
As I noted yesterday, the Nazi holocaust killed — legally, by the evil and warped standards of the German government of the day, at least six million … and some estimates that include other targeted groups rise to as many as seventeen million.
From 1973 to 2010 according to CDC statistics — which are more conservative than many other sources — there have been more than forty one million perfectly legal abortions in the United States. Many decent people not only see nothing wrong with the process, but defend it as an expression of a woman’s right to control her own body. This argument is often developed as a discussion of the morality of bringing unwanted children into the world, the right of every child to be loved or the right for every person to choose their own moral framework.
Now I’m not a clever philosopher or smart theologian. So I know I can get into some deep water here. And if any lady wants to say to me “you’re a man nearly 60 years old … what can you know about it?” I’ll freely grant the point. But there are some things that tug at my heart strings.
There are forty one million young people missing from our society. Now I’m not concerned about missing Mozarts … I’m sure those kids would have been like the rest of us — some really good, some really bad, and a whole lot in the middle. I do know, though, that we are missing a whole lot of love, life and energy in our society.
There are forty one million women, many of them terribly young, who have lived through a terrible period of their lives, made fearful decisions and are scarred forever.
The revenue from providing abortions is over $800m annually. That’s a lot of money from misery, no matter how you slice it.
Now, unlike many of my friends — and many of you reading this, I suspect — I can’t say that there are no circumstances in which abortion is allowable. I would for instance support a woman who had been raped if she wished to have an abortion. But I do know that many if the arguments that have been advanced in favor of the current legal environment amount to not much more than “kids are an inconvenience and a woman shouldn’t be forced to deal with them.” And that’s not enough.
The central issue, to me, has to be one if faith. What does God say? The Bible does not directly ban abortion. It doesn’t need to. The value God places on life, and children, is repeated again and again. God’s control of the “opening and closing of the womb” is stated and restated. It is made clear that the baby in the womb is a person (see, for instance, Isaiah 44:2). The weight of the Biblical evidence is, to me, clear. God is opposed to abortion and so, in general, am I.