Merle Hoffman is the founder of Choices, a major abortion center in New York City. In her memoir, titled Intimate Wars, she presented an impassioned argument in favor of abortion. In the process she made some surprising admissions. She says that every woman who has an abortion knows that she is not just choosing to eliminate some tissue and blood. An abortion, every woman knows, is “not like an appendectomy.” Hoffman admits that it is “the termination of potential life.” Yet she insists on it being a right choice. She does so because by her own admission she has no concept that life is sacred.
Mary Elizabeth Williams has recently said similar things in a Salon.com article. The pro-abortion movement has long sought to identify itself as “pro choice” and to speak only of fetuses, never of babies. Williams says it is time that the abortion rights movement be done with such chicanery and admit that the fetus is a human life. She knows women who spoke of their abortions as “scraping out a bunch of cells” yet during subsequent pregnancies would speak without hesitation of the child within them as a baby. She wrote, “I know women who have been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages. Why can’t we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that it’s pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn’t the same?”
Mary Elizabeth Williams has recently said similar things in a Salon.com article. The pro-abortion movement has long sought to identify itself as “pro choice” and to speak only of fetuses, never of babies. Williams says it is time that the abortion rights movement be done with such chicanery and admit that the fetus is a human life. She knows women who spoke of their abortions as “scraping out a bunch of cells” yet during subsequent pregnancies would speak without hesitation of the child within them as a baby. She wrote, “I know women who have been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages. Why can’t we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that it’s pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn’t the same?”
It sounds like Williams was making a pro-life argument, but she wasn’t. She went on to say that while the infant in the womb clearly is a human life, it doesn’t and shouldn’t have the same rights as the mother. She says that if in her mind the circumstances aren’t right for the mother to give birth to that infant then it is a “life worth sacrificing.”
I am glad that at least some in the abortion movement are admitting what is obviously true, that abortion is the taking of a human life. But I find their defense of that action to be chilling. The defense is made on bases such as saying that human life is not sacred or that sometimes a life has to be sacrificed. Sadly, such thinking reveals the frightening implications of some of the shibboleths of our current culture.
The party line these days is that humans are merely the product of random events and the forces of physics. If that is so then Hoffman is correct, human life is not sacred. It has no more value than a rock, which is equally the produce of physics and random chance. The taking of a human life then becomes a somewhat insignificant act. What does it matter if out of 7 billion people on the planet there is one less? Furthermore, if we are here merely as an accident, if we are not created in the image of God and equal before him, what is the point of our lives? They have no point! So what are we to do while alive? The only thing that makes any sense is to take care of ourselves. Self becomes the ultimate good. If an innocent infant’s nascent life must be ended in order to serve selfish ends, then so be it because self is what life is all about.
The implications of that view of life for a society are horrifying. In Romans 1 Paul spoke of what happens when people refuse to acknowledge God. He says their thinking becomes futile and their hearts are darkened. In verse 22 he says “although they claimed to be wise, they become fools.” We are seeing that play out. Take God out of the picture and the logical conclusions are truly frightening.
I am glad that at least some in the abortion movement are admitting what is obviously true, that abortion is the taking of a human life. But I find their defense of that action to be chilling. The defense is made on bases such as saying that human life is not sacred or that sometimes a life has to be sacrificed. Sadly, such thinking reveals the frightening implications of some of the shibboleths of our current culture.
The party line these days is that humans are merely the product of random events and the forces of physics. If that is so then Hoffman is correct, human life is not sacred. It has no more value than a rock, which is equally the produce of physics and random chance. The taking of a human life then becomes a somewhat insignificant act. What does it matter if out of 7 billion people on the planet there is one less? Furthermore, if we are here merely as an accident, if we are not created in the image of God and equal before him, what is the point of our lives? They have no point! So what are we to do while alive? The only thing that makes any sense is to take care of ourselves. Self becomes the ultimate good. If an innocent infant’s nascent life must be ended in order to serve selfish ends, then so be it because self is what life is all about.
The implications of that view of life for a society are horrifying. In Romans 1 Paul spoke of what happens when people refuse to acknowledge God. He says their thinking becomes futile and their hearts are darkened. In verse 22 he says “although they claimed to be wise, they become fools.” We are seeing that play out. Take God out of the picture and the logical conclusions are truly frightening.
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