Sermon for Sunday, February 17, 2008ABORTION AND THE BEGINNING OF LIFE6th in a series on Confronting the Controversies By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz |
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Scripture: Genesis 2:4b-7 4bIn the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 5 when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; 6 but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— 7 then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. Each time I or others here stand before you to take the role of proclaiming the gospel, we say a prayer that God will use our feeble efforts to be God’s instrument and God’s message because we realize the audacity, (in Paul’s words, the foolishness) of attempting to speak for God. And so we pray right before the sermon that the words of our mouths and the meditations of all of our hearts will be acceptable in God’s sight. I ask you especially to pray that silently with me this morning as we look at one of the most intensely emotional and divisive issues in our time. (Time for a brief silence). Two persons from our congregation e mailed me ahead of this Sunday, telling me their experiences over the controversy of abortion. One man who told of writing a letter a few years back to the Denver Post advocating that there may be some times when a couple and their physician should be able to have choices about continuing a pregnancy. He tells of getting a phone call a couple of days after his letter appeared from someone who threatened to burn his house down. Another from our congregation told of two girls she knew as she grew up in a different state. They went to the same conservative religious school. The atmosphere in the congregation she was in she described this way: sex was seen as evil. Contact between boys and girls was restricted-boys and girls were in different Sunday school classes. No dances were allowed. The first classmate she told about was a girl about was 16 years old and too afraid to tell her parents about her pregnancy. Abortions were not available. She committed suicide. The second friend she wrote me about was a high school junior in a religious school where being pregnant would mean being expelled. In order to hide her pregnancy she starved herself-not to harm the baby but to avoid anyone finding out. The child was born with many disabilities. Let me offer some different stories. Judy and I are members of one of the largest disability organizations in this country-the National Down Syndrome Congress. Judy has been the president of the group for several years and is still a national officer and helps plan the annual convention of 1800 to 2000 persons-families of persons with Down syndrome and kids and adults with Down syndrome. Recently her organization advocated with the professional organization of Obstetricians and Gynecologists for more and better information sharing to prospective parents when there has been a diagnosis of Down syndrome during a pregnancy. The national group wants prospective parents to know more about the great potential of a child with Down syndrome and to be able to talk with other parents and families because right now most of those pregnancies-90% in fact-are terminated. By the way, do you know there is a long waiting list of people who want to adopt a child with Down syndrome and that if couples who are pregnant with a child with an extra 21st chromosome and who want to continue the pregnancy and offer the baby for adoption, there are hundreds of prospective adoptive families who want to raise that child. If you want to know more about this check the website DSAGC.COM and click on the adoption awareness link. The next story is from Jim Wallis new book on our book shelves. He has a chapter on respecting life. He tells-it is in your quote sheet in your bulletin-about a woman who he met in his travels and lectures. She told him she had a daughter graduating from Harvard and how proud she was. He says he smiled and congratulated her and told her she should be proud and he knew how good that was because he teaches part time at Harvard. Then she said, “I was a low income woman when she was born and if I hadn’t gotten food stamps and health care, I would have aborted my daughter. And now she is graduating from Harvard.” She said to Dr. Wallis, I want you to tell people that if they want to prevent abortions, they need to support low income women like me.” Let me tell you another similar story of a young single mother who became pregnant and could have chosen to terminate the pregnancy but chose instead the challenge to continue and raise her son and her son is known to many of us as the Rev. Adam Hamilton, Senior Pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City, one of the fastest growing United Methodist Churches in our country. In his sermon a few years ago, Adam told a bit about his mom and what a journey that was without revealing that this was his story also and at the end of the sermon about abortion and this heroic young mother said simply, “Thanks Mom.” Let me offer just a couple of other stories about life situations. Then we will look to the foundations of our faith and our book for guidance. A thirteen year old girl is raped. Her health is fragile. Should she and her parents be able to consult with their physician about the possibility of terminating the pregnancy or should all such terminations of pregnancy be illegal, regardless of the circumstances? What do you think? A young couple in their late twenties becomes pregnant for the first time. During a routine ultrasound examination around the twentieth week of pregnancy, the physician sees some significant problems. The fetus has neither arms or legs. After other tests including an amniocentesis and a consultation with a geneticist, the diagnosis is “pseudo thalidomide”. The child has no rib cage or lungs and will not survive birth. Their physician tells them that if the child dies in utero, there is a chance of a serious infection for the mother. The couple consults with their pastor as well as their physician and their small group at their church. What should they do? Should they have the right to terminate the pregnancy? If that is their decision, should they then hold a memorial service? If you find yourself somewhere between the extremes on either the left or right, wanting families and physicians to have some choices but wanting abortions to be rare and never to be used as a substitute for birth control or never to be used simply because a pregnancy is inconvenient, if you are in that center ground, you are in the company of most other Americans on this emotional and controversial issue. In his USA Today article a few weeks ago writer conservative Michael Medved said, most Americans are pro life AND prochoice. We may not be able to justify abortion for ourselves but we do not want to make abortion totally illegal or totally unavailable. That is, according to the several polls I consulted (listed in your bulletin insert). The position of 77 per cent of Americans who want to give the choice of continuing or terminating a pregnancy to a patients and their physician. Only 15-20% want to outlaw all abortions under any circumstances. That may be a surprise to us since the opponents of all abortions are so visible and vocal in the press, but it is a very consistent polling result and you can look at many opinion surveys on the web site pollingreport.com or google abortion opinion surveys. Part of the reason for that centrist position is the belief that even if we tried to criminalize all abortions, they would not stop but they would still be done in ways that endanger more lives. Rev Jim Wallis strikes that middle ground position in his new book and this quote is in your insert sheet: My religious and moral view is that abortion is wrong even when the circumstances are wrapped up with great difficulties and inequities. My public policy view has a strong bias toward protecting unborn life in every possible way but without criminalizing abortion. How do we actually prevent unwanted pregnancies, protect unborn lives, support low income women, offer compassionate alternatives to abortion, make adoption more accessible and affordable, carefully fashion reasonable restrictions and thus dramatically reduce the shamefully high abortion rate in America? There is one more point from his book that we need to heed: our moral view on protecting life has to be consistent. Wallis affirms some theologians who are concerned with protecting and honoring life beyond the womb as well as before birth. He quotes conservative minister Rev. Joel Hunter who is one of those new, more thoughtful evangelical leaders we talked about last week: “My position is that unless we are caring as much for the vulnerable outside the womb as inside the womb, we are not carrying out the full message of Jesus.” Let’s use that statement as a bridge to see what our faith and our book say about issues of life. What is the full message of Jesus that we ought to be carrying out? Jesus summarized it in the great commandment to love God with all our heart, mind soul and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves. He made it even shorter for us in Luke 6: BE COMPASSIONATE JUST AS GOD IS COMPASSIONATE. Let’s keep that before us as we look at other parts of scripture to talk about respecting life and particularly the question of when life begins. One guideline for looking at the Bible is that the Bible is more complex than we think it is and that there are some surprises when we really read the Bible. We will see that next week as well when we look at another controversial topic. If we look at the Ten Commandments we think that the sixth commandment says “You shall not kill.” That is not what the Hebrew says. The Hebrew sentence is, “You shall not murder”. You shall not take life unjustifiably. The words in Hebrew for kill and for murder were different because in the Hebrew Bible there were instances when they believed the taking of life was justified. Before we become upset with that, you and I probably believe the same thing. Most of us are not complete pacifists. Most of us believe with sadness and with a sense of deep tragedy, that there are times when taking life is justified as the lesser of two wrongs. We may believe that in war or in self defense. Some of us believe in the legitimacy of capital punishment though that number of people is shrinking. It is a difficult thing to admit but in the Ten Commandments there is the assumption that sometimes that killing and murder are two different things. Secondly, what can the Bible tell us about when life begins? Here also you may be surprised. When does a person become a person? In the book of Genesis, chapters 2 and 6 and 7, the beginning of life is identified with breath. In the second creation story in Genesis 2, remember the words? “The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and (THEN) the man became a living being” the Hebrew word for “living being or living soul” is nefesh, and a nefesh, a living soul in the Bible, is connected with breath. When does life begin according to biologists and physicians? There are different answers of course. Is a two week old embryo a person or a potential person? What do you think? That question leads us to the other very emotional issue on stem cell research on the 400,000 frozen embryos in our own country. Should we allow stem cell research to be done on those embryos or should they just be disposed of every year, hundreds at a time, as they are now? Most Americans, some sixty to seventy per cent, want to support stem cell research using frozen embryos that will otherwise be discarded because an ethic of life that is consistent says if we can prevent premature death from major diseases such as Parkinsons, we ought to do that. Did you know that is the majority opinion? What do physicians and scientists say about when life begins or when an embryo becomes a person? Dr. Ruth Fuller contributed a chapter in a book that Judy and I wrote a chapter for as well (unfortunately the book is out of print but we have a copy in our library.) At that time Dr. Fuller was Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. She is quoted in your bulletin insert. She answers the question of when life begins and when a person becomes a person by pointing to the development of the cerebral cortex between the 24th and 32nd weeks of pregnancy and then she says in humility, “At this point in our history we are really relative neophytes at gathering information about mental functioning in the infant. Let me summarize by looking at the statement from our United Methodist church world wide. The social principles statement is, like most of you, both pro life and pro choice. We see abortion as a tragedy but do not want to take that medical option away from patients and physicians as they prayerfully and carefully discern the right course. We also as United Methodists encourage education on sexuality and birth control (this is different from other church groups), and we want kids to have information instead of being denied information. We want teenagers to respect themselves and their bodies and to have some sense of the sacredness of the creation and the sacredness of sexuality as part of God’s good creation, and like all good gifts, never to be misused or treated casually. We want to encourage adoptions. And in a perfect world, pregnancies would be carried to full term and the family or mother would raise that wanted child or relinquish the child to an adoptive family and there would be no abortions. But we are not in a perfect world and I believe God calls us again to compassion and to understanding and to a consistent ethic of life. Be compassionate, Jesus says; just as God is compassionate toward you. Forgive others just as God has forgiven you. Be compassionate and read and listen and discuss. Go see the movie Juno as a family if you have not yet. Judy and I hosted the senior high youth group a few weeks ago at our house after we had seen the film and it is a wonderful springboard for discussing and listening and reflecting on all of this. It may be a little too simplistic but that can be a topic for discussion. One more story-a personal one: Judy and I are, like quite few of you, adoptive parents. We had been on the waiting list for four years in El Paso County. We decided not to risk Judy becoming pregnant again after Todd’s birth because of some serious health problems she had toward the end of the pregnancy. We hoped an adoption would come through but at the end of four years we had almost given up. Then we got a call from a social worker in southwest Colorado saying that there was a baby girl waiting for us. That child had been born because the young birth mother had been raised in a family where terminating the pregnancy was not an option for her. She carried the pregnancy to full term and she and the father decided on adoption. She had been raised with an ethic of respecting life. And, and now we as the parents of that wonderful, delightful, successful, thirty year old daughter, are of course, eternally grateful. Amen. |
