Abortion 1

Here, for the record, is Doyle on the issue of abortion as of June 2009.

Premise One: Every single abortion is a murder. Yes, you read that right. Keep reading.

• When does life begin? Unclear. That's not a scientific or medical question; instead, it's a philosophical question. You can make a case from Scripture that it begins at conception, at the first breath, or at the moment God created Heaven and Earth. Of the various arguable starting points, the case for any of them is not so much more powerful than the others that the matter is settled, so what remains is to decide which way to err. If a body in an Emergency Room might be dead or might be alive, doctors would err on the side of making sure they weren't letting the patient die. That simple, clear-cut judgment call illustrates an elegant way to settle the matter of which starting point should be accepted. Even if I can't make an airtight argument that a fertilized egg is a full human being, I can say that if such a claim meets minimal tests of rationality to become admissible, and no other framing of the question can dismiss it, then I ought to lean toward embracing it.
• It may be killing, but is it murder? That's an easy one: yes. It's premeditated, and the life being extinguished is entirely innocent.
• What about rape or incest? The conditions of the child's conception are in absolutely zero way relevant to this question.
• What about cases in which the mother's life is in danger? If we take our faith seriously, then we place such cases in God's hands and trust Him. I like to think I take my faith seriously. I'm not always perfect in doing so, but that's what it dictates in this matter.

Premise Two: Abortion should be completely and utterly legal. No restrictions, no waiting periods, nothing.

• I do not believe in outlawing abortion. I believe in stopping abortion. The two are entirely distinct. Anyone who believes in gun ownership should have an easy time grasping this: I assume that in your perfect world, zero people would die from gunshot wounds, but wishing for that world does not place you in favor of gun control. Outlawing something, criminalizing it, prosecuting it, has absolutely no necessary relationship to stopping it.
• Nothing in my Bible gives me permission to agitate for the passage of laws against particular sins, and then walk away satisfied. My Bible teaches me that my job is to spread the Gospel, and then leave each person's sins to their growing relationship with their Father, and to the transformative work of the Holy Spirit. That's how abortion can be stopped. Using the bludgeon of the law to stamp out abortion strikes me as profoundly un-Biblical.
• Would I, then, be opposed to laws against murder? Do I think there's any role at all for a criminal justice system? I think all of these human institutions are effectively playground equipment. I think they set up human encounters, and it's the way we handle these encounters that gives us the opportunity to glorify God, or else fail to do so. That said, I do not trust in law enforcement to protect me from being murdered. God has chosen the last moment of my life and the cause of my death. Until that moment, I am invulnerable. At that moment, nothing can save me. Again, if we took our faith seriously, we wouldn't bicker over these things nearly as much.
• I finally believe that dishonest, power-hungry, ambitious people routinely and deliberately exploit the very emotional, fervent opposition to abortion among Christians in order to make themselves powerful. I believe most politicians who talk the loudest about being "pro-life" actually want very badly for abortions to continue, because for them, abortion is a self-replenishing fountain of campaign contributions. All they have to do is step in front of a camera, make a statement whose language pushes the abortion button and the checks come flowing in. And it breaks my heart that my Christian sisters and brothers are so eager, so hungry, to be exploited in this fashion. It's true that a clear cut face-off between good and evil is more emotionally satisfying than a murky, complicated problem that's tied up with poverty, ignorance, and people's sin nature, but it's also true that our craving for that kind of satisfaction leaves us defenseless against deceit. The Bible is filled with warnings against those who will deceive us, and we're so convinced that when deceivers appear, they'll wear horns and a tail and a T-shirt with 666 emblazoned across it, that it never occurs to us that someone in a suit, with a southern accent and an American flag lapel pin, might be distorting God's word in the same way the serpent distorted it in the Garden. But scarcely a day goes by that I don't see exactly that happen.

There's more. There's a good deal more. But those are the four corners of my position on abortion. In the wake of Dr. Tiller's murder, I get the feeling it's going to be a long, hot summer, and for the rest of this month I plan to set down in words a lot of what I don't understand, what I do understand, and what I wish more of my Christian family understood.