One of the most pressing moral problems of our day is abortion. It is nearly impossible anymore to find someone who doesn't have an opinion about abortion, and probably a strong opinion at that. Yet the endless debates on the topic usually go nowhere, leaving the opponents even more committed to their positions and the open-minded observers confused. Both sides make a good case. An unwanted child is a pitiful thing, and the attendant social problems (single motherhood, financial destitution, child neglect, and urban overcrowding, to name just a few) do not have easy solutions. On the other hand, the thought of terminating something that, if left to run its natural course, would ultimately result in the birth of a human being gives all but the most hard-hearted among us cause for serious introspection. “ It is the second most common surgical procedure in the U.S., circumcision being the first. Since the historic Roe vs Wade decision on January 22, 1973, in the United States abortions have risen from about 775,000 in 1973 to about 1.6 million annually.”    The Court ruled in the case of Roe vs. Wade that states could not outlaw abortion. In effect, the Court authorized abortion on demand.

“The Court's decision unleashed a holocaust of unprecedented proportions a holocaust of babies. Since 1973 Americans have been killing their babies at the rate of 4,000 per day, or 1 1/2million per year. The 20th anniversary of the Court's decision in 1993 marked a total slaughter of almost 30 million babies. That's five times the death count of Hitler who murdered 6 million Jews.”

In all the wars the United states has fought since the Revolutionary War including the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War the number of Americans killed totals 775,000. We kill twice that many babies in America every year in the name of choice for women.

Yes, I said, "murdered," because the Word of God makes it clear that abortion is murder. The Bible says that we are to "choose life" (Deuteronomy 30:19). The abortionists choose death. The Bible says that God hates "hands that shed innocent blood" (Proverbs 6:17). The abortionists shed the blood of the innocent. The abortionists say that the baby in the womb is not a human being. They dehumanize it by calling it a fetus or a "protoplasmic blob." But God said to Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations" (Jeremiah 1:5).  These passages from God's Word clearly teach that the baby in the womb is a human being from the moment of conception.

Here is an interview with an abortion doctor who is describing in court how he does an abortion: “Under oath in July 1997, abortionist Carhart comments on how he commits abortions. Here he is questioned by his attorney:

Question: Are there times when you don’t remove the fetus intact?

Carhart: Yes, sir.

Question: Can you tell me about that, when that occurs?

Carhart: That occurs when the tissue fragments, or frequently when you rupture the membranes, an arm will spontaneously prolapse through the oz. I think most...statistically the most common presentation, we talk about the forehead or the skull being first. We talked about the feet being first, but I think in probably the great majority of terminations, it’s what they would call a transverse lie, so really you’re looking at a side profile of a curved fetus. When the patient...the uterus is already starting to contract and they are starting to miscarry, when you rupture the waters, usually something prolapses through the uterine, through the cervical os, not always, but very often an extremity will.

Question: What do you do then?

Carhart: My normal course would be to dismember that extremity and then go back and try to take the fetus out either foot or skull first, whatever end I can get to first.

Question: How do you go about dismembering that extremity?

Carhart: Just traction and rotation, grasping the portion that you can get a hold of which would be usually somewhere up the shaft of the exposed portion of the fetus, pulling down on it through the os, using the internal os as your counter-traction and rotating to dismember the shoulder or the hip or whatever it would be. Sometimes you will get one leg and you can’t get the other leg out.

Question: In that situation, are you, when you pull on the arm and remove it, is the fetus still alive?

Carhart: Yes.

Question: Do you consider an arm, for example, to be a substantial portion of the fetus?

Carhart: In the way I read it, I think if I lost my arm, that would be a substantial loss to me. I think I would have to interpret it that way.

Question: And then what happens next after you remove the arm? You then try to remove the rest of the fetus?

Carhart: Then I would go back and attempt to either bring the feet down or bring the skull down, or even sometimes you bring the other arm down and remove that also and then get the feet down.

Question: At what point is the fetus...does the fetus die during that process?

Carhart: I don’t really know. I know that the fetus is alive during the process most of the time because I can see fetal heartbeat on the ultrasound.

The Court: Counsel, for what it’s worth, it still is unclear to me with regard to the intact D&E when fetal demise occurs.

Question: Okay, I will try to clarify that. In the procedure of an intact D&E where you would start foot first, with the situation where the fetus is presented feet first, tell me how you are able to get the feet out first.

Carhart: Under ultrasound, you can see the extremities. You know what is what. You know what the foot is, you know what the arm is, you know what the skull is. By grabbing the feet and pulling down on it or by grabbing a knee and pulling down on it, usually you can get one leg out, get the other leg out and bring the fetus out. I don’t know where this...all the controversy about rotating the fetus comes from. I don’t attempt to do that. I just attempt to bring out whatever is the proximal portion of the fetus.

Question: At the time that you bring out the feet in this example, is the fetus still alive?

Carhart: Yes.

Question: Then what’s the next step you do?

Carhart: I didn’t mention it. I should. I usually attempt to grasp the cord first and divide the cord, if I can do that.

Question: What is the cord?

Carhart: The cord is the structure that transports the blood, both arterial and venous, from the fetus to the back to the fetus, and it gives the fetus its only source of oxygen, so that if you can divide the cord, the fetus will eventually die, but whether this takes five minutes or fifteen minutes and when that occurs, I don’t think anyone really knows.

Question: Are there situations where you don’t divide the cord?

Carhart: There are situations when I can’t.

Question: What are those

Carhart: I just can’t get to the cord. It’s either high above the fetus and structures where you can’t reach up that far. The instruments are only 11 inches long.

Question: Let’s take the situation where you haven’t divided the cord because you couldn’t, and you have begun to remove a living fetus feet first. What happens next after you have gotten the feet removed?

Carhart: We remove the feet and continue with traction on the feet until the abdomen and the thorax came through the cavity. At that point, I would try...you have to bring the shoulders down, but you can get enough of them outside, you can do this with your finger outside of the uterus, and then at that point the fetal...the base of the fetal skull is usually in the cervical canal.

Question: What do you do next?

Carhart: And you can reach that, and that’s where you would rupture the fetal skull to some extent and aspirate the contents out.

Question: At what point in that process does fetal demise occur between initial remove...removal of of the feet or legs and the crushing of the skull, or I’m sorry, the decompressing of the skull?

Carhart: Well, you know, again, this is where I’m not sure what fetal demise is. I mean, I honestly have to share your concern, your Honor. You can remove the cranial contents and the fetus will still have a heartbeat for several seconds or several minutes, so is the fetus alive? I would have to say probably, although I don’t think it has any brain function, so it’s brain dead at that point.

Question: So the brain death might occur when you begin suctioning out of the cranium?

Carhart: I think brain death would occur because the suctioning to remove contents is only two or three seconds, so somewhere in that period of time, obviously not when you penetrate the skull, because people get shot in the head and the don’t die immediately from that, if they are going to die at all, so that probably is not sufficient to kill the fetus, but I think removing the brain contents eventually will .

Later under cross examination from the AG’S counsel, Carhart stated: "My intent in every abortion I have ever done is to kill the fetus and terminate the pregnancy."

How many Beethovens have died? How many Shakespeares have been killed? How many Billy Grahams, Jonas Salks and Martin Luther Kings have been murdered in their mother's wombs?

“ Recently one report stated that the most dangerous place to be in America today is in a mother’s womb. The place that God made as a haven and refuge, as a sacred and mysterious laboratory for the development of life, as His greatest promise of renewal for the human race, has become a slaughter house. Abortionist murder up to 1.6 million children each year in their mothers’ wombs.”  I s anybody listening to these cries of the heart. Where are all those who want to save the whales, baby seals, the dolphins, the red squirrels? Don’t they want to save the children?
One reason the debate goes nowhere is that each side focuses on a different topic. We make no progress because we are not talking about the same thing. The pro-abortionist prefers to discuss choice, and to dwell on all of the social problems inherent in an unwanted child. The anti-abortionist is interested primarily in protecting the life of the fetus. In simple terms, the pro-abortionist focuses on a woman's rights and the anti-abortionist focuses on a fetus' rights. Though interrelated, these are basically different topics

In assessing the relative pro’s and cons for the pro life and pro choice positions, I believe that the pro life position makes the better case. As a result I believe that voluntary abortions in general are immoral. I’m not talking about cases of rape or incest.
While it is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to convince a pro-abortionist of the personhood of the fetus, nevertheless from a purely ethical point of view it still makes since to demand that human life should not be arbitrarily terminated, particularly when less dramatic solutions exist. “ Such solutions should be sought on the side of both the fetus and the mother. Having once been conceived, the fetus has no choice but to grow, and just as it had no choice in its conception or its blond hair or blue eyes. Hence, the fetus is without recourse and remedy. The same is not true of the mother, who has at least three alternatives other than abortion. She can exercise initial will power by abstinence, which is grossly out of fashion today. She has the option to use contraception to prevent the unwanted child. And finally, given the birth of the child, the mother can allow the living yet unwanted infant to be put up for adoption.”

While this approach does not entirely resolve the confrontation between the two sides in the debate, it does make it clear that it is the fetus who is the innocent victim, and it’s the mother who controls, at least in some human sense, the beginning of life and thus should take the necessary precautions to prevent the conception and subsequent destruction of it.
 

  J Kerby Anderson, “Living Ethically in the 90’s” ( Wheaton: Victor Books, 1990) p.204
  Pat Robertson, “The Turning Tide” ( Word Publishing, 1993) p.202
  Holy Bible- NIV
  http://www.operationsaveamerica.org/streets/ne/carhart.html  Jan. 3, 2000
  Pat Robertson, “The Turning Tide” ( Word Publishing, 1993) p.203
  John Feinberg, “ Ethics for a Brave New World” ( Crossway Books 1993) p. 71