Documented abortion
Julia Black, an independent film maker, recently produced a documentary on the subject of abortion for channel 4 in Britain. Speaking of the experience she writes (in The Sun Herald, July 11, 2004)
I met people from both sides and what surprised me was how much language they shared. I would interview someone opposed to abortion one day and a doctor who performs abortions the next, and when I stripped away their moral views they shared many beliefs. They both marvelled at the first few cells that eventually form a human being and there was no difference in their respect for the foetus or their view about the unpalatable nature of abortion. This presented me with a problem: how could I admit that abortion destroys a life and still be pro-choice?
Well, one possibility of course would be changing your mind. But no, says Ms Black, before throwing responsibility for the dilemma back onto the pro-life supporters:
This is a difficult place for me to be, and I challenge the pro-choice movement to help me and others resolve the emotional contradiction that surrounds abortion when you look at the facts.
But there is only an ‘emotional contradiction’ if one begins from the point of taking the right to abort as fact, rather than as the simple assertion of the mother's rights over the child's. Remove this ‘fact’, and the contradiction disappears.
Having removed pseudo-fact, we can recognize the actual fact of God's love and care for the unborn. Ps 139:13-16 says:
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there were none of them.