Flying in the face of God’s creation
The Layman February 2003 Volume 36, Number 1, February 17, 2003
The 214th General Assembly thrust every Presbyterian into the national spotlight by voting to make the Presbyterian Church (USA) the only mainline denomination to sanction partial-birth abortions.
Pediatricians have called the controversial procedure a “silent scream” that no one hears from a fetus that is very much alive. It is a particularly brutal procedure: The doctor adjusts the baby’s position in the uterus to the breach position. Next, the baby is pulled out feet first by means of forceps. A sharp instrument then is inserted into the baby’s head that piths its brain. After that, the doctor suctions out the brain and finishes delivering the corpse.
All available evidence demonstrates the lack of a medical need for such a procedure, since the infant after 20 weeks is able to live outside the womb. Yet, a majority (77 percent) of commissioners to the 214th General Assembly clung to the mantra of a woman’s choice and, like the baby after an abortion, discarded the Word of God: “Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.”
It doesn’t matter that commissioners tried to camouflage their decision by saying that partial-birth abortions are “a matter of grave moral concern to us all.” What matters is that their action is the church’s endorsement to continue, and increase, the estimated 16,000 such abortions a year.
The issue of partial-birth abortions is not new. During the Clinton Administration, Congress voted twice, in 1996 and 1997, to outlaw it – but both times the president vetoed the legislation. In 1999, both chambers of Congress again voted to outlaw the procedure, but the legislation never made it out of a House-Senate conference committee.
In lockstep with Clinton’s policies, and out of step with the majority of legislators, the offices of the General Assembly, the denomination’s Washington Office and the office of the Stated Clerk long have lobbied Congress to approve partial-birth abortions.
Those efforts were dealt a setback when the 1997 General Assembly opposed the procedure. They gained new life when partial-birth abortions became the subject of legislation in Nebraska. That case emboldened the denomination’s Advisory Committee on Litigation to ask the 2000 General Assembly to refer to the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy a request to study the issue and report to the general assembly. That report, rescinding the 1997 statement of opposition and written in part by a committee that supports abortion rights, is what commissioners approved in Columbus, Ohio, in 2002.
Presbyterians Pro-Life, and similar ministries in other denominations, have been working for years to expose such efforts that seek to overturn a concept that is central to understanding God as the creator and author of life. Just before the 214th General Assembly, Presbyterians Pro-Life said, “Now is the time for the Church to give good, godly protection to babies who are approaching full term and delivery into our world. Now is the time to resist the subtle arguments that want to erase the Church’s moral guidance. … Now is the time to support the expressed desires of local churches to restrain abortions and minister to women who are making decisions in crisis pregnancies.”
The U.S. House of Representatives again has approved legislation to place a ban on partial-birth abortions. President Bush has indicated he will sign it. First, though, the bill must get through the Senate, which will take it up in the spring. Its passage there, however, is not assured. As one abortion-rights advocate told The New York Times, “The Senate is our firewall.”
Now is the time for every Presbyterian to make his or her voice heard on this issue and to demonstrate that staff-led committees, the Washington Office and the stated clerk do not speak for the majority in this denomination. Jesus does, and He said: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”