For the Wheaton Record

The following is an editorial I wrote for the college newspaper. They will print it in this week's edition, just before the Easter weekend. I hope people read it.

I've found the whole process of writing and submitting and editing to be emotionally draining. It's so frustrating to know that despite the hours of thought and labor, despite my best intentions and best efforts, people will likely misunderstand and misinterpret and misrepresent what I've written. I guess I'm not in control. Yeah.

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One in three children conceived in the US is aborted. One in three. This situation is dire and tragic. Furthermore, President Obama has promised to sign the Freedom of Choice Act bill that would legalize partial birth abortions, dispense with the twenty-four hour waiting period before abortions, no longer require parental consent for minors, and require states to allow abortions by non-physicians. FOCA would overturn hundreds of pro-life laws approved in states across the country. It is estimated that the passage of FOCA could result in an increase of 100,000 abortions annually, which would be funded by our tax-payer money.

In spite of this, abortion has received very little attention on campus until recently. The Voice for Life club did not renew its charter at the beginning of this year for lack of student support. With the exception of one prayer in chapel, there was no mention made of abortion during National Right to Life week. The bookstore's section of books on current issues does not even have a single book on abortion.

Since little readily apparent progress has been made in the thirty-six years since Roe v. Wade, many Christians have grown tired of fighting abortion. The pro-life movement is not sexy anymore. But we need to remember that Christians have been fighting abortion not just for decades, but for centuries. The Romans thought nothing of abandoning infants to die from exposure or be devoured by beasts. There are also records of abortions obtained through abortifacient concoctions and physical measures in many ancient societies. It was the Christians who stepped forward to affirm the sanctity of life. Clement, Tertullian, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine all spoke out strongly against abortion and called on the church to bring an end to it. The Didache, one of the earliest Christian documents written around the time of Revelation, includes a call to cherish and defend innocent human life and an injunction against abortion and infanticide.

Christians continue to fight abortion and strive to preserve life because our God cherishes innocent human life, and the things that are important to our God must be important to us. The Lord is the Author of Life who created all people in His image for His good purposes. As God loves His creation and values justice, He repeatedly calls us to defend the innocent. Among the innocent, God has a particularly special, deep love for children. It is clear from Scripture that God sees no difference between a child in the womb of his mother and one already born. Our lives as persons begin in the womb. It was the presence of the incarnate Son of God, conceived just days before, that caused John the Baptist to leap for joy in the womb of Elizabeth. This physical response of the pre-born John the Baptist is recognition and confirmation of the fact that he and Jesus Christ, at the time a zygote, were fully persons.

In the last thirty-six years, fifty million of the most innocent, vulnerable people were brutally murdered. These abortions were not fifty million solutions to an inconvenience or the end to fifty million potential persons. These abortions brought about the death of fifty million people created and beloved by God.

Love for God and love for our neighbor demands that we respond to this crisis at hand. It demands that we reach out in compassion to the hurting women around us who have had abortions. It demands that we seek to provide for impoverished young mothers. It demands that we strive to bring an end to abortion, an end to the slaying of innocent children.

The newly rechartered Voice for Life club seeks to encourage and equip students in their commitment to the sanctity of human life, with a compassionate passion fueled by love of the Lord and an unwavering dedication to His gospel. Wheaton students, we must become educated about abortion and passionate about preserving life. There is no excuse for "if you say, 'Behold, we did not know this,' does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work?" We must "rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter." (Proverbs 24:12,11)

Wheaton College, please consider these words of George Grant: "The pro-life movement and the Christian faith are synonymous. Where there is one, there will be the other - for one cannot be had without the other."