Baptists Should Be on the Side of Life

                                                                                                                                                                                   Vol. V, No. 2, April 1992

[The following is excerpted from an editorial in the Missouri Baptist Convention paper, Word & Way, 5 Sep. 1991, by Bob Terry. Bracketed comments by your editor.]

...The Baptist position [on abortion] has been inconsistent, at best. In 1971, messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution calling for "legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother."

By 1980 [a year after Adrian Rogers was elected as the first conservative SBC president committed to return our Convention to a firm stand on the authority of the Bible], the SBC position had changed, and a resolution was adopted opposing all abortions. Later that position was modified to allow for abortion when the physical life of the mother was threatened. ...

Today the indiscriminate availability of abortion on demand resembles the barbaric practices of Rome and Greece in New Testament days. Each minute 2.8 abortions are performed in the United States. That is 171 abortions per hour, 4,111 per day, 1.5 million per year. [We have killed more unborn babies in the United States since the Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973 than Hitler's armies and concentration camps killed in World War II.]

The practice is in direct conflict with the nature of God and the dignity and reverence for human life taught in the Holy Scripture. Today's church must oppose abortion on demand just as the New Testament church did. Exceptions may exist, as they did in Jewish life [to save the physical life of the mother] and in New Testament times, but the central issue is clear. We oppose abortions.

One study found that 97 percent of abortions in the United States have nothing to do with a threat to the physical life of the mother or with rape, incest, or with gross fetal deformity. Ninety-seven percent of abortions are convenience abortions. Surely Christians can stand together and say these must be stopped. ...

[97% may even be too low! Your editor has read of one large hospital that over some 15 years had done approximately 50,000 abortions. When their records were studied, it was found that not one had been for any reason but convenience. Likewise, the article we ran in the last Banner by the former owner/operator of abortion clinics stated that of the over 35,000 abortions she had been involved in, "not one was for the health or life of the mother. All were for the convenience of the mother: birth control abortions."]