Blowing the Trumpet for the Unborn

I came across an interesting letter while reading Brother’s, We Are Not Professionals by John Piper.  In his chapter, “Brothers, Blow the Trumpet for the Unborn,” Pastor John shares a letter he wrote to the Editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  I found this letter very compelling and a demonstration of how to stand up for aborted babies. 

Dear Editor,

                Are you aware of the fact that the same day the Senate Health and Human Services Committee approved unconditional permission to terminate the lives of twenty-four-week-old fetuses, the neonatology unit at Abbot Northwestern was caring for a twenty-two-and-a-half-week-old (500 gram) preemie with good chances of healthy life?

                Now that is news and calls for profound reflection.  Instead, your lead editorial the morning after (Feb. 26) glossed over this critical issue and endorsed abortion because it is “one of the most personal decisions a woman can make” and because “the abortion decision is undeniably sensitive.”  This level of reflection is unworthy of major editorials in good newspapers.

                I assume you mean by “personal decision” not: having deep personal implications, but: having deep personal implications for only one person, the mother.

                But abortion is emphatically not a “personal” decision in that limited sense.  There is another person, namely, the unborn child.  If you deny this, you must give an account of what that little preemie is at Abbot Northwestern.  Abortion is a decision about competing human rights: the right not to be pregnant and the right not to be killed.

                I assume you approve of the Committee’s action.  But I also assume you would not approve of the mother’s right to strangle the preemie at Abbot before its twenty-fifth week of life.  If so you owe your readers an explanation of your simple endorsement of abortion because it is “personal” and “sensitive.”

                In fact I challenge you to publish two photographs side by side: one of this “child” outside the womb and another of a “fetus” inside the womb both at twenty-three or twenty-four weeks, with a caption that says something like: “We at the Star Tribune regard the termination of the preemie as manslaughter and the termination of the fetus as the personal choice of the mother.”

                I have read in your pages how you disdain the use of pictures because abortion is too complex for simplistic solutions.  But I also remember how you approved the possible televising of an execution as one of the most effective ways of turning the heart of America against capital punishment (a similarly complex issue).

                We both know that if America watched repeated termination of twenty-three-week-old fetuses on television (or saw the procedure truthfully documented in your paper), the sentiment of our society would profoundly change.  (The Alan Guttnacher Institute estimated over nine thousand abortions after twenty-one weeks in 1987.)

                Words fail to describe the barbarity of an unconditional right to take the life of a human being as fully developed as twenty-three weeks.  You could never successfully defend it in the public presence of the act itself.

                You can do so only in the moral fog of phrases like: Abortion must be left to the woman because it is “undeniably sensitive.”  This is not compelling.  There are many sensitive situations where the state prescribes limits for how we express our feelings where others are concerned.  If you are willing, you may meet this “other person” face-to-face in dozens of hospitals around the country.

                                                Sincerely yours,

                                                John Piper

 

After reading this letter and the entire chapter, one verse came to my mind.  It might not be a verse many think of when it comes to combating abortion.  The verse is Psalm 150:6. 

 

“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!  Praise the Lord!”

 

What a tragedy it is for those who never have a chance to praise the Lord.  All that has breath was made to glorify God and ascribe praise to His name.  In taking the life of an unborn child, we do not only commit sin against that person but also against the very image of God in which this child was formed.  The odiousness of this sin should overwhelm us and make us stand up for these little ones, as well as for the glory of God.  I pray that we would never stop “blowing the trumpet for the unborn.”