Abortion issue points out disorder in human rules

What’s wrong with this picture?

In Washington, D.C., the nation’s highest court soon will debate whether it’s legal to kill unborn babies by puncturing their skulls and removing their brains.

Proponents of this savagery refer to it as a “partial-birth” or “late-term” abortion and insist its legalization is part of a woman’s right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term.

Across the continent, in California, a convicted murderer has won a stay of his execution, saying his pending death by lethal injection violates the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

The inmate, Michael Morales, knows cruel and unusual behavior when he sees it. After all, he attacked his 17-year-old victim with a hammer, stabbed her and left her to die half-naked in a vineyard back in 1983.

Since the Morales murder, an estimated 20 million babies have been legally put to death. About 1 percent of those lives – roughly 200,000 – were snuffed out via partial-birth abortion.

What’s wrong with this picture?

As I study the Scriptures, I have to wonder how much longer God will put up with such a messed-up state of human affairs. We live in an age in which people fight to save the life of a convicted murderer, and fight with equal vigor to preserve the practice of killing unborn children.

Such moral confusion is the byproduct of replacing God’s standard for truth with man’s standard for truth.

God’s standard is his word, the Bible – a time-tested foundation for personal and public life. Man’s standard is an ever-changing hunch based on his sense of tolerance, fairness and whatever happens to be popular at any particular moment.

The Bible actually forecasts this sort of topsy-turvy morality and warns that those who follow such a path are digging their own graves.

Isaiah 5:20-21 says, “Destruction is certain for those who say that evil is good and good is evil; that dark is light and light is dark; that bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter. Destruction is certain for those who think they are wise and consider themselves to be clever” (NLT).

Today, we readily see what is good being called evil and what is evil being called good. It’s all around us.

Consider the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court fight over partial-birth abortion. So-called pro-choice advocates are beating the same drum they’ve worn raw since the landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.

Last Tuesday, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America decried the Supreme Court’s decision to even take up the partial birth abortion issue. By simply agreeing to consider the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, Planned Parenthood insists, the high court is committing “a dangerous act of hostility aimed squarely at women’s health and safety.”

Never mind that the act, passed by Congress and signed by the president less than three years ago, has never been put into force, thanks to court challenges.

I really believe the court’s consideration of a federal ban on partial-birth abortion is a good thing. It stuns me that anyone would disagree.

How can it not be good to call a time out and at least think about these questions: Is it moral, ethical and humane to kill babies by such a brutal method? How can a society that champions individual rights justify killing its most vulnerable members – the unborn?

However you answer them, those are good questions. And yet here we have an influential, well-financed and well-spoken group like Planned Parenthood calling the court’s action evil.

But then, Planned Parenthood ought to know evil when it sees it. After all, its deceptive advocacy for women’s rights has helped make the United States a world leader in the legalized killing of unborn children.

Christians ought to be careful not to be lured by the culture’s lie. Abortion is not primarily a political issue, or even a medical or women’s rights issue.

It is a spiritual issue that cuts to the core of what is right and what is wrong. And, yes, there is an objective difference as defined by God’s word.

Isaiah’s prophesy is intensely practical for us today. How much better off we will be if we rely on the truth of Scripture when answering the day’s ethical questions.

Let us pray for hearts that love what is good, hate what is evil, and boldly call evil what it really is.

Destruction is the certain result of ethics based on man’s mushy moral compass.

Need proof?

It’s as close as death row – or the nearest abortion clinic.