CIM Technical Papers

                    ABORTION AND HUMAN NATURE
                         by Bill Crouse


     It would not be an overstatement to conclude that no
issue has so polarized our nation during the last few years as
the issue of abortion.  Proclaimed a deciding factor in recent
election campaigns, it was and is the issue of many controversial
court cases.  Ethicists are enjoying the attention the abortion
issue elicits but can present no authoritative answers.  At best
they tell us only about alternatives and consequences.  Feminists
promote abortion as the doorway to equality of the sexes while
their opponents view it as a sharp decline in morality.  It is a
troublesome issue for politicians because there appears to be no
middle ground upon which to stand.
     A minimal amount of sober reflection brings the realization
that during the last twenty to thirty years the U.S. has
undergone an obvious shift in its moral axis.  In the fifties and
early sixties, for example, the public consensus was that the
doctor who performed an abortion was a criminal and that anyone
who wanted an abortion was devoid of morality.  Today the pro-
abortionists are seen by many to be the emancipators of women.
     What is not immediately obvious in this change of political
and moral climate is the collision of two conflicting world
views, the Judeo-Christian consensus and secular humanism.  "What
is man that thou art mindful of him" (Psalm 8:4) is pitted
against, "Man the measure of all things," (a humanistic slogan). 
     More specifically there is a clash of conflicting human
rights: the woman's rights over her own body and her privacy
vs.the right to life of the fetus.  Traditionally when a crisis
situation has arisen forcing a choice between the mother's life
and the life of the fetus, the mother's life has been given
priority with every effort then being made to save the fetus as
well.  The focus of this discussion does not include a decision
which involves immediate danger to the mother's life.  Nor does
it deal with aborting a pregnancy due to rape or incest.  This is
an excruciatingly difficult moral decision, but it is a different
moral decision than the choice to abort a pregnancy that does not
endanger the mother's actual life and resulted from a sexual
union to which she agreed.  This paper addresses what is widely
called "abortion on demand."
     Feminists are confident that widespread acceptance of
abortion on demand will free women from the oppressive chains
imposed by the out-dated rules of patriarchal Christianity.  They
view control over their own "reproductive rights" as an essential
element in their struggle to achieve equal footing with men in
modern society.  The pro-lifers feel that the new loosening of
controls on abortion will lead to a worse repression of both
sexes and the unjustified destruction of countless children's
lives.

CRITERIA FOR DEFINING MAN AND HIS VALUE?
     Traditionally western society has believed that there was a
qualitative difference between man and the animals.  Today many
are of the opinion that man differs from the beast only in degree
(quantitative rather than qualitative difference).  This belief
eliminates the uniqueness of human life.  The direct result of
this thinking is that not only does the definition of man become
relative, but so do the standards for assigning value to man. Our
value and dignity as human beings becomes a matter of judgment
based on currently held values rather than an absolute standard.
     The heart of the abortion controversy is this subjective
manner of defining what is human (a person with full rights and
value).  It is not a question of when life begins, since we know
with certainty that life (home sapiens) begins with conception.7 
In the 1973 landmark abortion case Roe vs. Wade, what the Supreme
Court did not know with certainty was the point at which the
developing fetus became a person with constitutional rights. 
Their decision was that it began with the third trimester of
pregnancy.8
     The determination of when life has value is often made on
arbitrary and relative criteria.  Let us look at four examples of
this type of evaluation.
     The first example is one in which human value and personhood
are determined by certain physical characteristics.  Francis
Crick, the Nobel prize-winning biologist, has advocated
legislation in which newborn babies would not be considered
legally alive until they were two days old and had been certified
as healthy by medical examiners.10  On November 12, 1973, ten
months after the Supreme Court's decision to legalize abortion,
NEWSWEEK ("Shall This Child Die?") reported that doctors were
already permitting babies with birth defects to die by
withholding treatment.  The doctors claimed that these newborn
babies had little or no hope of achieving personhood.  They thus
redefined humanness as the ability to meet a certain physical
standard making handicapped persons something less than human.
     Secondly, human value is sometimes seen as an economic
issue.  The question is whether or not a being is capable of
making a positive contribution to society.  Many cite dwindling
resources in the face of population growth as a persuasive
argument for abortion.11  For example, Sen. Charles Percy (R-Ill.)
argued in the Congressional Record (June 27, 1977) that abortion
is a much better deal for the taxpayer since it is considerably
cheaper than welfare.  No one would deny that an additional child
or a handicapped child can be a burden (financially and
otherwise) to a family, but is human worth a monetary issue?  If
this kind of reasoning becomes prevalent, people will have to be
careful not to become inconvenient to society.
     Others use mental criteria as a third way of assigning
humanness and value.  Joseph Fletcher, ethicist and proclaimed
father of the new morality, defines humanness as a being capable
of mental function.  He says:  "Human beings, in order to qualify
as human, have to be something more than just biologically
classifiable. . . (they must also be) possessed of functioning
cerebral cortex (and) some minimal level of intelligence."14
     Winston L. Duke, a nuclear physicist, states that "A
philosophy of reason will define a human being as life which
demonstrates self-awareness, volition, and rationality.  Thus it
should be recognized that not all men are human . . . it would
seem . . . to be more inhumane to kill an adult chimpanzee than a
newborn baby, since the chimpanzee has greater mental
awareness."15
     A fourth arbitrary definition of humanness has to do with
social and cultural criteria.  Ashley Montagu, a British
anthropologist, believes that a baby is not born human.  Instead,
it is born more or less with a capacity for becoming human as he
or she is molded by social and cultural influences.16  Human
value according to this criterion is on a sliding scale.  Hence,
a thirty-year-old Ph.D. may be more human than a two-year-old. 
Humanity then is not an endowment, but an accomplishment.
     Each of the definitions cited above will eventually lead to
the conclusion that some life is devoid of value because it is
physically or mentally weak, or simply too expensive.  Ethicist
Daniel Callahan notes the consequences of this type of thinking: 
"A power group society could, by the use of this principle (of
defining humanness any way we wish), define the chronically sick,
the senile, the elderly as non-human, and thus justify the taking
of their lives on the grounds of the social good to be
obtained."17

PERSONHOOD AND HUMAN VALUE AS INHERENT
     Palmer and Colton in their college textbook on Western
civilization comment that the Greeks showed man his mind but
Christianity gave man his soul.18  What they are saying here is
that Christianity gave man dignity and worth because he was seen
as a person created in God's image.  The Judeo-Christian world
view has always been that man's value is inherent because his
Creator made him to be good and declared it so (Gen. 1:31).  The
Creator demonstrated His regard for man when He sent His Son in
the likeness of man to redeem him.
     This belief in a transcendent Creator influenced the author
of the Declaration of Independence when he wrote:  "We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable
rights. . . " (emphasis mine).  Certainly he was not saying equal
endowment in the areas of physical or mental capacity, but
equality in the area of dignity and human worth.  The value of
man is decided upon by Someone outside the natural realm of man
and is therefore not open to peer judgment.  
     That man is valuable to God and that man is to treat his
fellow man with dignity is revealed in the Ten Commandments in
which man is instructed to love God (Who loves man), for if he
loves God (Who loves man) he will also love his neighbor as
himself (Ex. 20).  Dr. Arthur Guett, the Nazi director of public
health, substituted the state for the Creator when he proclaimed
in 1935:  "The ill-conceived love of neighbor has to disappear,
especially in relation to inferior or asocial creatures.  It is
the supreme duty of a national state to grant life and livelihood
only to the healthy . . . in order to secure the maintenance of a
hereditarily sound and racially pure fold for all eternity.  The
life of an individual has meaning only in the light of that
ultimate aim, that is, in the light of his meaning to his family
and to his national state."19  Historically, Western civilization
attained great personal freedom because of its view of man in
respect to God.
     Is this paper suggesting that abortion is murder?  Only if
the fetus is a person.  Earlier in this discussion it was
established that human life definitely begins at conception.  But
does the person or soul begin at conception?  The psalmist seems
to answer in the affirmative when he says:  "My frame was not
hidden from You when I was made in the secret place.  When I was
woven together in the depths of the earth, Your eyes saw my
unformed body.  All the days ordained for me were written in Your
book before one of them came to be" (Ps. 139: 15-16).  Jeremiah
1:5 assigns personal pronouns to a fetus as does Luke 1:15-19 in
which John is filled with the Holy Spirit before birth.  The
Bible seems to view life as a continuum from conception to
death.  Because of the biblical idea that humans have dignity as
the result of their creation in God's image, we should begin to
treat them with dignity where Scripture begins...at conception. 

A SHIFT IN CULTURAL CONSENSUS
     Abortion is now legal because Western civilization has
shifted away from a Judeo-Christian consensus.  The focus has
moved from the sanctity of life to the quality of life.  Noting
this shift, Archibald Cox, former law professor and special
prosecutor of the Watergate case, was prompted to comment on the
Supreme Court's decision:  "The opinion fails even to consider
what I would suppose to be the most compelling interest of the
state in prohibiting abortion:  the interest in maintaining that
respect for the paramount sanctity of human life which has always
been at the centre of Western civilization."20
     Unborn babies are being destroyed at a rate of one and a
half million a year which amounts to one third of all the
pregnancies in the United States.  Since the 1973 court decision
it is estimated that over eight million abortions have occurred
in the U. S.  The Population Crisis Committee estimated in 1976
that worldwide, one in four pregnancies were ended through
abortion.22  This translates to a figure of forty-five to fifty-
five million abortions per year!  As staggering as these
statistics are, the really frightening consequence is that what
is actually being consumed is man himself as he is being
redefined in humanistic terms.

THE CHRISTIAN'S RESPONSIBILITY
     Because the Christian value of the sanctity of life and the
dignity of man is being undermined, it is precisely at this point
that Christians (individually and corporately) need first of all
to re-affirm and proclaim the biblical mandate to uphold the
sanctity of life.  Secondly, the church and its members need to
concentrate on the application of this principle (of the sanctity
of life) in their everyday lives.23  No matter how heinous a sin,
we are never to cease loving the sinner or put him in any other
class than a man in God's image.  He never enters the realm of
the beast.  The doctor who does the abortion and the woman who
gets one are both people for whom Christ died.  Loving the
sinner, while abhorring the sin was the example of Christ.
     A woman on welfare who has six children and no husband and
who is desirous of an abortion does not have an immediate need
for a lecture on morals!  What an opportunity for the church of
Jesus Christ to bear witness by ministering to her in love and
acceptance and by providing her with biblical counsel and relief
for her material needs!  She of course needs to know of the
reconciling work of Christ, and when she responds to His love,
the Holy Spirit will convict her on moral issues.  But what if
she does not respond to God's love?  Christians should continue
to meet her needs!  The whole person needs saving, not just the
soul.  Often by ministering to the physical, tangible need we are
privileged to meet the deeper spiritual one as well.
     The church must deplore the double standard that allows the
morally loose male to "sow his wild oats" while escaping the
consequences of pregnancy.  Christians must go on record for a
sharing of the consequences.  Women should be on their guard
against the emotional rhetoric that abortion will free them from
exploitation as sex objects.  In fact, the very opposite may be
true.  Feminists need to ask why the "sexist" establishment
supports abortion.  It may be that abortion enhances the male's
freedom to exploit by sparing him from the worry of paternity! 
In other words, the chauvinist welcomes the feminist, pro-
abortion stance because it frees him of potential responsibility
and obligation.
     Neither is abortion the harmless procedure it is sometimes
presented to be. A recent paper by Dick Calvert of Duke
University Medical School says, "Four studies have demonstrated
that two or more abortions can significantly impair a woman's
future childbearing ability."  She has an "increased risk for
miscarriage, and for premature or low birth weight infants."
     Churches and parachurch organizations need to provide the
kind of services that dispense Christian love and counsel
concerning biblically acceptable alternatives to abortion.  The
alternatives might be in the form of homes for unwed mothers,
material support, adoption services, and medical attention, as
well as providing the emotion support and encouragement for women
who have decided against abortion.  Some have already launched
such a ministry.24
     Until recently, evangelicals have been mostly silent on the
abortion issue, possibly because they didn't perceive what the
real issue was, nor its logical consequences.  Abortion was
thought to be a Catholic issue or one in which either position
(pro or anti) could fit biblical revelation.  Today many good
books have been written by both Catholics and Protestants (see
"For Further Reading").  Moreover, now the majority of
evangelical leaders and scholars have spoken against this
practice.  But ignorance about abortion and its consequences is
still appalling.  Christians must seek to inform themselves about
the issue and act quickly.
     It is the attitude of many Christians that "I personally
oppose abortion, but I do not think it is right for me to impose
my Christian morality on anyone else."  But Harold O. J. Brown
(founder of the Christian Action Council) says:  "The first
amendment prohibits the state from dictating to the conscience of
its citizens.  It does not prohibit the conscience of the citizen
from speaking to the state.  If we understand the first amendment
correctly, we will recognize that far from telling us that those
of us who have religious convictions may not speak to the state,
it is intended to protect our consciences so we will be able to
speak to the state.  If Christians may not be a witness to the
state of standards of right and wrong as they see them because
these standards have a religious origin, then there will be no
standards in America, a country founded on Christian
principles."25
     We must be careful not to buy the myth of separation of
religious ideas and the state.  The authors of the first
amendment were well aware that religious ideas could never be
separated from the state in all its functions.  "Thou shalt not
kill" (the Hebrew word means "murder") was commanded by God.  The
state happens to concur with this religious-originated law and is
not inclined to legalize murder so it can maintain separation of
church and state!
     But the question of legality is not the root of the issue. 
The crucial questions are ones which were raised earlier:  "What
is human?  How are we to value something that is human?
     The pro-life position argues that the fetus is fully human
from conception.  Tradition, as well as much scientific evidence
lends support to this position.  Thus, the burden of proof is on
the pro-abortionist to show that the fetus is not a person.  This
is especially true in light of the seriousness of the taking of
life.  If there is a possibility that the fetus is fully human,
then it is surely better to assume that it has a right to life
rather than run the risk of needlessly denying this life.
     Because God's image is stamped on each person, any being
that is human is valuable beyond any measure of time, money, or
even emotional distress.  This is a difficult principle to put
into practice.  Is the person in the womb worth nine months of
physical discomfort and possible emotional anguish?  Is this
child worth the thousands of welfare dollars which he or she may
cost?
     Granted, the cost of a pro-life attitude is high:  in
health, in emotions, in waylaid careers, and in plain and simple
dollars. Yet a reverence for life has for centuries been a
binding principle in Western society.  If we lose the reverence
for any life, including the one not yet born, then we run the
great risk of cheapening our own.



Copyright 1979.

                           REFERENCES

.  This death of God theology was first promulgated by
    theologians Thomas J. J. Altizer, William Hamilton, and Paul
    M. Van Buren.  TIME magazine in its stories in the October 
    22, 1965, and April 8, 1966, issues brought this subject to
    the attention of the public.

.  The quote "God is dead" and the consequences of His death are
    found in Nietzsche's work "THE GAY SCIENCE," published in THE
    PORTABLE NIETZSCHE, trans. Walter Kauffman (New York:  Viking
    Press, 1954), pp. 95-96.

.  Francis Schaeffer, HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? (Old Tappan,
    N.J.:  Fleming  Revell, 1977), pp. 178, 180.

.  See B. F. Skinner, BEYOND FREEDOM AND DIGNITY (New York:
    Bantam Books, 1971).

.  For an excellent treatment on the subject of the difference
    between man and things see Mortimer J. Adler's book THE
    DIFFERENCE IN MAN AND THE DIFFERENCE IT MAKES.  (New York: 
    Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967).  This work is especially
    interesting since Adler, a humanist, shows the logical
    consequences of viewing man as different only in degree from
    things.

.  "Abortion -- Or Compulsory Pregnancy,"  JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE
    AND FAMILY (May, 1968), pp. 250-51.

.  This is an established biological fact, but recently some
    medical textbooks have changed the definition of pregnancy. 
    Conception ceased to mean "fertilization," and is now defined
    as beginning with "implantation" of the embryo in the womb. 
    This subtle change was made no doubt to accommodate the
    increasing use of intrauterine devices (IUDs) as a method of
    birth control.  IUDs are not a contraceptive, but an
    abortifacient.

.  The Supreme Court legalized all abortions for whatever reason
    up until the end of the second trimester of pregnancy.  This
    they judged to be the age of "viability," meaning  that the
    fetus could survive and hence the states could regulate
    abortions after this point. However, they added an exception
    clause having to do with the "mother's health."  The terms
    "viable" and "mother's health" are open to wide
    interpretation.  Hence for all practical purposes, an
    abortion cannot be denied even up to the point of delivery if
    some reason (such as mental health) is found that might
    threaten the mother's health.

.  The issues of concern here are those such as euthanasia, the
    right to die, genetic engineering, test-tube babies, human
    guinea pigs, etc.  

.  NATURE 220 (2 November 1968):  429-30.

.  See C. Everett Koop, THE RIGHT TO LIVE; THE RIGHT TO DIE.
     (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House, 1976).  See also the moving
     article by Sondra Diamond entitled "On Being Alive," THE
     HUMAN LIFE REVIEW 3, no. 4 (Fall 1977):  86-87.  See also
     the article on "The Deformed Child's Right to Life" in
     DEATH, DYING AND EUTHANASIA, eds. Dennis J. Horan and David
     Mall (Washington, D.C.:  University Publications of America,
     Inc., 1977).

.  For some very provocative discussion on the subject of
     overpopulation and dwindling resources see Robert L.
     Sassone, HANDBOOK ON POPULATION (Santa Ana, Calif.:  by the
     author, 1973) and R. J. Rushdoony, THE MYTH OF
     OVERPOPULATION (Nutley, N. J.:  Craig Press, 1969).

.  See the following articles:  C. Everett Koop, "The Slide to
     Auschwitz," THE HUMAN LIFE REVIEW 3, no.2 (Spring 1977); Leo
     Alexander, "Medical Science Under Dictatorship," in DEATH,
     DYING AND EUTHANASIA; and Charles Carrol, "Abortion Without
     Ethics," ABORTION AND SOCIAL JUSTICE, eds. Thomas W. Hilgers
     and Dennis J. Horan (New York:  Sheed and Ward, 1972).

.  Joseph Fletcher, The ETHICS OF GENETIC CONTROL (New York:
     Anchor Books, 1974), pp. 170-71.

.  Winston L. Duke, "The New Biology," REASON (August 1972).

.  Ashley Montagu, SEX, MAN AND SOCIETY (New York:  G. P.
     Putnam and Sons, p.67).

.  Daniel Callahan, ABORTION:  LAW, CHOICE AND MORALITY (New
     York:  Collier-Macmillan, 1970), p. 125.

.  R. R. Palmer and Joel Colton, A HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD
     (New York:  Alfred A.   Knopf, 1950).

.  Arthur Guett, The STRUCTURE OF PUBLIC HEALTH IN THE THIRD
     REICH, cited by Clifford E. Bajema in ABORTION AND THE
     MEANING OF PERSONHOOD (Grand Rapids:  Baker Books, 1974), p.
     13.  For a fuller explanation of Nazi ethics, see Frederick
     Wertman's book A SIGN FOR CAIN (New York:  Macmillan, 1966),
     or Gitta Sereny's book INTO THAT DARKNESS; FROM MERCY
     KILLING TO MASS MURDER. (New York:  McGraw-Hill, 1974).

.  Archibald Cox, THE ROLE OF THE SUPREME COURT IN AMERICAN
     GOVERNMENT (New York: Oxford Press, 1976), p. 52.

.  Helmut Thielicke, NIHILISM (New York:  Harper and Row,
     1967), p. 84.

.  These statistics are taken from an article in the author's
     possession which appeared in the DALLAS MORNING NEWS
     sometime in 1976.

.  An excellent treatise that exhorts us to do just that is
     Francis Schaeffer'sbook, THE CHURCH BEFORE A WATCHING WORLD
     (Downers Grove, Ill.:  Intervarsity Press, 1971).

.  Two such groups that are offering these services are: 
     Christian Action Council, 788 National Press Building,
     Washington, D.C.  20045; and National Birthright, 11055
     South St. Louis Ave., Chicago, IL.  60055.

.  Harold O. J. Brown, DEATH BEFORE BIRTH (Nashville:  Thomas
     Nelson, 1977) p. 143.

.  See John W. Whitehead,  THE SEPARATION ILLUSION (Milford,
     Mich.:  Mott Media, 1977).


                       FOR FURTHER READING


Bajema, Clifford E.  ABORTION AND THE MEANING OF PERSONHOOD. 
    Grand Rapids, Mich.:  Baker Book House, 1974.

Brown, Harold O. J. DEATH BEFORE BIRTH.  Nashville:  Thomas 
    Nelson Inc., 1977.

Ganz, Richard L.  THOU SHALT NOT KILL.  New Rochelle, N.Y.:   
    Arlington House, 1978.

Schaeffer, Francis A., and Koop, C. Everett.  WHATEVER HAPPENED 
    TO THE HUMAN RACE?  Old Tappan, N.J.:  Fleming H. Revell,
    1979.

Wilke, Dr. and Mrs. J. C. HANDBOOK ON ABORTION.  Cincinnati, 
    Ohio:  Hiltz Publishing Col, 1971. 
 
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