Abortion as Spiritual Sacrifice

The following is excerpted from chapter two of my new ebook, Love the Least. To read Love the Least in its entirety download it for free and add it to your favorite ereader.

When I first began combating abortion as a full-time vocation, I was directed to an abortion cover story in New Age Journal.¹⁴ The author calmly asserts that abortion is a religious sacrament. She cites the book, Pagan Meditations by Ginette Paris, who says that it is only when we see abortion as “a sacred sacrifice to Artemis” that the sanctity of the aborted life is restored. The author dreams of the day when all daughters will be initiated into the “spiritual dignity” of abortion, “with prayers to Artemis or the Divine Mother, She who gives and takes life.” Unable to convince herself that her own abortion was an immaterial procedure, she finds comfort in counting it a sacrifice to the Divine Mother, and asks that “the spirit of this, my child, [may] come again—when the world and when I welcome its rebirth.”

Though most aborting women don’t have it in their minds that they’re sacrificing their child to a pagan goddess, virtually every abortion is performed in service to a false god. We may not worship stone statues, but we are surrounded by the idols of money, power, prestige, autonomy, and sex. Abortion after abortion is laid down at the feet of these gods. And the true God sees every one, which is worth considering in its own right. The only way for massive, violent injustices to survive is for the perpetrators to keep them hidden. The reason an entire nation of “decent” people isn’t outraged by abortion is because we don’t see it. The “pro-choice” lobby works hard to keep abortion out of the limelight, and the womb itself is an intrinsically concealed place. Truly, abortion is as hidden an injustice as there has ever been. In most instances, it’s a blind procedure; even the abortionist doesn’t see what he’s doing. But God sees every one. Our frame was not hidden from him in the womb; “No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”¹⁵ I first felt the weight of this while reading Gary Haugen’s Good News About Injustice. He writes this:

In Rwanda, where I had to bear the burden of digging through the twisted, reeking remains of horrific mass graves, I tried to imagine for just a minute, what it must have been like for God to be present at each of the massacre sites as thousands of Tutsi women and children were murdered. Frankly, the idea was impossible to bear. But the thought led me to imagine what it must be like for God to be present, this year, at the rape of all the world’s child prostitutes, at the beatings of all the world’s prisoners of conscience, at the moment the last breath of hope expires from the breast of each of the millions of small children languishing in slavery. As I would approach my God in prayer, I could hear his gentle voice saying to me, “Son, do you have any idea where your Father has been lately?”¹⁶

I would add to that list abortion. You and I are protected from its stench by a chasm of separation. God is not. In reading through all the biblical inclusions of the word “hate,” I came upon a shockingly grotesque passage in Micah 3. It reads as follows:

Hear, you heads of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel! Is it not for you to know justice?—you who hate the good and love the evil, who tear the skin from off my people and their flesh from off their bones, who eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones in pieces and chop them up like meat in a pot, like flesh in a cauldron.

Surely this is symbolic speech—meant to expose the depravity of their wicked hearts by attributing to them the most physically depraved acts one could possibly imagine. For who would actually tear the skin off their victims, or flay the skin from their bones? Who would break their bones in pieces or chop them up like meat in a pot, like flesh in a cauldron? Such behavior is unthinkable, and yet this is precisely what abortion does. If you have never seen it’s violent aftermath, this is where you put the book down, visit Abort73.com and go to “Photographic Evidence.” It’s time to be shocked and horrified. But as shocking and horrifying as these images are, they are nothing compared with what it must be like to actually be in the womb as these tiny bodies are literally ripped apart. This is what God sees, thousands of times a day—the most innocent and helpless members of his most prized creation torn to shreds. Can you imagine his fury? Can you imagine what it will be like when the floodgates of God’s wrath finally open in response to the injustice of abortion?

To this, some will raise an objection. If God is physically present for every abortion, if his anger burns at every one, why doesn’t he act to stop them? We’ll wrestle through that question at the book’s conclusion. For now, I’ll offer two responses. The first is Paul’s—offered in the context of God’s choosing Jacob over Esau.¹⁷ Who are we to question the wisdom or goodness of God? Does clay have the right to question the potter? Second, I would suggest that abortion is both deserving of God’s wrath and an expression of God’s wrath. Romans 1 tells us that those who suppress the truth of God, truth that is revealed to everyone through the created order and the human conscience, will eventually be given over to their sinful desires. Verse 28 explains that, “since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.” Those who continue to rebel against the authority of God will eventually get their wish. God will give them over to everything they want, and it will destroy them. It is only the mercy of God that spares us from our warped desires. When we are given over to pursue our “dishonorable passions” the results are socially devastating: “envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness… men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.” Some see God’s commandments as narrow, arbitrary and inhibiting. In reality, they are a protection. When we abandon them, things go terribly wrong. In the case of abortion, we kill children in pursuit of a happier future and in the process, we destroy our future, we destroy our families, we destroy our culture, we destroy our consciences, and we destroy our peace. We want God to leave us alone, and so he does—which is a judgment in itself.

The more important question for us is not what stays God’s hand, but what stays ours.

14 Brenda Peterson, The Abortion Debate: Can We Find Common Ground? (New Age Journal, October 1993).

15 Hebrews 4:13

16 Haugen, Gary. Good News About Injustice, Updated 10th Anniversary Edition: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World. (Downer’s Grove: IVP Books, 2009) 95.

17 Romans 9:14-24