Sanctity of Life Day

Yesterday, Sunday, January 21, 2007 was Sanctity of Life Day. This topic is one that is close to my heart for a number of reasons. As I was driving home from school today, I heard some staggering statistics; such as 3,000 abortions are performed everyday and that in New York City alone last year there were 86,000 abortions performed. Since 1973, there have been 47,282,923 abortions performed in this country.

To give you some perspective on these numbers, remember September 11, 2001, the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The death toll from that day was about 3,000 people. So, every day in this country we experience the loss we did on that terrible day in September. The number of abortions last year performed in New York City is equivalent to wiping the city of Waterloo, Iowa off the map. I can’t even start to make sense of the last statistic that I listed in the above paragraph. Even though the numbers are staggering, we never hear about this tragedy on the nightly news. Why? Because the world says that these unborn babies are not actually alive.

I don’t buy that, because Christ had some very important words that He spoke about children in Matthew 19:13-14, "Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked those who brought them. Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’" God values life and anyone who has seen the miracle of a heart beating in the womb at six weeks would say that that is LIFE.

I am so thankful that there are organizations that are pro-life and a President that is strongly pro-life. However, I believe that Christians need to stop wavering on this issue and take a strong Biblical stand against abortion. In a book from Focus on the Family, Answering the Call (2003), John Ensor points out that one in six abortions are done on women identifying themselves as "born again" Christians... When he was a pastor in Boston in 1989 he was shocked, he said, to discover that 30% of the women in his church had had an abortion (pp. 21-22). Ensor concludes, "Indeed, the abortion industry could not survive financially without paying customers drawn from the church (pp. 21)." That is sad, but challenging to me. We need to continue to take a stand on this issue.