Are You For or Against Choice?
June 1, 2008
by Harry Osborne

If you refused to allow your child to serve the poison he had chosen from the shelf to his visiting friends, would you be "anti-choice"? If a policeman restrained your neighbor who had chosen to kill you, would the policeman be "anti-choice"? Would it be a case of the government violating your neighbor's right to privacy and becoming involved where it had no legitimate business? Unless you have a rather strange sense of personal liberty, your answer to these questions is "NO!" Why? Because you understand that one cannot be free to choose to take another's life. Government has a legitimate responsibility to protect human life. The cynical use of semantics to term that legitimate protection as "anti-choice" does not negate that fact.

Understanding this principle, it was amazing to me to hear the terminology thrown around during the political campaigns and media coverage regarding abortion. Those opposing abortion have been portrayed and sometimes labeled as "anti-choice." During this presidential campaign season, several major candidates have openly and stridently affirmed that the government had no right to restrict abortion because a woman has an absolute right of choice as to what she wishes to do with her body.

That argument presupposes that the child within the womb is not a separate, living being, but a part of the mother's body. The fact is that the child within the womb is genetically and, in many ways, metabolically distinct from the mother. For instance, how can a male child with a different blood type being pumped by a different heart under the direction of a different brain be called "a part of the woman's body"?

Those knowledgeable in the medical fields of fetology and perinatology (specialties dealing with the development of the unborn child) have clearly shown that the unborn child is a separate life from the mother. Those favoring "abortion rights" conveniently ignore this fact. If they admit that two distinct lives are present, the need to protect human life must also be admitted. I say "human life" because genetically the child could only be human.

Since we are dealing with two distinct human lives, the so-called "pro-choice" label is seen as a rather hollow and evasive use of terminology. One has no right to choose to kill another innocent human being. The government has every right and even the responsibility to protect the innocent human life.

The mere ability one has to make a choice does not give that one the legitimate right to make the choice. We have the ability to choose to pick up a gun and shoot another person, but we do not have the legitimate right to do so. The Bible makes a distinction between us having the ability to choose certain actions and our right to do so.

"Now therefore, fear the Lord, serve Him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord! And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:14-15).

The people of Israel had the ability to choose whom they would serve as God, but the right choice was to serve the Lord. Any other choice would have been wrong and would have led them to disastrous consequences. A similar choice is set before the people in Elijah's day (1 Kings 18:21).

Please consider the choice set before Moses as to how he should spend his life. The Hebrew writer relates that choice in these words:

"By faith Moses, when he be-came of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward" (Hebrews 11:24-26).

Again, Moses had the ability to choose sin with the world or afflictions with the people of God. However, he had no right to choose the path of sin for God condemned such. The right choice was to suffer with God's people in doing that which God commanded. Moses made the right choice.

Those favoring "abortion rights" need to be less concerned with their right to choose and more concerned with making the right choice! They need to hear the words of God spoken to Israel long ago:

"I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live" (Deut. 30:19).

From time to time, I see a bumper sticker that reads, "Pro-choice IS pro-family." The "choice" being promoted by the advertisement is the choice to kill an innocent human life in abortion. Over the years, I have noted a great number of those bumper stickers on the cars of faculty parking lots of public schools and colleges. It bothers me more than a little to see our young people under the influence of people with little enough sense to put something like that on their bumper! It not only shows an abominable lack of knowledge regarding scientific fact, but also demonstrates a total lack of ability to reason from premise to conclusion. Just ask yourself, how many families would we have if every woman exercised that "choice"? By the same reasoning, could we not also call euthanasia "pro-family"? How about parent acceptance or even assistance for a teenager's right to commit suicide, would that also be "pro-family"? How absurd! The folly of such failures to think rationally is self-evident. What we need to do is "choose life" and be unashamed to speak out against the fatal assaults being perpetrated upon unborn children and the perverted terminology used to legitimize it. Let's call it what it really is -- an attempt to legalize murder for the convenience of the sexually irresponsible and immoral.

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