WORLDVIEWS
• Metaphysics: what is real (prime reality)?
– Supernatural only
– Natural only
– Supernatural & Natural
• Epistemology: what is true (and how do you know)?
– Absolute or Relative?
– Determined by senses, logic, experience only?
– Determined by senses, logic, experience & Divine revelation?
• Ethics: What is right and wrong (ought/ought not)?
– Determined by individuals, cultures, evolution, or God?
– How do you live?
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
• Christian Ethics In Plain Language
– Kerby Anderson
• Moral Choices An Introduction to Ethics
– Scott B. Rae
• Evangelical Ethics
– John Jefferson Davis
• Bioethics and the Christian Life
– David Vandrunen
• Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against
Abortion Choice
– Francis J. Beckwith
Roe v. Wade
• January 22, 1973
• Abortion on demand during first trimester
• After first trimester, abortion allowed to
preserve the life or health of the mother
Doe v. Bolton
• January 22, 1973
• The health of the mother included her
psychological and emotional health
• Abortion legal throughout pregnancy if the
mother’s psychological or emotional health
was impaired
ROE VS. WADE DECISION
• The Court held that a right to privacy existed and
included the right to have an abortion. The court found
that a mother had a right to abortion until viability, a
point to be determined by the abortion doctor. After
viability a woman can obtain an abortion for health
reasons, which the Court defined broadly to include
psychological well-being.
• "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life
begins." Instead, it chose to point out that historically,
under English and American common law, "the unborn
have never been recognized ...as persons in the whole
sense" and thus the fetuses are not legally entitled to
the protection afforded by the right to life specifically
enumerated in the Fourteenth Amendment.
CULTURAL ARGUMENTS
FOR ABORTION
• Some human beings are not persons
and therefore do not have rights
• A woman cannot be forced to use
her body to maintain the survival of
a non-person human being
THE ISSUE
• Question: Can I kill this?
• Answer: What is it?
• What is the unborn?
PERSONHOOD:
WHEN IS A HUMAN A PERSON?
• SUBSTANCE BASED - BIBLICAL:
– A human being is intrinsically valuable because of
its nature, essence, substance and the human
being remains that nature, essence, substance as
long as they are alive
• PERFORMANCE BASED - CULTURAL:
– A human being becomes a person after it has
accomplished certain milestones and it loses
personhood when cannot maintain those
milestones
CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW
• Metaphysics: One Holy Creator
Triune God and His creation
• Epistemology: God’s inerrant Word,
and what corresponds to reality
• Ethics: God’s character and His
revealed commands
CHRISTIAN ARGUMENTS
AGAINST ABORTION
• Scientific
• Logical
• Biblical
SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS
AGAINST ABORTION
• Before fertilization:
– Egg and sperm – parts of two separate persons
• After fertilization:
– The one-celled zygote is a new distinct living
human organism with a new unique human
genetic code that does not change
– The only changes in the new human is its Size,
Level of development, Environment, and Degree
of dependency
SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENTS
AGAINST ABORTION
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Produced by humans (Law of Biogenesis)
Is alive (growth, metabolism)
Has unique human DNA at conception
Not different in kind from adult humans
Is a separate, distinct human being and not a part
of another human being.
• It differs from adult human persons only in:
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Size
Level of development
Environment
Degree of dependency
LOGICAL ARGUMENTS
AGAINST ABORTION
• Apply all abortion reasoning to a 5 year old
human being: privacy; freedom to choose;
back-alley abortions; poverty; unwanted;
handicapped; wrong sex; rape or incest
• Size
• Level of development
• Environment
• Degree of dependency
BIBLICAL ARGUMENTS
AGAINST ABORTION
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All humans are made in God’s image
Children are a gift from the Lord
God knows people before they are born
God is involved in the formation of infants
God’s penalty for harming the unborn
God commands protection of the weak
The Lord Jesus Christ was an unborn infant
MADE IN GOD’S IMAGE
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness. And let them have dominion
over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the
heavens and over the livestock and over all the
earth and over every creeping thing that creeps
on the earth.” So God created man in his own
image, in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:26-27
PROTECTED BECAUSE OF IMAGE
• And for your lifeblood I will require a
reckoning: from every beast I will require it
and from man. From his fellow man I will
require a reckoning for the life of man.
“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man
shall his blood be shed, for God made man in
his own image. Genesis 9:5-6
GOD’S GIFT
• Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Psalm 127:3
KNOWN BEFORE BIRTH
• “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you; I
appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
Jeremiah 1:5
• even as he chose us in him before the
foundation of the world, that we should be
holy and blameless before him. Ephesians 1:4
GOD’S INVOLVEMENT
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me
together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for
I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful
are your works; my soul knows it very well. My
frame was not hidden from you, when I was
being made in secret, intricately woven in the
depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed
substance; in your book were written, every one
of them, the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them. Psalm
139:13-16
PENALTY FOR HARMING THE UNBORN
• 22 “When men strive together and hit a
pregnant woman, so that her children come
out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her
shall surely be fined, as the woman's husband
shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the
judges determine. 23 But if there is harm, [49]
then you shall pay life for life, 24 eye for eye,
tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
25 burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for
stripe. Exodus 21:22-25
PROTECTION FOR THE WEAK
• Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the right of the afflicted and the
destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
Psalm 82:3-4
• And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to
you, as you did it to one of the least of these
my brothers, you did it to me.’
Matthew 25:40
THE LORD JESUS CHRIST
Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When
his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before
they came together she was found to be with child from
the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man
and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce
her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an
angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying,
“Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your
wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy
Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name
Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this
took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the
prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a
son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which
means, God with us). Matthew 1:18-23
APPLICATIONS
• It is the belief that people are made in the image
of God that has motivated Christians through the
centuries to combat slavery, poverty, genocide,
infanticide, abortion on demand, and active
euthanasia.
• “As missionaries circled the globe they
established hospitals. They founded orphanages.
They started rescue missions. They built
almshouses. They opened soup kitchens. They
changed laws. They lived as if people mattered.”
George Grant, “The Last Crusader”
WHAT NOW?
• 16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is
the power of God for salvation to everyone
who believes, to the Jew first and also to the
Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is
revealed from faith for faith, as it is written,
“The righteous shall live by faith.” Romans
1:16-17
• Name the baby, grieve, be comforted, know
that all infants who die are redeemed
• Hope Pregnancy Center, adoption, vote