Abortion

, Seth David Gruber was born and raised a SoCal boy, that is Southern California. He graduated class of 2014 from Westmont College in Santa Barbara with a major in religious studies and a minor in communication studies. 2014, the thought strikes me, he's a young whippersnapper. But that's one of the things that I like about him coming here to speak to us about the topic.

It serves as an encouragement for those of us who are older in years that the baton of faith is being passed on to younger generations, and for those of you who are younger, let this be an example to you that God wants to use younger people to pass the baton of faith. On, OK, and so what a blessing to have a young man, if you will. It's weird for me to say young man, but I can say it because I'm 44 now, and I can say he's a young man. It says that, Seth has committed his life to the abolition of abortion and has been active in the pro-life movement both at its college and in the larger world.

Seth spent his college years interning. at the Center for Bioethical Reform, an organization focused on educating the culture about abortion through graphic AIDS in the same way that social reformers before us have also exposed the horror of injustices using graphic imagery to prick the collective conscience of the culture. Seth founded the Right to Life Club at Westmont College and was its president for the duration of his time there, during which he challenged the college on their neutral stance on abortion and conducted educational displays on campus.

Seth is on staff at Life Training Institute, a pro-life organization focused on training pro-life advocates to persuasively defend their views in the marketplace of ideas by clearly presenting the pro-life position.

Seth has been featured by World Magazine, World On Campus, American Family Association, Christianity Today, Life Site News, Students for Life of America, Christian Research Network, and has appeared on the Janet Medford Show. Seth has spoken on his campus in churches, pregnancy care clinic banquets, and for the Los Angeles chapter of Reasonable faith. And so he comes to us qualified to speak to us, and we look forward to what Seth has to share with us today, and so let us give to him a warm welcome.

Carol.

It's good to be with you guys. I'll tell you, it's a lot warmer here than Costa Mesa. Which is where I've been living the last year. Well, I've met a couple of your pastors, in the last few minutes since getting here and it's encouraging to be in the church and to interact with pastors who take worldview issues seriously.

if the gospel functions as a lens, as some Christians like to describe it, lens of how we interpret and see the world. Then we can't just say that we preach the gospel, we want to see people saved without also talking about how does the gospel influence how we make sense of the rest of the world. How should the gospel influence how we see and make sense of and think about issues like some of the ones you talked about today, homosexuality, Islam, and abortion. Your pastor's asked me to say that, by the way.

No, they didn't, but I would have said it anyways. So I'm here to tell you guys 3 things that I believe the church must be able to do and be able to do well. If we want to see any meaningful change in our country on the issue of abortion. But before I tell you what those three things are, I want to read you a quote from a professor at Westmont College, which, as Pastor Carlos mentioned, is the college I graduated from last year.

he will remain nameless, but he's a professor in the communication studies department and I was a communication studies minor. And in an email correspondence on the issue of abortion, This professor shares his two-sentence opinion on how he believes higher, higher Christian education should deal with issues like abortion, and I, I believe it's very revealing of where we are today as a society, especially in the church. This is what he says. The moral particularities of abortion are so fine-textured and open-textured that Manichean distinctions about being pro or anti-abortion strike me as ethically obtuse.

Our community and our students are best served when our chapel speakers invite us to tarry in the liminal spaces of complexity. Now, while that may sound like a parody of professorial thinking, I'm afraid it's much more of a window into our culture's deep-seated confusion on the abortion issue, and unfortunately that confusion is also in much of the church today. So 2 Corinthians 10:45 says that the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.

And key, we demolish arguments in every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. How many Christians can say that they can do this with the abortion issue, to take this thought, this issue, this debate and make it captive to Christ. This confusing, emotionally charged, politically charged, women's rights issue. How can we take that and make sense of it and make it captive to Christ?

So a generation of students is being raised in our country. To believe that abortion is merely a women's rights issue, that abortion is merely a reproductive freedom issue, and who are we to step on women's reproductive rights. I can testify to this moral confusion in today's culture and certainly amongst today's students. as Pastor Carlos mentioned, I'm the founder and former president of the Right to Life Club at my college where I'm conducting educational displays and engaged in pro-life activism.

And I am now on staff with Life Training Institute and I'm part of a rigorous pro-life apologetics training regimen where I'm learning and mastering the best material out there. Now, I don't say that to put the spotlight on myself, but merely to point out that I've encountered and can testify to the deep moral confusion amongst today's students and even in the church on the issue of abortion. So how can we as Christians turn the tide and make the case for life? I believe there's at least 3 things the church must do and do well if we want to see meaningful change in our country on the issue of abortion, and this is significant and this is important because we live in a culture where Christians and non-Christians, unfortunately, are deeply confused on the abortion issue.

Though our pro-life beliefs certainly should flow from our Christian faith, for many Christians, they don't. At Westmount College where I attended, there were plenty of Christian professors and Christian students who self-identify themselves as pro-choice. And there's also multiple Christians who say they're on the fence and really don't know what they think about this women's rights issue. And so there's confusion both in and outside the doors of the church.

So we need to talk about this and we need to equip ourselves to be ambassadors for the unborn so we can see meaningful change in our country and in our culture. So I told you I was going to tell you three things I believe the church needs to be able to do. The first is that we have to engage. The second is that we have to equip ourselves to engage and the third is that we have to challenge ourselves to step up and take and make painful sacrifices on behalf of unborn children.

We have to engage, we have to equip ourselves to engage, and we have to step up and make sacrifices on behalf of unborn children and for the pro-life movement. So let's talk about each of those. The first is that we have to engage. While the forces against us are scary and huge, surrender is not an option.

Our Christian worldview which informs our pro-life position. It's still largely unpopular and we are swimming upstream to culture on this issue. Now many of you are familiar with the recent happenings in our country on the abortion issue with Planned Parenthood, harvesting fetal tissue and then selling it for profit. So we are having more and more things happen in the pro-life movement where abortion is being exposed for the evil that it is and pro-lifers and Christians are responding as they should, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us.

So while the forces are scary and huge, surrender is not an option. One of my favorite pro-life verses and one that many of you are familiar with. It's Proverbs 31:8 and I was, I was reading Proverbs 31 recently and I actually wasn't looking for the perfect wife, though I believe she's out there. this is be a little bit before all that and verse 8 says to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.

For the rights of the destitute. And pro-lifers and Christians love that verse because it applies perfectly to this issue. Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. The unborn can't speak up for themselves, so we should speak up on their behalf, and that's true and that's a beautiful reflection of our pro-life beliefs.

But as I considered this verse more and I thought about it more, I realized the deeper gospel truth to this verse and how it should inform our pro-life action, if you will. In our own sin, and apart from Christ's work on the cross, we are also those who are utterly incapable of speaking up for ourselves. We are utterly incapable of bringing anything to the table. So we're told what we're told to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, but until we until we realize that we are also those who are utterly incapable of speaking up on our own behalf, until we realize that our salvation stems from the fact that somebody else spoke up for us, as first John tells us, my dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin, but if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense, Jesus Christ, the righteous one.

So if the claims of Christianity are true and what Christians say about the gospel is true that, that we can't bring anything to the table, we're utterly incapable of speaking up for ourselves. Someone came into the picture from outside the picture, spoke up on our behalf, has now imparted an alien righteousness to us that is not, that we cannot own or claim as our own, but is given to us as an undeserved gift. Then how can we not speak up for others in our culture and country today?

Who were utterly incapable of speaking up for themselves, the unborn.

So we have to engage. Many of you are familiar with the historical figure and rather inspirational figure, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his struggle during World War II. To, in his attempts to assassinate Hitler, which ultimately failed and cost him his life. Eric Metaxas, a Christian author, wrote a book on Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

It's called Bonhoeffer Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. It's an excellent biography, reads like a novel. I encourage you to read it if you have not read it before. And there's a significant section, there's many significant sections in Bonhoeffer.

Eberhard Beske was a close friend of Bonhofer and he shares his thoughts on the predicament of the confessing church during this time and Bonhoeffer's struggle with the German church. And this is what he shares. He says we now realize that mere confession. No matter how courageous, inescapably meant complicity with the murderers.

Even though there would always be new acts of refusing to be co-opted and even though we would preach Christ alone Sunday after Sunday. During the whole time, the Nazi state never considered it necessary to prohibit such preaching. Why should it? Thus we were approaching the borderline between confession and resistance.

And if we did not cross this border, our confession was going to be no better than cooperation with the criminals. And so, it became clear where the problem lay for the confessing church. We were resisting by way of confession, but we were not confessing by way of resistance. And I believe that that is the situation that much of the American churches today on the abortion issue.

We, like Besky, unfortunately, as he says, we often merely resist by way of confession, the way that our resistance to the abortion issue and to the evils of our country often only manifest themselves through our mouth. Through what we say we believe, through our confession, I confess I believe the unborn child is a human and abortion takes the life of a defenseless unborn human person and our resistance often goes no further than our rhetoric. And Beesky says that that was the problem for the confessing church in Germany.

They were resisting by way of confession, but they were not confessing by way of resistance.

So if we want to see any meaningful change in our country on the abortion issue, the church has to engage. Surrender is not an option. The church has been silent for far too long. As 55 million babies have been butchered in America alone since 1973 and the legalization of Roe versus Wade.

Secondly, we have to equip ourselves to engage. The willingness and desire and zeal to engage means nothing if you're not equipped to do so. Only a fool goes into battle unarmed. Just as we should always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks us about the hope that we have in Jesus, as 1 Peter 3 asked us to do, so too should we be prepared to answer everyone who asks us, why would we be opposed to a woman's issue like abortion.

Are we able to take those thoughts and make them captive to Christ? Now, I believe there's some things we need to be able to do to equip ourselves. So we're, we have to engage, we recognize the calling to engage. So we're ready to equip ourselves.

What do we need to do as Christians to equip ourselves to think well on this issue and then to interact well with others who most likely disagree with us on this issue. The first thing that we need to do to equip ourselves to engage is we need to clarify the nature of moral reasoning. What do by that? Pro-lifers aren't claiming that abortion is wrong because we dislike it.

That's not the pro-life position. We do not say that abortion is wrong because we happen to have personal qualms against it. We're saying that abortion is wrong whether you like it or not, regardless of how you feel about it. We're making an objective statement, an objective claim about the nature of reality.

Now I'm gonna make two different types of claims right now and everyone in this room is going to recognize the difference between these two claims. The first is this. Vanilla ice cream is better than chocolate ice cream. Oh, now, I might have upset some people.

The second claim is this, it's wrong to torture toddlers for fun. And none of you would raise your hand and stand up and go, excuse me, Seth, maybe it's wrong for you to torture toddlers for fun. But don't push your moral views on me. What's the difference between the claim vanilla ice cream is better than chocolate ice cream and that it's wrong to torture toddlers for fun?

Nobody gets hurt. That's right. And, and so the difference between these two claims is that one is a subjective issue. One is a subjective claim.

If you like chocolate ice cream and I like vanilla ice cream, who's right? No one's right. It's a preference claim. But when I say it's wrong to torture toddlers for fun, I'm making an objective claim that is, that it is wrong whether we disagree about it or not, whether you like it or not.

So when pro-lifers make the claim that abortion is an indefensible act of violence that takes the life of a defenseless unborn human person, we are not saying we don't like abortion. We're saying abortion is wrong because it it violates rational moral principles, such as it is wrong to take innocent human life without proper justification. Which certainly applies to the unborn child. Many of you are familiar with the bumper sticker.

Don't like abortion, don't have one. As if one's willingness or unwillingness to get an abortion has anything to do with the morality question of the abortion issue. How about this? Don't like spousal abuse, don't beat your wife.

We don't like that and we laugh and we should because we recognize that spousal abuse is wrong regardless of how you feel about it. Now, I believe one of the reasons that many people in our culture today and sadly many people in the church continue to think about abortion as merely a preference issue, as merely an ice cream issue, is because they have not seen abortion. They have not seen what abortion is and does to unborn children. In other words, abortion remains an abstraction.

It's easy to justify the abortion issue and justify the killing of innocent unborn human beings when you do not see the injustices that are being perpetrated. So we want to run and show you a very short video clip tonight that shows what abortion is and does to unborn children. Now, before we run it, I want to warn you that it is graphic. That it does show what Planned Parenthood we call fetal tissue, that it does show the remains of the limbs that have been torn off little baby boys and girls from 1st and 2nd trimester abortions.

So it is gruesome and it is hard to look at. But until the playing field is leveled, when we say the word abortion, further discourse with those who disagree with us is often very difficult because when you say the word abortion, you're thinking of an indefensible act of violence that tears the limbs off of little baby boys and little baby girls. But your pro-choice friend is merely thinking of some ethereal procedure that merely removes a blob of tissue or potential tissue to a human being.

So until the playing field is leveled, Further discourse is often very difficult, so we show this video merely as an informative means and to to make you aware of it as a tool to level the playing fields when we discuss the abortion issue.

Now we realize that when we discuss this issue there could very well be people in this audience tonight who have been wounded by abortion either directly. Or Maybe a friend, family member, cousin, sibling, so, so on and so forth. So we do not show this video and I do not show this video in any means to shame you. You need to know and be reminded that Jesus is just as eager to forgive the sin of abortion as he is any other sin.

There's complete healing and forgiveness in Jesus as there is for all of us, regardless of how sinful we are. So, if this issue touches closer to home for you than some, your pastors would be, very willing and excited to speak with you and walk through you, walk through any healing process with you that perhaps you would need to go through. So without any further ado, we'd like to show you this video to make you aware of what abortion is and does to unborn children. Sometimes it's very easy to equate the later terms of a pregnancy.

And the abortions that end those pregnancy as more evil. Sometimes we tend to think whether we realize it or not, even as Christians who are already pro-life, that, that those third trimester motions, oh, those are really bad, those are really evil. But all the footage you saw before that final clip was all first trimester abortions. The trimester in which Over 90% of abortions are performed in the US today.

And the trimester in which there is the most public support for abortion in the US today, and the trimester in which Planned Parenthood seems to believe and tell the American culture that there is just tissue. And yet we clearly saw the remains of what abortion does to the early fetus. So if we want to equip ourselves to engage on the abortion issue, we firstly have to be able to clarify the nature of moral reasoning. And it will be easier to do that once the playing field is leveled.

Once the person you're talking to about abortion. Thinks of that when you say the word abortion instead of some Simple procedure that removes tissue. Secondly, if we want to equip ourselves to engage on the abortion issue, we need to clarify the one and only question that matters in the abortion debate. There are many considerations and questions that matter in the abortion debate, but they can all be boiled down to one simple question.

And once you understand this question, it will help simplify the abortion debate in conversations that you very well may have. To get at this question, I'm gonna use a very brief analogy that Christian thinker, philosopher, author Greg Cochel uses when he talks about the abortion issue. He says to imagine that you're sitting at your kitchen sink doing dishes. And as you're standing there doing dishes, your 3 year old toddler walks up behind you.

Your back is turned. And your toddler says, Mommy or daddy, can I kill this? Now what's going to be the first question out of your mouth in response to your toddler's question, Can I kill this? What is it?

What is it? Cause maybe if he has a cockroach, maybe you go, here, son, here's a hammer, don't tell mom. But maybe if he's holding the neighbor kitty, your response would be a little different. And if he has his brother by the throat, well, then you need counseling.

So the answer to the question, what is it would trump all others at that point, wouldn't it? What's he got? Ronald Reagan used a similar analogy when talking about the abortion issue. He said, do you imagine that you're on a hunting trip with a close friend.

And you took different paths, perhaps tracking a deer, and as you're walking down the forest path, you hear the bushes rustling off to your left. Unaware of whether that sound is being caused by the deer you've been tracking or your hunting buddy, do you shoot into the bushes? No, you don't, because you don't know what's on the other side. You don't know what is causing that sound.

Greg Coco goes on to say, and One sentence, something that will help us simplify the abortion issue and it comes back to this question, what is the unborn? He says this, if the unborn are not human, No justification for abortion is necessary. However, if the unborn are human, no justification for abortion is adequate. So if the unborn are not human, Then you get as many abortions as you'd like.

It's no different than clipping your fingernails. But if the unborn is human, there's no justification in defense of that practice that anyone can offer that is adequate, that suffices. So it all comes back to the question, what is the unborn? Once you understand this question, you can use it to clear confusion in the abortion debate and help navigate discussions back to the only question that matters, which is what is the unborn.

You can also use this to respond to objections to the pro-life position. For example, Your pro-choice friend says, pro-lifer, how dare you tell a woman that she does not have the right to obtain an abortion. Because that's a private issue. That's a privacy issue that is best left to be decided between her and her boyfriend, husband, so on.

At which point you merely respond very graciously with this question. Should we allow parents to kill their toddlers as long as they do so in the privacy of their own homes? Oh, well, no. Oh, why?

Because the toddler's a human. You can't do that. Oh. So the issue wasn't privacy.

Because the humanity that your pro-choice friend is granting to the toddler in your counterexample, he's denying that humanity to the unborn child in his argument for abortion from privacy. Oh, so the issue is never privacy. The issue is what is the unborn. This strategy is called trotting out the toddler.

And, and it helps bring back the issue back to that question, what is the unborn? You merely take a pro-choice argument and you replace the subject of the unborn in that argument with a toddler and see if that argument holds up. This can be done with most pro-choice arguments. Another example is this.

Pro-lifer, how dare you tell a woman she can't obtain an abortion if she doesn't have the financial capacity to bring that child into the world, to raise that child? Who are you to demand and place that burden on her? At which point you very graciously respond with this question. Should we allow parents to kill their toddlers when they get expensive?

Oh, they're not gonna like that. Why? Because they are granting the toddler personhood, humanity, a right to life, but denying that personhood to the unborn. So the issue is never finances or privacy.

The issue is what is the unborn. So if we want to equip ourselves to engage well in the abortion issue, we firstly have to clarify the nature of moral reasoning. We are making objective claims, not subjective claims about the abortion issue. Secondly, we have to clarify the only question that matters in the abortion debate.

What is the unborn? Thirdly, we have to offer a compelling and persuasive case for life. We have to defend our beliefs. We have to offer an argument in defense of our pro-life position.

Pro-life advocates, Christians, Catholics, those who believe that the intentional killing of the unborn fetus is unjust can use science and philosophy to make their pro-life case. And once we understand this case, we can make it in 2 minutes or less. I'll take a little bit longer to go through it and then I'll show you how you can make the case in really 1 minute or less. So let's go to science.

What does science tell us about the unborn? The science of embryology is clear and has been clear for many years that from the earliest stages of development, in other words, from the moment of conception, the unborn child is a distinct, distinct living and whole human being. Distinct, it is separate from the mother, residing in the mother but separate, living. It is living and growing.

Therefore, if it's growing, it's living. Distinct living and whole, It is whole. It, it is not just a mass of cells. It is a mass of cells that that is part of the whole.

We are all massive cells. I'm scratching my arms. Cells are falling to the ground. We're all parts, we're all massive cells, but those cells are parts of who we are.

We call that parts of whole, the whole being us. So the unborn is distinct, living and whole and the science of embryology has been clear on this point for many, many, many years. So, when I scratch my arm and I launch thousands of somatic cells to the ground, am I a mass murderer? No, because as I just said, we recognize that those, those make up who I am.

They're parts of the whole. And many people will say about the embryo that it is merely a mass of tissue, a mass of cells. So how can we think and think about the unborn child from science to illustrate that it is not just a mass of cells? Beyond just what the science of embryology tells us, we, I believe we can use a helpful analogy here to think, think well about the unborn child.

Imagine, who's here, who's here as a family tonight. OK. So let's say this family right here just won a, a safari in Africa, OK? And so you guys get shipped over there and you're in one of those like safari vehicles and you get to like see all this wildlife, OK?

And because you're old school, you didn't bring digital cameras. You brought those like shoot, point and shoot and then it spits the photo out. Is that Kodak? Polaroid, Polaroid, that's right.

I think Kodak made them, so, right, and so, and then you wave it right and you're like, oh look, it's coming. OK, so let's say you guys all have those and let's say dad's sitting in the front. And as the safari vehicle is driving along, a black Jaguar leaps in front of the vehicle. Black Jaguars being rarely seen and rarely photographed, so he's stoked because he got his Polaroid up just in time to snap a picture of this black Jaguar airborne.

Jumping across the path. Now, because I tagged along on the trip, which I forgot to mention, I'm in the back seat. I reach behind his shoulder, rip the photo out of his hand, tear it into little pieces, and throw it to the side of the road. Now he would rightly be enraged.

What if I just said, dude, it was just a black smudge on a white piece of paper. Well, he would, he would rightly protest and go, no, what are you talking about? The jaguar was already there. We just couldn't see him yet.

So it is with the unborn child. The unborn child is a distinct living and whole human being. Who was there from the earliest stages of development, from the moment of conception, even if we can't see him or her yet. In the same way that everything that was necessary to see that jaguar was already in the picture.

It just needed time. Time to develop in the same way all that is needed for the unborn child. To realize it's Infanthood, childhood. teenager, adult, elderly, is time.

The only thing that separates us from the early embryo is time. Everything that is necessary for the growth and development of that unborn child is already there, even if we can't see him or her yet. So, if we want to equip ourselves to make a thoughtful and winsome defense for the pro-life position and to engage well, we have to be able to clarify the nature of moral reasoning. We have to be able to simplify the abortion issue down to the one question that matters, what is the unborn, and we have to be able to offer the case for life.

So we have now made our case from science. Now we look to philosophy to bolster our case. Science has given us the facts that we need to develop the values that we need which we go to philosophy for. So, pro-lifers maintain that there is no essential difference between the embryonic human being that you once were in your mother's womb and the young adults or adults that you are today that would have justified killing you at that earlier stage.

I'll say that again. Philosophically, pro-lifers make the claim that there is no essential or we could, we could say morally significant difference between the embryonic human being that you once were in your mother's womb and the young adults or adults that you are today that would have justified killing you at that earlier stage. Now there are differences clearly between the embryonic human being and the infant, toddler, teenager, adult, and so on and so forth. But our case is that none of those differences are morally significant.

But let's look at at least 4 of those differences. Think of the acronym SLED, SLED, a foreign concept in Riverside. Firstly, S size. Size, yes, it's true.

The unborn child is smaller than the newborn child, just like the newborn child is smaller than the toddler and the toddler is smaller than the teenager. If size is morally relevant to the abortion debate, then we'd be forced to say that I am more human than most of you in this room. I'm 6'3, weigh 200 pounds. There might be a couple of you that are over 6'3, but we'd have to say that that person would be more human than I.

Since when has size been a morally relevant factor in determining value or personhood? Size level of development. Yes, it's true, the unborn child is less developed than who? Than the newborn, than the toddler, than the teenager.

Just like I am less developed than my parents. A teenager would doesn't, would not like to hear that he is less valuable or has less right to life simply because he's less developed than his parents. So clearly level of development is not morally relevant. Size, level of development, E is environment or where one is located.

Yes, it's true. The unborn child is located in a very unique place, his or her mother's womb. But when you leave this room and break. For dinner or for whatever's next, do you stop being human because you changed locations?

When you roll over in bed because you're suffering from a dream or a nightmare, do you stop being human because you changed locations? Clearly not. So why does a six-inch journey down the birth canal change the unborn child from something that we can legally kill to something that is protected by law and is Worthy of our protection and dignity. So clearly environment or where you're located is not morally relevant to the abortion debate.

Size, level of development, environment, and D is degree of dependency. How dependent you are on someone or something else to continue living. So yes, the unborn child is very dependent on the mother for life and, and certainly in the first trimester and in the early 2nd trimester, the unborn child cannot survive without the presence and sustenance of the mother, though science is allowing us to save the unborn child earlier and earlier. But if degree of dependency is morally relevant, we'd be forced to say that all those dependent on heart pacemakers, kidney machine.

Insulin Life support are all non-humans because they're dependent on something without which they cannot continue to live. Do you see the danger? In pro-choice thinking. The moral dilemmas that it leads to.

If we deny humanity and personhood and value to the unborn based on size, level of development, environment, degree of dependency, we can use those same things to justify killing born people. So if we don't grant Value and personhood and human dignity to the unborn child from the earliest stages of development, which science tells us is when the unborn person starts and begins. Then we run into the dangerous moral dilemmas of being able to justify killing born people, given those same criteria.

So once we understand this case from science and philosophy, we can make it in a minute or less, and here it is.

Scientifically, pro-lifers argue that from the earliest stages of development, In other words, conception. The unborn child is what, a distinct, living and whole human being. Distinct, separate from the mother, though residing in her, living, directing its own self-growth. And whole, all that is necessary for that its self-development is present from the earliest stages of development.

Philosophically, pro-lifers argue that there is no essential or morally significant difference between the embryonic human being that you once were in your mother's wombs and the young adults or adults that you are today that would have justified killing you at that earlier stage. Differences in size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency are not good reasons for saying that you had no right to life then. In your mother's womb. Oh, but you do now.

Because you're larger, more developed. Outside the womb Dependent on your, on just yourself independent. So that's the case for life and once we understand that case, we can make it in a minute or less. So if we want to see any meaningful change in our country on the abortion issue, I believe the church needs to engage.

We have to engage, surrender is not an option. But to engage, we have to equip ourselves to engage. And to equip ourselves, we need to be able to clarify the nature of moral reasoning. Clarify what types of claims we're making because oftentimes when we say oh abortion is wrong, the pro-choice side here is, oh they don't like abortion but we're not making vanilla chocolate ice cream claims.

We're claiming that this thing, this thing called abortion is wrong regardless of how you feel about it. So we have to clarify the nature of moral reasoning. We have to simplify the abortion debate or clarify the abortion debate. By simplifying it to the only question that matters, which is what?

What is the unborn? What is it? And thirdly, we have to be able to offer a gracious and winsome and persuasive case for life by appealing to science and philosophy as I just did. Thirdly, if we want to see meaningful change in our country on the abortion issue, the church has to be willing to challenge itself and step up to make painful sacrifices on behalf of the pro-life movement and on behalf of unborn children.

Greg Cunningham, the director of the Center for Bioethical Reform, a leading pro-life organization where I interned for three years, says this. There are more people working full-time to kill babies than there are working full-time to save them. That's because killing babies is very profitable. While saving them is very costly.

So costly that large numbers of people who say they oppose abortion. are not lifting a finger to stop the killing. And those that do lift a finger do just enough to salve the conscience, but not enough to stop the killing. So that leads us to this question.

What is our duty to the preborn? What is the born again Christian's duty to the, to unborn children? How do we respond to this genocide? I believe the answer is that we are called to love our unborn neighbor.

And his or her mother. We are called to love our unborn neighbor and his or her mother. Well, this begs the question, of course, Is the unborn our neighbor? Should we as Christians view the unborn and think of the unborn in the same light that Jesus seems to portray loving our neighbors?

Do we grant the title neighbor as Jesus used it to unborn children? I believe that the case for life I've offered tonight proves that the unborn is a distinct, living and whole human being and should therefore be granted the same value that Jesus put on loving our neighbors. But sometimes it's costly to love our neighbors, isn't it? Sometimes it hurts.

Sometimes we have to make sacrifices. It's not always fun to love your neighbor. I believe that the parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates this better than most. I'm going to assume that most of the parable of the Good Samaritan, but I'm going to paraphrase it briefly.

So a man is traveling on a road. He gets beaten. He gets mugged. He gets robbed, he gets left for dead.

As he's sitting on the side of the road bleeding out. Several different men walked by. The first two we're told are religious men, a Levite and a priest. I think it's safe to say that the Levite and the priest were opposed to street mugging.

I think it's safe to say that the Levite and the priest would have felt bad about the guy who got beat up and left for dead. That's a bummer. I wouldn't have beat him up. I wish he hadn't gotten beaten up.

But what does scripture tell us? It says that they They walked by on the other side. They went out of their way to avoid the bleeding victim. It was the good Samaritan, as we know, the bleeding victim's natural enemy.

who made sacrifices of his time and his money to love his neighbor, to love his neighbor well, to love his neighbor lavishly. So as we know, the parable tells us that this good Samaritan. Bandage this man's wounds. Took him with him to an inn, told the innkeeper, nurse this man back to health.

I gotta go. When I come back, I'll pay for any other cost that accumulated while I was gone. radical sacrifices of his time and his money to love his to love his neighbor well. To love his neighbor lavishly.

Randy Alcorn in his book Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments talks about this parable, and he says this, he says, I appeal to you to come to grips with the fact that loving God cannot be separated from loving our neighbor. To a man who wished to define neighbor in a way that excluded certain groups of needy people, Christ presented the Good Samaritan as a model for our behavior. He went out of his way to help the man lying in the ditch. In contrast, the religious hypocrites looked the other way because they had more religious things to do.

And I believe that's the position, unfortunately that much of the American church is in today. We feel bad about abortion. We are oftentimes just like the Levite and the priest. We're not for street mugging.

We're not for abortion. We feel bad about it. We feel compassion. But many of us don't take compassion.

We don't show compassion. That was one of the reasons Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan was to show the contrast between two men who probably felt compassion but did nothing. And the man who took compassion, who showed compassion. So I believe our duty and role as the church.

is to fulfill the second greatest commandment, which is what? To love your neighbor as yourself. Is the unborn our neighbor? Should we look at the unborn in the same light that Jesus used neighbor when, when he told the parable of the Good Samaritan?

If so, we have a radical calling and responsibility to love unborn children. And their mothers To care for the widow and the orphan in their distress. So if we want to see meaningful change in our country on the abortion issue today, the church As a whole, as a collective, and also individually. Each of us on our own journey have to engage.

We are not all called to full-time pro-life work. I am. I understand that we're not all called to do the same thing. Now that's ludicrous.

If we all did the same thing, there would be thousands of other injustices that are being ignored. So we're not all called to the same thing, but we're all called to play a part. How can you use your giftings in a unique way to contribute to the abolition of abortion? So we have to engage, surrender is not an option.

But we have to equip ourselves to engage and to do that well, we have to be able to clarify the nature of moral reasoning. Clarify the one and only question that matters in the abortion debate, which is what is the unborn? And thirdly, we have to be able to offer a winsome and persuasive case for life by appealing to science and philosophy. Once we've equipped ourselves to engage well so that we're prepared, so we have the tools to enter this battle.

Then we begin challenging ourselves and our brothers and sisters in Christ to step up and make painful sacrifices on behalf of unborn children. That's, what I believe the church is called to. That's what we need to do if we want to see this issue abolished and see meaningful change in our country. So go and be encouraged to equip yourselves and challenge each other to be ambassadors for the unborn in culture, so that you can love your neighbor well and love your neighbor lavishly.

Thank you.