Excerpts from Abortion and the Church (which he needs to read):
Abortion is the violation of the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” The Westminster Larger Catechism expounds on what this commandment requires of us positively:
All careful studies, and lawful endeavors, to preserve the life of ourselves and others by resisting all thoughts and purposes, subduing all passions, and avoiding all occasions, temptations, and practices, which tend to the unjust taking away the life of any; . . . just defense thereof against violence . . . ; comforting and succoring the distressed, and protecting and defending the innocent.
God deals with men representationally and corporately. God judges nations for the sins prevalent among them. Even if there are people of God today who have not participated directly in the sin of abortion, we cannot claim clean hands and hearts. We live in a nation committed to the bloodshed of children, and God is just to judge our nation corporately, showering His holy wrath upon us all.
When the day comes when God’s judgment falls upon the bloodshed of our nations, will there be men of God among us we have seen and heard stand and preach as righteous Noah preached righteousness to his own generation?
Then pp. 51-53, subsection titled “Imago Dei.” Critically important.
I would differ from Aaron and others who would counsel caution in quoting Scripture, and specifically the Sixth of the Ten Commandments, nor would I speak positively by citing the Golden Rule. God’s Moral Law is summed up positively as the love of God and neighbor, but it is stated negatively. In the statehouse, especially of South Carolina!, I would start with God judging us by His character and law. I would point out that Noah was unsuccessful in preaching righteousness to his own uberwicked age, but that God commends him for preaching to them regardless, in the heroes of faith chapter in Hebrews, and so that’s a good enough motivation for you speaking now to them in your own wicked day.
Then I would point out that the reason God commands capital punishment for those who murder, commanding all of us through His command given to Noah (after He had wiped out every living creature except those in Noah’s ark), is that men and women are created by God in His own image and likeness. Then I would read the command to Noah out loud, ending by stating "This is why God hates those who shed the innocent blood of humans, and we do ourselves a favor by outlawing what God hates lest His judgment fall on us as it did on those in the days of Noah.”
Next I would move to the rule of law among men and say there is no law more basic to justice as always understood by nations everywhere and always than the horror of murder. There is no law more fundamental to the rule of law than the law against murder. THere is nothing more universally condemned by all nations and times’s rule of law than murder.
But does this mean that all nations everywhere and always have kept this law?
No. Two thousand years ago, the Roman Emporer Nero didn’t keep it, but he burned helpless Christians alive to light the streets of Rome.
More recently, Stalin, Hitler, and Chairman Mao slaughtered well over one-hundred million of their own citizens who were helpless to oppose them.
Back a few decades ago, the Rwandans engaged in a terribly bloody genocide in their tiny country that left 750,000 to 1,000,000 of their own neighbors and family members murdered—most killed by machetes.
And in the past half-century, all over the world–but particularly here in the United States—we ourselves have slaughted 50-100 million babies too weak to defend themselves, with no voice of their own. Ever.
So no, even if we dispense of the simple fact of the Image of God in man, every little one from the moment of his or her conception, and defy God’s command not to murder; even if we’re so godless that we make no reference to God in our state’s laws and debates over the passage of those laws; even if we allow God’s character and commandments to be removed from our public places and silenced in our halls and assemblies and courts of law; murder is the most basic violation of the rule of law possible, and always has been. Yet murder has always been committed by those strong enough to escape punishment. So they prey on the weak, and who is more weak, innocent, and defenseless than the little baby nestled in his mother’s womb.
Yes, you have no doubt there are those present—maybe many of them—who have no fear of God and His judgment. You tremble for what they will face because Scripture states it is fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God. Nevertheless, there have always been those who have no fear of God. The godless, too, we always have among us. And yes, you know it angers them for you to cite God’s Word as your first and most authoritative authority for opposing the slaughter of teeny-tiny babies. Even the godless, though, should want to protect their own lives, and therefore the lives of others. Will not the godless have some notion of justice and injustice, and what is more injust than robbing another man, no matter how poor and weak and small, of his own life?
And so on…
