PCUSA and Abortion: Guilty!

The Presbyterian Church (USA) erroneously treats abortion as a decision of no moral guidance or consequence. Abortion has been defended in our denomination as a woman’s ‘considered decision’, or an ‘option of last resort’. More recently abortion has been referenced by the euphemisms: “reproductive options,” “reproductive justice,” or the deceptive, “reproductive healthcare.” The trouble with euphemisms and other forms of deceptive wording is that it eventually butts up against an unyielding principle of Scripture—“There is nothing hidden that will not be made public. There is no secret that will not be well known.” (Mark 4:22)

Abortion exposed in court

Dr. Kermit Gosnell was convicted just last week of 3 counts of first degree murder in the deaths of three infants who were born alive in late-term abortions and then killed by a gruesome technique of “snipping” the spinal cord at the back of the baby’s neck with a scissors. Gosnell was found guilty on numerous other charges including a 3^rd degree murder of a woman who died in his clinic when untrained personnel administered an overdose of Demerol. Gosnell escaped the death penalty by promising not to appeal and was granted the lighter sentence of life in prison with no parole. I am relieved to know that his clinic is closed and no more precious lives will die at his hand. As a pro-life Christian, I am also grateful that mercy was extended and that Gosnell’s life has been preserved in spite of his monstrous crimes.

The Gosnell trial tears away the veil that abortion is “choice,” "healthcare," or “justice.” It reveals the truth of what abortion really is: the callous and brutal legal killing of a child within the womb, or, when that doesn’t work—the illegal murder of the baby outside the womb. The end goal in any abortion is always a dead human being.

Americans are guilty of abortion

Albert Mohler wrote in his article, Kermit Gosnell’s America — What His Trial Really Reveals, that: “the whole nation was on trial, and we are guilty." 

He goes on to expose our guilt:

This is America. A nation that has legalized murder in the womb and that now finds itself staring at what abortion really represents. Human dignity cannot survive in a society that insists that a baby inside the womb has no right to live while that same baby, just seconds later, is a murder victim. Respect for human life cannot endure when a baby inside the womb is just a fetus, but when moved only a few centimeters is a full citizen.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) is guilty of abortion

If our nation is guilty, and it is, how much more weighty is the guilt of the church when it condones and defends the deadly injustice of this crime against our tiniest brothers and sisters in the human family? Raymond Tear, a Texas PCUSA pastor, is right to ask in response to Mohler’s article, “How much longer can we live with this?" More importantly, how much longer will God tolerate it?”

Tear describes the ongoing complicity of the PCUSA in abortion:

The votes of repeated General Assemblies, the work of the lobbying office in Washington, and the medical portion of our Benefits Plan which paid for abortion on demand before it became a requirement of Obamacare, all have served to make each of us in the PCUSA especially complicit in the assembly line infanticide of 1.5 million unborns every year. (BTW, most of whom are minorities.)

There is good news: Mercy for the contrite!

We are guilty‑Americans, members of the PCUSA, abortionists and women and men who have chosen abortion. Here is the wonderful good news: God is merciful to those who turn to Him!

“For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit…I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners.” Isaiah 57:15,18

“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” II Chronicles 7:14