Murder and Abortion
I remember one day when I was teaching a lesson to college students in an Asian country, the English exercise took the form of a discussion question. The book told of a shipwreck, and 9 survivors left in a liferaft. The 9 people spanned demographics, including the middle-aged, the elderly, a young college athlete, and a pregnant woman. The liferaft could only hold 8 people, so supposedly, one person must be thrown over and the book asked the students to decide who. I was so surprised and a somewhat disturbed when I heard the students almost unaminously say that the pregnant woman should be thrown over! When I asked them why, they said that the boat has a population problem and the pregnant woman should be thrown over because she is really like two people.
I told them that in America, most people would say that the pregnant woman should be saved even if it meant the death of every other person on the boat. I told them that most Americans would say that the oldest person should probably be thrown over… and that maybe even some would say that the college athlete should volunteer to jump because he is the strongest.
After reading something like this–an article on a teenage girl who did not know she was pregnant until she gave birth–I am not so sure. When she realized what had happened, she immediately panicked and stabbed the baby 135 times, before throwing it into the garbage. The whole issue of abortion makes me wonder how well I represented Americans and American values to those Asian students, afterall. The most depressing thing about it is, if she had murdered the baby only a few short hours before its birth, maybe she would have been convicted of some minor crime and not 1st degree murder. Maybe.
Isaiah 49:15 Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.
