New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern delivered a key electoral campaign promise last week when lawmakers passed a bill decriminalizing abortion. The bill passed in Parliament on Wednesday, 68-to-51, and will become law after it is signed by the country’s governor general.

The new law is an amendment to the 1977 law that made abortion a crime in New Zealand except when two doctors agree that continuing the pregnancy would endanger the mother’s mental or physical health. Previously, an unlawful abortion could be punished with up to 14 years in prison.

The new law no longer requires any medical consent. A mother can self-refer in the first 20 weeks of pregnancy without even visiting a hospital. Abortion can still occur after 20 weeks, but only if two doctors agree that to continue the pregnancy would be harmful to the woman’s physical, mental or “overall well-being.” According to officials, New Zealand has moved abortion from a crime to a health issue.

In campaigning for abortion rights, National Member of Parliament Amy Adams told Parliament, “I have an absolutely innate view that Parliament needs to stay out of the medical and personal decisions of women’s lives. Women have an inalienable right to control their bodies and reproductive systems.”

But Adams does not realize that abortion is not about a woman’s right to her own body. New Zealand bishops were right when they called the bill “a travesty of human rights” that “ignores the reality that a genetically unique human life has begun which is neither that of the mother or the father.”

This is not merely a religious belief, it is a biological fact that an unborn child is a distinct and separate human being. Several studies have proved that a fetus can feel excruciating pain from very early in pregnancy.

This is a biological fact that theologian and educator Herbert W. Armstrong discussed in his landmark book Mystery of the Ages:

The human spirit enters the human embryo at conception. It is this spirit that may, upon adult conversion, be united with the Holy Spirit from the great Creator God, impregnating that human with God-life as a child of the living God, in a state of gestation, though as yet unborn. To destroy an embryo or a fetus in a mother’s uterus is to murder a potential future God being.

Therefore, abortion is murder.

Mr. Armstrong recognized the biological facts of abortion together with the greater spiritual dimension at play.

Legislators passing abortion bills do not recognize the unborn child’s incredible human potential. Abortion doctors don’t just kill another human being; they murder “a potential future God being.”

According to Worldometer, there have been more than 9.7 million abortions worldwide so far this year. That is more than 115,476 abortions every day since January 1. Every hour, nearly 5,000 babies are murdered—more than 80 every minute. That means more than one abortion is performed every second of every day worldwide.

If you think coronavirus is a pandemic, perhaps officials ought to turn their attention to the abortion rate.

This brutality represents the mentality God prophesied would be rampant in the end time. 2 Timothy 3:1-3 says, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection ….” The natural affection of a mother toward her unborn child and mankind’s respect for human life is disappearing.

As Joel Hilliker wrote in “Why Do So Many People Want More Abortion?” these kinds of shocking statistics are the result of mankind’s rejection of God and refusal to see human life as more than just atoms. “This is what happens when we cast aside the revelation that God made us in His own image—that He endowed us with tremendous potential given to no other creation—and that every single human life matters.”

This tremendous potential fills the Bible. Psalm 127:3-5 says, “Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them ….” In Genesis 1:26-27, God says that man was made in His image and likeness with a potential described in Hebrews 2:7-8: “Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him.” The Moffatt version translates “all things” as “the universe.” God is preparing to give mankind the entire universe!

These are the scriptures that fill Herbert W. Armstrong’s book The Incredible Human Potential. Please read this book to understand the potential God has given every single human being—those living, who have died, and those yet to be born. This potential reveals why Satan is working so feverishly to legalize abortion around the world.