The landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision carved out a special federal right for women to kill their unborn babies. That unconstitutional “right” ended with new Supreme Court rulings in June.

We are living in the age of exposure. So many truths about our modern world are being revealed in phenomenal ways. This battle in the ongoing war over abortion is another striking and important example.

A lot of rage and a lot of hidden truth has now been exposed as leftists have reacted to Roe v. Wade being overturned by expressing their true, strong, radically godless feelings. They have mourned. They have grieved. They have screamed. Why? Because the Supreme Court said voters in each state should determine whether they can continue to kill unborn children.

They have reacted with absolute, unchecked rage. They have demanded the “right” to kill babies up until the moment of birth—and even immediately after. One lefist television host reacted by telling the viewer, “I don’t care that you’re a Christian. I don’t care what the Bible says. I feel like it’s a clown show sitting here trying to decipher what your little mythical book has to say about these very real political issues.” After using an expletive, she added, “I’m so tired of having nonstop conversations about what the Bible says. … I don’t care. I don’t believe in it, and I have the right based on our Constitution to not believe in it.”

Now it’s being exposed. We see what leftists really think about God, about the Bible, about human life itself.

Yes or No?

Every year in the United States, well over 1 million babies are killed in the womb, more than a quarter of all unborn children. And a large majority of these deaths occur because parents say they “couldn’t afford to take care of a baby,” they “weren’t ready for the responsibility,” or they “just didn’t want it.”

But abortion advocates say this is no problem, because abortion is just a medical procedure, perhaps no more serious than having a tooth pulled.

But what if abortion is murder? Are those people absolutely sure it isn’t?

One prominent champion of abortion, Hillary Clinton, famously said that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare—and by rare, I mean rare.” But if abortion is not murder, why should it be rare?

Any woman with the choice of whether to get an abortion is faced with an agonizing dilemma. It doesn’t do any good to discuss how “safe” the methods are, or to tell her that it’s an “individual matter.” She needs to know if it is right or if it is wrong!

This is not a matter of opinion. There is a definite, correct answer to her dilemma. A fetus is either a separate human being from its mother or it isn’t. There is no middle ground. If it is separate, abortion is an act of ending a person’s life, and is therefore murder. We surely all agree that murder is wrong—right?

The person who says murder is wrong, yet believes abortion is permissible, has some serious proving to do.

If a woman is uncertain whether her baby is a person yet or not, she should never simply “take a chance” on it. Yet most honest medical doctors, family-planning counselors, politicians and Supreme Court justices openly admit that they are uncertain of when a baby becomes a person. And they still urge women to fight for the right to abort their babies.

In the majority Roe v. Wade decision that led to tens of millions of abortions, the Supreme Court said, “We need not resolve the difficult question of when an unborn child actually becomes a human person with a legal right to live.” They were openly uncertain. They openly sidestepped this life-and-death issue and passed off responsibility for the monumental consequences of their decision with this statement: “When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”

In the nearly 50 years that Roe was considered law, by some estimates over 63 million babies were legally killed in the United States. That equates to about 19 percent of the current U.S. population.

That is the danger of uncertainty. That is the problem with being uneducated about this issue. By not “speculating as to the answer” of whether abortion is right or wrong, the court did, in fact, make a definite decision affecting millions of mothers, exterminating the lives of millions of unborn.

What They Really Think

The Supreme Court justices were uncertain whether they were authorizing the murder of babies. New York legislators did not know if or when a baby in the womb is a human being. Yet in 2019, they passed a law essentially decriminalizing abortions right up to the point of birth. Other states have similar laws. Some legislators have been directly asked whether the laws they support will permit a baby to be killed when he or she is beginning to emerge. Their answer? Yes!

When he was governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam said on radio that if an abortion failed and a baby was actually born alive, the mother and the health-care provider could “discuss” whether to let that baby live.

Explaining how late a baby could be aborted, Northam said, “[I]f a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen: The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated—if that’s what the mother and the family desired—and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

The language always sounds thoughtful, intelligent, calm. But you cannot mistake what he said! He was describing a child who has already been delivered, alive. He is saying that a discussion will take place to determine whether to let that baby live, or to kill him or her.

Lifetimes ago, the left abandoned the realm of absolute right and wrong when they committed to abortion. Ever since, they have reasoned and campaign-promised their way through the logic. Abortion should be done for a good reason, they said. It should occur early in pregnancy, they said. It should be rare, they said just three presidential elections ago. But since there is no stage between conception and a baby’s first breaths where he or she suddenly becomes a human being, they moved their demands. Not in the direction of making abortion earlier and rarer, but further and further toward the light at the end of the birth canal.

And now, even after that.

Governor Northam spoke with such humane terminology—keeping the infant comfortable and such … before killing it.

This is infanticide. This is murder.

This is what happens when we come to view human life as nothing more than matter—atoms colliding with atoms. This is what happens when we say there is nothing sacred about human life.

Here is an unmistakable reality: Many abortion advocates have a casual, even hostile perspective on human life.

Opposing this trend are those who view human life as very special, uniquely worthy of preservation and protection.

These two perspectives could not be more different. Which is your view? And where does that view ultimately come from?

Sanctity of Human Life

Where does the view of the sanctity of human life come from in the first place? We may think the inherent, precious value of human life is self-evident. But as the example of the abortionists teaches us, that is not so.

Most people don’t stop to think about it, and that leftist commentator won’t like it—but our high assessment of human life does come from the Bible.

This Book reveals that human beings were created by God. Its first chapter describes God renewing the face of the Earth, creating a beautiful environment that would support life—first the atmospheric and geological conditions, then plant life in spectacular variety, then animal life in the skies and seas, then land creatures of every kind, “cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind” (Genesis 1:24). Why did God do all this? For human life! As His crowning physical creation, “God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness …. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (verses 26-27).

The Bible’s first chapter shows that human beings are unlike any other creation: We are made in God’s image and likeness. It further reveals that God gave us dominion over all the other creatures.

Throw out the Bible, and perhaps most or all of us would view human life as a product of blind evolution and altogether insignificant, therefore disposable.

The rest of the Bible reveals why God made man and what His purpose for us is—and it is a most inspiring truth. God took pains to reveal it in order to give us hope, inspiration and motivation to live productive, moral and purposeful lives.

Most people do not understand the Bible. But flip it open to almost any page and you will see evidence of the specialness and purpose of human life.

King David wrote, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:3-4). Out of all His vast creation, why does God care so much for human beings? “For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea …. O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!” (verses 5-9). David was awestruck at God’s creation and the fact that God crowned humans with such honor at the head of it all.

One New Testament author quoted David’s psalm: “But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” (Hebrews 2:6). He quoted the verses about God putting creation under human dominion, then expanded on them. Herbert W. Armstrong explained in his book Mystery of the Ages: “But now the writer of the book of Hebrews is inspired to expand David’s prophecy to add something radically different—something to happen in the world to come!

“This revealed knowledge of God’s purpose for mankind—of man’s incredible awesome potential—staggers the imagination. Science knows nothing of it—no religion reveals it, so far as I know—and certainly higher education is in utter ignorance of it.

“Nevertheless, it is what God says He has prepared for them that love Him (1 Corinthians 2:9-10).”

Mr. Armstrong showed that the passage in Hebrews 2 plainly reveals God’s purpose: God made human beings to actually help Him govern not only Earth, but the universe! It describes God crowning Jesus Christ “with glory and honour”—and then intending to bring “many sons unto glory” the way He brought His Son Jesus Christ to glory!

The truth about God’s purpose for human beings is awesome and wonderful! Mr. Armstrong wrote an entire book about it, called The Incredible Human Potential, which shows that this inspiring purpose is in the Bible from beginning to end (request a complimentary copy). God wants us to understand this truth. It gives our lives meaning and direction.

And it gives us crucial perspective on why it is so important to protect and preserve life.

When we reject this truth, as modern secular society has, then we cannot see anything particularly special about human life. Humanism and other ideologies and religions provide poor substitutes. Left empty-handed, we descend into the base thinking and death worship you see in America’s abortion culture.

God’s Law Protects Life

Having created us for a wonderful purpose, God is serious about protecting human life. He authored several laws for that purpose, most powerfully the Sixth Commandment, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13; New King James Version).

Throughout history, societies that departed furthest away from godly thinking have come to view murder not as a sin or a crime, but as a valuable tool for achieving what they want. In the 20th century alone, governments helmed by Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Hirohito, Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh took a very cheap view of life, and they killed millions upon millions of people in pursuit of their political aims.

God considers human life so valuable that He commands, “He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death” (Exodus 21:12). Did you know this is the only law that is repeated in all five books of the Pentateuch? (see also Genesis 9:6; Leviticus 24:17, 21; Numbers 35:16-18, 31; and Deuteronomy 19:11-13). Many people believe the death penalty is unjust and hypocritical—that it somehow degrades human life. God says it actually shows the supremely high value of human life! It forcibly demonstrates just how precious was the life of that innocent victim by demanding the severest of penalties for the one who took it.

(You cannot understand human life and God’s plan for it without understanding the Bible’s teaching on the afterlife. The Bible reveals that God will resurrect all sinners who have never known Him—including murderers who were executed. Each person will receive the opportunity to repent and live forever—e.g. Revelation 20:11-12. So that execution for a crime is not an eternal death sentence.)

God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. But He demanded the death penalty, not only to put a murderer out of his misery (and then reserve him for resurrection) but also so that others would hear and fear, to prevent more innocent life from being taken. Such a serious command protecting life has a powerful deterrent effect: Fewer people commit murder, meaning fewer murder victims and fewer executed murderers.

In the law God gave ancient Israel, even the punishment for manslaughter, accidental killing, was severe: The killer had to uproot his life and flee to a city of refuge, remaining there until the high priest died (Numbers 35). This too engendered deep respect for the life of our fellow man.

God’s law even commands that an animal which kills a human being is to be killed (Exodus 21:28-32). Many other ancient codes of law address the matter of an animal injuring or killing a human being—but only in God’s law was the animal subject to the death penalty and its flesh rendered unfit for human consumption. In Babylon, for example, the uppermost concern was to protect the property of the wealthy and powerful. In God’s law, the sanctity of a human life, formed in the image and likeness of God, was paramount.

Most relevant to recent events, God even gave a law to protect the life of an unborn child in the womb.

In verses 22-23, the New King James Version reads, “If men fight, and hurt a woman with child, so that she gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follows [meaning, no injury comes to the fetus], he shall surely be punished accordingly as the woman’s husband imposes on him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.” The perpetrator had only to pay damages for whatever inconvenience or hardship might have come on the parents. “But,” it continues, “if any harm follows, then you shall give life for life.” In other words, if his actions caused the unborn child to die, he was sentenced to death!

In the eyes of God’s law, human life is sacred. And the life of an unborn child is equal to that of an adult.

This law gave the penalty for accidentally killing a fetus. How do you suppose the God who made that law views the doctors who perform abortions for profit, or counseling services that pressure pregnant women into killing their babies, or judges who decide it is “legal,” or politicians, lobbyists and activists who encourage such laws and debate the merits of intentionally leaving a newborn to die on a hospital table?

Life begins at conception. Not only is this true by biblical reckoning, it is also the only scientifically viable view. The question cannot be satisfactorily, definitively answered any other way. After conception, there is no stage of a child’s development, no moment of maturation, that suddenly makes him or her become a human being. He or she is a human being at conception. The only reason there would be any disagreement over this point is that people want to carry on with their lives without an unwanted, unborn child—and thus want to justify killing it.

The Danger of Human Reasoning

This message about the supreme value of human life is consistent throughout the Bible. It is when we ignore that revelation from our Creator that we begin to rationalize acts of brutality toward other human beings, even killing.

Abortion advocates always use noble-sounding language like “freedom” and “choice” and “health care” and “equality” and “women’s rights” and “women’s health.” (They wouldn’t get very far proclaiming the virtues of “fornication,” “poisoning” and “dismemberment.”) However, the closer you look into the actual reality of abortion, the more shocking and grotesque it is. Once people remove God from the picture, once they discard absolutes and begin traveling down that road in their thinking, they end up justifying actions that are more and more horrific.

When human beings discard the truth that God is our Creator, and they hypothesize that His vast, spectacular, beautiful creation is a cosmic accident without meaning, purpose or inherent value—when we reject God’s revelation and begin reasoning our way through questions of life and death—then rationalization for all kinds of destructive behavior increases, even murder.

God says abortion is murder. Society vehemently disagrees. In the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned, abortion advocates have expressed themselves with renewed passion. They use the language of “rights” and “freedom”—even, ironically, “health”—but they are aggressively promoting murder.

A 2006 documentary called Lake of Fire included footage of an abortionist, holding a tub containing the contents of his latest procedure. He is washing out a tub of intestines and bones and organs and tiny hands, ensuring he evacuated everything properly. He is measuring the length of a tiny severed foot on a ruler to assess how far the child’s development had advanced. And this is the language coming out of his mouth: “Well the media attention is always directed for the fetus and the gory parts, if you will, of providing the procedure—when the really important thing is that we’ve been able to help this young lady get on with her life. She’s planning to go to school and she doesn’t have to take on the responsibilities of parenting. And here in just a few minutes we’re able to facilitate her decision to not be a parent at this time.”

How compassionate. How magnanimous and high-minded he is—as he holds a tiny decapitated head with his fingers. Don’t focus on the gory parts, he says. Focus on the fact that we’re helping her live her life the way she wants to live it. And look—it takes mere minutes to turn that life into a tub of body parts.

This is what the people passing these laws are really celebrating. Not “reproductive rights.” Not “protecting a mother’s health.” They are celebrating a woman gaining the freedom to walk away from parenthood—to make the same terrible choice that an irresponsible man can—by murdering her child.

How can they have grown so callous? What is really behind such thinking? The Bible exposes its true origin: “the god of this world,” a malevolent spirit that hates human beings and wants to destroy us—and yet who rules this world (2 Corinthians 4:4). “He was a murderer from the beginning, and … there is no truth in him. … [F]or he is a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44). Surcharging the air with hostility toward the Creator, he is “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2).

Yes, that murderous, lying spirit “now works” in a world increasingly filled with and governed by “children of disobedience.”

Look starkly at the abortion issue, and the contrast is stunningly clear between the view, and influence, of that evil being—and that of the beneficent Creator.

The Apostle Paul prophesied in 2 Timothy 3:1-4 that “in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves [selfish, self-centered] … disobedient to parents … Without natural affection … incontinent [without self-control], fierce [brutal] … lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.”

We are living in these prophesied “last days.” Our world is rife with the attitudes Paul forecast—attitudes that lead to illicit sex and to unwanted babies. And to brutal abortions on a mass scale. And to fighting fervidly to perpetuate this ghoulish reality.

God is already correcting us for these sins, and that correction is certain to get far more severe. One day soon, however—thanks to that correction—people will get reacquainted with the Creator they have turned their backs on. And they will learn to cherish the sanctity of the gift of life.

A God of Life!

God is a God of life! He created life, He created human beings, and He protects human beings from other human beings. God loves human beings and wants the best for us. This is a beautiful truth that abortion advocates do not recognize. When we believe God’s truth and revelation, when we accept His guidance, when we follow His laws, we are blessed for it. Our lives become infused with purpose and hope. Our thinking becomes cleaner and brighter and more positive. A society that respects His creation and His laws also respects life, in all its forms.

If you are open to the biblical truth on this subject, read “Is Abortion Really Murder?” (theTrumpet.com/65). Besides physical proofs, it gives compelling and inspiring spiritual perspective on the preciousness of an unborn life! Realizing what the Creator of human beings is doing with physical and spiritual conception and birth will stun you and stir you.

God tells us, in Deuteronomy 30:19, “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.” God wants us to live! He gives us His truth and His law that we and our children may live!

And He tells us plainly—He pleads with us: Do not choose death. Don’t go your own way. Don’t reason your way through this. Follow me. Obey me. Learn to think as I think. Learn to view human life as I do. Learn my wonderful purpose—for you and for your children. And choose life!