The Right to Use Force to Stop Abortion
Reformation Lutheran Church
Anno Domini 2001
Anti-abortionists and the right to use force to stop abortion
Statement:
Since convenience-driven abortion is nothing less than the murder of innocent human beings, the use of force to stop such wanton child-slaughter is justified. The same biblical principles which justify the intervention in behalf of the innocent adults, threatened with death, applies to intervention in behalf of the innocent womb child. If there is even the possibility that the innocent will be killed, the use of even lethal force is justified (Ex. 22:2)
The actions of those who have killed abortionists or destroyed their machinery of death ought to be lauded rather than lamented. Prisoners and defendants ought to be honored rather than demeaned. Judges who have sentenced such citizens, calling the convicts cowards, ought to repent and honor them as heroes. Convicts (or those otherwise credited) ought to be provided with compensation and honor so that the contrast is not less than what the world observed in the treatment of Nelson Mandela: one moment a prisoner; the next the prime minister.
Explanation
Christian doctrine does not and has not historically prohibited “violence” for the purpose of doing good. And, secondly, Christian doctrine and practice has always affirmed the fact that God inspires His people and strengthens and drives them to take action as individuals and as communities. We need not recoil from these truths when we are calumniated by modern pagans who call us crazy or violent, even as they continue in their “sanity,” advocating rights to abortion, sodomy, and fornication. On the contrary, we believe that God induces His people to extraordinary deeds. He is pleased with His people’s concern for the “weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matt. 23:23). Indeed, He inspires His people to sacrificial acts of kindness and righteousness. (We constantly talk of “the Lord leading me” to buy this house or take that job, but woe to the crazy fellow who says, “the Lord led me to save a baby”!)
Some think that baby-saving must be achieved only by peaceful means – as if the Lord of Hosts were no “Man of War” himself.
Others think that the rescuer is restricted from baby-saving by the fact that his government does not give him permission. Moses gives permission to defend the innocent, when there is even the chance that they might be killed by someone who breaks into a house at night (Deuteronomy 22:2). It is not just family members which may be protected. Moses (and Jesus) commands us to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18).
Our own civil laws, (common law, codes, and judicial rulings) all allow for the use of force –even lethal force – to defend the innocent against an aggressor. The issue for us is to affirm that the womb children are in fact a class of human beings – a “people group” for missions-minded folks. We must affirm the truth of his humanity by affirming the legitimacy of taking defensive action.
The fact that we never find Jesus in a situation where an innocent person was about to be killed is not grounds for denying that He wound have intervened to save one of those children whom He “suffered to come unto” Him if such a one were threatened with death. What do we imagine His counsel would have been to the Good Samaritan had the timing been different and had the rescuer come upon the victim while the assault and robbery were in processes?
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