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Randy's Response to a Jewish Boy's Position on Abortion
Dear Mr. Alcorn,
I am a 13-year-old Jew. In performing research regarding denial of the Holocaust, I stumbled upon your page. While I disagree vehemently with your anti-abortion position, that is not about what I am concerned. The contents of the article were very helpful, and I wanted to commend you on your efforts to chastise the atrocious belief that the Holocaust never occurred.
Sincerely, Daniel
answered by Randy Alcorn
(All names and identifying information have been changed to protect the individual)
Daniel,
Thanks for your thoughtful note. How kind of you to write. I'm always glad to get letters from someone your age. Quite a few young people read my books, especially my novels, and I like hearing from them. I wanted to share with you some things to consider.
On the abortion issue, I take no offense at your disagreement, but I would encourage you to take a closer look. I will not try to be critical of you, but I will just express my convictions, in the same way that you are free to express yours. Perhaps you and I can both learn from each other.
Several years ago I spent time with a national prolife group in Israel, where Israeli citizens expressed their concerns that preborn children are being dehumanized in the way that Jews were in Nazi Germany.
Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg argues that the key to the destruction of the Jewish people was the use and acceptance of such terms as "useless eaters" and "garbage" that blind society to the once-obvious fact that these were real people. Well, even though they're now demeaned and dehumanized by terms like "product of conception," it was once obvious to everybody that preborn children were real people.
In my book ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments, I cite page after page from prominent scientists, from medical school textbooks, affirming each human life begins at conception. Do you really believe all these scientists are wrong?
Daniel, I don't think people should be discriminated against for race, gender, size, age, or place of residence, do you? So when people say of preborn babies, "They're just a few inches big," or "They're just a few days or weeks or months old," or "They're still living inside their mother," I don't discriminate against them because of their size, age, or place of residence. (It's like saying, "He's just a Serbian," or "He's just a Muslim," or "He's just a Gypsy," or "She's just a woman.")
Because of your Jewish heritage - which you are right to treasure, I highly recommend that you read Robert Jay Lifton's powerful book, The Nazi Doctors: Study in the Psychology of Genocide. As a Jewish scholar, he documents how normal and intelligent medical professionals endorsed and participated in cruel and deadly surgeries with shocking ease. Well, that is exactly what has happened in America (and many other places, including, tragically, Israel) regarding abortion.
I hope you have not been influenced to accept abortion just because it is legal. Remember, the law once protected unborn children, but was changed in 1973. As Jews had their legal rights stripped from them in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, so preborn children were systematically stripped of their rights in the late '60s and early '70s. But just because the laws protecting them were changed in Germany, doesn't mean the Jews became subhuman. Just because it became legal to kill Jews doesn't mean it became right. And just because killing preborn children was legalized, doesn't mean it became right. Legality and morality are not the same thing. Those who fail to see that become collaborators in the atrocities of their place and time.
The slippery slope starts with the concept that some lives have more worth than others. Historically, this has always slid society into further human exploitation. Dr. Leo Alexander was a consultant to the Secretary of War at the Nuremberg Trials. Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, he points out that the Holocaust began with a subtle shift in medical ethics:
Whatever proportions these crimes finally assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they had started from small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the acceptance of the attitude... that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived. This attitude in its early stages concerned itself merely with the severely and chronically sick. Gradually the sphere of those to be included in this category was enlarged to encompass the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the racially unwanted, and finally all non-Germans. (Leo Alexander, "Medical Science Under Dictatorship," New England Journal of Medicine (14 July 1989):39-47.)
Dr. Josef Mengele, the notorious "butcher of Auschwitz," epitomized the Nazi ideal of fastidious devotion to research and medicine, killing innocent people in the name of bettering humanity. I'll never forget reading the papers several years ago when they first opened Argentine files concerning Dr. Mengele. It turns out he spent his postwar years - what would you guess - performing abortions. I admit, Daniel, I did not find this in the least surprising. Those who commit atrocities against one group of innocent people should be expected to commit them against another.
I read that Hitler killed 275,000 handicapped people before he started killing Jews - when you kill one group of people, it makes it easier to kill another. Did you know that child abuse has risen dramatically in America since abortion was legalized? Think about it - if it's fine to kill a child before birth, what's the big deal about beating up the same child after he's born?
In 1948, with the Holocaust still fresh in its memory, the World Medical Association adopted the Declaration of Geneva that said, "I will maintain the utmost respect for human life, from the time of conception; even under threat, I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity." In 1949 the World Medical Association also adopted the International Code of Medical Ethics which said, "A doctor must always bear in mind the importance of preserving human life from the time of conception until death."
History has given us a perspective that at the time few people had. I believe one day history will give us a perspective on the killing of unborn children that few have today. It is relatively easy in retrospect to see the evil of American slavery or Nazi cruelty, but at those times and places few saw them because they were being nationally accepted and defended and people became gradually desensitized. The real trick is seeing the horrors being committed in our own day that are nationally accepted and defended. We have become desensitized to the truth of the humanity and worth of the unborn, and the moral evil of abortion. We need to break out of the political correctness of our time and look with fresh and sane eyes to see if we too have bought into the propaganda that says killing some group of people - in this case, the unborn - is perfectly fine and right and moral.
Did you know that every doctor doing an abortion violates the fundamental historic creeds of the medical profession? The fifth-century B.C. Hippocratic oath was a resolution intended to forever separate killing and healing in the medical profession. Previously killing and healing had been incongruously wedded together in the practices of pagan "doctors," who were more like witch doctors. In the Hippocratic oath, which was taken routinely by doctors for centuries, physicians swore they would never participate in inducing an abortion.
Daniel, let me appeal to the Hebrew Scriptures that I think we both believe. Proverbs 31:8-9 says, "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy."
In our organization we stand up for those who are persecuted for race, gender, religion, age, size, you name it. And if anyone falls into the category of people who "cannot speak for themselves," I think it is preborn children, created in the image of God.
Martin Luther King said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." By accepting injustice to the unborn, we open the door to those who perpetuate injustice to women, Jews, and the handicapped, among others. Just as there were those who were so indoctrinated with the anti-Semitic rhetoric and assumptions of their culture that they embraced them without ever analyzing their inaccuracy or their evil, there are many today so indoctrinated with the anti-preborn rhetoric and assumptions of their culture, that they embrace them without ever analyzing their inaccuracy or their evil. Frankly, I am pro-baby for exactly the same reasons I am pro-Jewish and pro-black and pro-woman. I think it is entirely inconsistent to pick and choose which humans' rights we will defend and which we will deny.
One last question to consider: the issue of choice.
Laws against false advertising restrict a businessman's right to free speech. Laws against discrimination infringe on the freedom of choice of those who would treat minorities unfairly. When others' rights are at stake - and particularly when their very lives are at stake, any decent society must restrict the individual's freedom of choice. Is an innocent person being damaged by a woman's choice to have an abortion? If not, no problem. If so, it is a major problem that society cannot afford to ignore.
"Freedom to choose" is too vague for meaningful discussion; we must always ask, "Freedom to choose what?"
It's absurd to defend a specific choice merely on the basis that it is a choice. Yet if you read the literature and listen to the talk shows, you see that this is constantly done by prochoice activists. "The right to choose" is a magic slogan that seems to make all choices equally legitimate.
All of us are in favor of free choice when it comes to where people live, what kind of car they drive, and a thousand matters of personal preference that harm no one else. We are also prochoice in matters of religion, politics, and lifestyle, even when people choose beliefs and behavior with which we don't agree. But most of us are decidedly not prochoice when it comes to murder, rape, kidnapping, armed robbery, child abuse, and genocide. When we oppose the "right to choose" rape or child abuse or the right to kill people because of their race or religion, we aren't opposing a "right," we're opposing a "wrong." And we're not narrow minded and bigoted for doing so. We're just decent people concerned for the rights of the innocent. Do you see the point, Daniel? To be prochoice about someone's right to kill is to be anti-choice about someone else's right to live.
Whenever we hear the term prochoice, we must ask the all-important question, "What choice are we talking about?" Given the facts about abortion, the question really becomes, "Do you think people should have the right to choose to kill innocent children if that's what they want to do?"
Nearly all violations of human rights have been defended on the grounds of the right to choose.
The slave-owners in this country a century and a half ago were prochoice. They said, "You don't have to own slaves if you don't want to, but don't tell us we can't choose to. It's our right." Those who wanted slaveholding to be illegal were accused of being anti-choice and anti-freedom, and of imposing their morality on others.
The civil rights movement, like the abolitionist movement one hundred years earlier, vehemently opposed the exercise of personal rights that much of society defended. It was solidly anti-choice when it came to racial discrimination. Whites historically had a free choice to own slaves, and later to have segregated lunch counters if they so chose. After all, America was a free country. But the civil rights movement fought to take away that free choice from them. Likewise, the women's movement fought to take away an employer's free choice to discriminate against women.
Nearly every movement of oppression and exploitation - from slavery, to prostitution, to pornography, to drug dealing, to abortion - has labeled itself prochoice. Likewise, opposing movements offering compassion and deliverance have been labeled anti-choice by the exploiters. At least with prostitution, pornography, and drugs, the victim usually has some choice. In the case of abortion, the victim has no choice. He is society's most glaring exception to all the high-sounding rhetoric about the right to choose and the right to live one's life without interference from others.
The prochoice position always overlooks the victim's right to choose. The women don't choose rape. The blacks didn't choose slavery. The Jews didn't choose the ovens. And the babies don't choose abortion.
If you ever want to talk about this - or about the question of who Jesus was and is - I'm here, Daniel. Best wishes, my friend. You are obviously a very intelligent and articulate young man. I pray that God will use for his glory-and for the good of others-the gifts he has given you.
Randy Alcorn
Eternal Perspective Ministries, 2229 E. Burnside #23, Gresham, OR 97030, 503-663-6481, www.epm.org