C. Everett Koop was the Surgeon General during the Reagan administration in the wake of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision of the United States Supreme Court that opened the floodgate to abortion. He was a pediatric surgeon and the first Surgeon General to become a household name.
When asked about abortion, he made the point that abortion has always been legal, but has not always meant the same thing. He said the mother is literally the life support system for the baby; if the pregnancy becomes troubled and a danger to the mother’s health then the life of the baby is also in jeopardy. When necessary in such instances an abortion was performed in an attempt to save both the mother and the child. Abortion was considered a medical term for the early termination of a pregnancy, not the killing of a baby.
That subtle distinction became stark reality when New York’s Governor Cuomo announced this past Jan. 22, that the New York legislature removed the 24 week, first trimester, restriction on abortions. Now, in New York, a baby can be healthy and reach full-term, and can be killed before it sees the light of day if that is what the mother decides.
All this in a state that thinks lethal injection executions for convicted murderers is cruel and unusual punishment, but partial-birth abortions are not. New Yorkers get squeamish at the thought of injecting a murderer with a lethal dose of chemicals, but think nothing of puncturing the scull of a child being born to vacuum out its brains to make passage of the now dead baby through the birth canal easier.
In his article “Fire In My Bones,” J. Lee Grady writes, “At the foot of the rebuilt World Trade Center in New York City, a somber 9/11 monument features the names of the 2,606 people who died in the terrorist attack. Besides those names, it also mentions 11 unborn children. The phrase ‘and her unborn child’ is inscribed after the names of pregnant 9/11 victims.”
How hypocritical can it get? New York memorializes the unborn that died at the hands of terrorists and then passes a law that subjects the unborn to continued terrorist attacks and produce more than 11 victims.
The psalmist wrote, “For You formed my inward parts, You wove me in my mother’s womb…Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them,” (Psalm 139:13, 15).
When Governor Cuomo publicly announced passage of the law, New Yorkers clapped and cheered. I wept while writing this article contemplating the babies that will die and be added to the “American” holocaust, wondering how much more blatantly barbarous can we become?
I think people often believe God’s judgment is something akin to fire and brimstone raining down from above, but I think sometimes when we disregard His truth, His judgment is allowing us to abort ourselves.