Much of Ireland
imagines they have joined the ranks of the liberated as a result of the
demolition of its constitutional protection for the unborn. It does not seem to
care that by the same action it has effectively delivered a death sentence on a
significant percentage of its potential population.
Actions of this nature
are the inevitable consequence of secularisation. As belief in God and
awareness of His Word declines, so does resistance to abortion laws. It’s a
matter of anthropology: when man believes himself to be a random event instead
of a purposeful creation, he will inevitably draw the same conclusion about
those both within him and around him. This will then enable him to weigh lives
on utilitarian scales and so make distinctions about their respective
value.
The Bible makes it
plain that God considers even the deliberate abandonment of one’s child as an
extreme example of heartlessness (Isaiah 49:15); and does not distinguish
between the value of the child in the womb and the child who has made it into
the world, using exactly the same word to describe both (Luke 1:41&44; Luke
18:15).
We are obliged to show
compassion and offer care to the small percentage of women who are caught in extreme
circumstances, though while the ‘Yes' campaign centred its focus on those
emotive margins to gain its advantage, it is extremely disingenuous and
dangerous to ignore the fact that the overwhelming majority of women who have
presented themselves for abortion have done so for socio-economic reasons.
The result of this
referendum is a terrible outcome for everyone. People who have celebrated this
event with the kind of enthusiasm that is more typical of a pop concert may not
even realise the extent of what they have done; declaring their freedom even as
they are delivered into the chains of their own judgment. When men sin with
abandonment, God gives them over to sin that they may be consumed by it. They
pour the drink into the glass with gladness, but do not yet realise that they
will be made to drink it with grief, every last drop.
Which is why the
majority in County Donegal, plus the minority across the rest of the Republic
of Ireland, who voted to preserve the lives of both mother and child, deserve
our humble thanks – and all the efforts of those who are now determined to
extend the stretch of the killing fields to Northern Ireland should be
implacably resisted.
Rev. Ian Brown
Clerk, Free
Presbyterian Church of Ulster
