“therefore choose life, that both you and your
descendants may live …”
(Deut 30:19, NKJV)
Following the previous teaching we cannot let the opportunity pass to link to a very contentious subject which has to do with women and their choices concerning pregnancy and children – contraception. When Paul in 1 Tim 2:15 makes it clear that women are the mothers of all the living, the discussion turns to this primary responsibility which is given to women, an important ethical issue which we need to need to think about.
Part of the sexual revolution of the last century was the freedom of choice women now demanded when it came to pregnancy. Although contraception in all kinds of forms had been used throughout the ages, the Pill dictated the emancipation of the woman like nothing other. It was easy, affordable, and placed the control right on her tongue. Around the world the Pill made such an impact that it truly became a lifestyle for many women.
Before we look at contraception as such, it is important to look at God’s nature, that He is love (1 John 4:8), which always implies choice. God never takes away man’s choice, and regards personal choice in such high regard that He never overrules it, even though it has, for instance, affected the entire history of human life in certain very negative ways, purely on account of the choices Adam and Eve, as our ancestors, made.
The most important strategy which Satan uses when it comes to man is blinding him from the truth. The god of this world has veiled our thoughts (2 Cor 4:4; John 12:40-41) in such a way that we cannot discern his plans (2 Cor 2:10-11). And his plan and mission is clear – “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.” (John 8:44). We know that he came “to steal, and to kill, and to destroy” (John 10:10).
Nowhere is this reality made more clear than in the case of contraception.
It took years of counselling with thousands of people to come to this terrifying conclusion. Most men have an immense struggle to sustain a deepening relationship with God on account of 1 Pet 3:7 – they do not honour their wife, and thus God does not listen to their prayers. Most women have an immense struggle to sustain a deepening relationship with God because they have blood on their hands – through their choices of contraception they have often unwittingly murdered her children.
Throughout the Old Testament God warns man to not sacrifice his children to Molech/Moloch – “And you shall not give your seed to pass them through to Molech, nor shall you pollute the name of your God; I am Jehovah.” (Lev 18:21, LITV). In Hebrew Molech means king. The generic legion-face of the Evil one (Mark 5:9) who reigns over the kingdoms of this world (Matt 4:8) also manifests himself in the New Testament. Here his name is Abaddon/ Apóllyon: “And they had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, but in Greek he has the name Apollyon. These two names mean Destroyer. In Acts 7:42 Stephen, just before he is stoned, delivers a powerful speech to explain the history to the Jewish authorities. In verse 42 he shows them that they had been worshiping “the host of heaven”, which includes Moloch, and” the star of your god Remphan” (verse 43). About Moloch Thayer says the following: “(it is) the name of the idol god … to which human victims, particularly young children were offered in sacrifice. Its image was a hollow brazen figure, with the head of an ox, and outstretched human arms. It was heated red hot by a fire from within, and the little ones placed in its arms to be slowly burned, while to prevent the parents from hearing the dying cries, the sacrificing priests beat drums.”
Remphan means: “the shrunken (as lifeless)”.
A more gruesome yet apt description of the Pill as a capsule coffin in which children are shrunk till they’re lifeless will be hard to find. And this is done with open arms, in a casual, shrug of the shoulders-manner, with a smile – Honey, I’ve shrunk the kids.
How could we have been so misled? It’s all about semantics, this splitting hairs over when exactly life originates. We don’t have to rehash all the arguments – let’s briefly have a simple biology lesson about foetal development –
| Day 1 | Fertilisation takes place in the mother’s fallopian tubes, the entire, unique
set of 46 chromosomes of a new human being is present in genetic code in the embryo. The embryo is the new living being from which the baby will be formed. In this code the child’s sex, eye and hair colour and characteristics are encoded. A single DNA-string contains more information than a thousand volumes of an encyclopaedia. Life has begun! |
| Day 2 | The complex biological process of cell division starts. |
| ±Day 6 | The embryo moves from the fallopian tubes to the uterus and is implanted
there so that it can be fed and provided with blood, to grow as needed. |
| ±Day 16 | The first organ of the new being, the heart, starts beating with the little
person’s unique blood, often from a different blood group than the mother’s. |
| ±Day 21 | The baby’s spinal cord and nervous system is formed. The liver, kidneys
and intestines start taking shape. |
| Week 5 | Eyes, hands and legs are formed. |
| Week 6 | Brain waves are distinguished, lips and finger nails.
|
| Week 7 | Eyelids and toes form; the nose can be distinguished; baby can kick and
swim. |
| Week 8 | Every organ is in its place, bones replace cartilage and a unique fingerprint
is formed. The baby can hear. |
| Week 9 | Teeth are formed. The baby can turn its head and frown J |
Life begins with the melting together of the male sperm and the female ovum on Day 1 of fertilisation. It is a new living person, if it were not, why would it grow? Life does not only start once the zygote is implanted in the womb, or when the heart (visibly) starts beating. Life does not only begin once the brain starts functioning. The first signs of life are already there in its embryonic COMPLETENESS on Day 1.
In this lies the lie concerning contraception – most forms of chemical contraception, especially most forms (+-40) of the low dosage Pill, the intra-uterine apparatus which is placed in a woman’s uterus, injections, emergency contraception, the so-called morning after pill, do not prevent contraception, but abort the zygote which is on its way to be planted into the uterus. The result is an early abortion, the murder of an already formed individual. Women are not informed that this is one of the results of this type of contraception, that it often prevents the zygote from being implanted into the uterus, and thus aborts it (Physicians’ Desk Reference 1998-edition, p. 1782). In Randy Alcorne’s startling book Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortions? he explains that these forms of contraception work in three ways – “1. inhibiting ovulation (the primary mechanism), 2. thickening the cervical mucus, thereby making it more difficult for sperm to travel to the egg, and 3. thinning and shrivelling the lining of the uterus to the point that it is unable or less able to facilitate the implantation of the newly fertilized egg. The first two mechanisms are contraceptive. The third is abortive.”
In Dr. Kristine Severyn’s article “Abortifacient Drugs and Devices: Medical and Moral Dilemmas” in Linacre Quarterly (Aug 1990, p.55) she spells it out – “The third effect of combined oral contraceptives is to alter the endometrium in such a way that implantation of the fertilized egg (new life) is made more difficult, if not impossible. In effect, the endometrium becomes atrophic and unable to support implantation of the fertilized egg … The alteration of the endometrium, making it hostile to implantation by the fertilized egg, provides a backup abortifacient method to prevent pregnancy.” This is absolutely terrifying.
Some allege that the Pill stops the egg cell from being released. But medical experts confirm there is what is called stray egg cells, which are still inexplicably released when the Pill is used, and can thus be fertilized. We’ll let Gwendolyn Brook’s poem, The Mother, deliver the last argument –
“Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.
I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?–
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.”
In God’s name, choose life.
- Sela: Repent before God of the blood on your hands.
- Read: Num 28-36
- Examine how this has been fulfilled: Num 35:6 in the light of this whole sub-theme.
- For a deeper understanding: Read Alcorne’s book mentioned in the text.
