All women and men of good will affirm the value and dignity of human life. We reject the pernicious notions that human value arises from some fiat of government, some individually chosen level of self-fulfillment, or some socially determined level of "usefulness." No matter how poor and defenseless, old and weak, crippled and deformed, young and helpless, human beings enjoy the greatest worth and dignity. To choose to disregard this dignity sets us on the path to destructive moral chaos. To choose violence toward another human being embraces evil and destruction. To choose to wantonly destroy the life of another human being casts us into the abyss of murder. All of this the human community knows with certainty.

We can only view, then, the current American practice of abortion with moral and spiritual alarm and great sadness. Of every three lives conceived and implanted in a mother's womb in America today, only two are allowed to survive until birth. What was once defended as a rare and tragic necessity has become an accepted solution to unwanted pregnancy, a popular political stand, and a profitable industry. American law against abortion has not been liberalized or reformed. It has been abolished, with abortions now legal through the ninth month of pregnancy, until birth, under any circumstances. Given this most permissive law of any democratic nation, abortion is the most common surgical procedure in American, following circumcision. The sheer number of abortions in the USA is enough to trouble even pro-choice advocates: more than 1.3 million abortions per year, 3500 per day, 150 per hour, 2.5 per minute!

Each of these abortions represents tragic personal loss. Each arises from a tale of anguish and relational failure and intense personal pain. Each abortion results in the anguish of loss. A human being who should be the object of our protection and love will never join us for a family celebration, will never taste the joy of life. But that is not all. The abortion license has also helped create a coarsened society, desensitized to death and disloyal to life. We have crossed over a line, leaving civilized society behind. By approving routine violence against the weak and teaching our children to do the same, we have proclaimed that it is permissible for the strong to dominate the weak and eliminate the inconvenient. The barbarism of such views and practices is profoundly repulsive.

For this reason, the abortion license has proven to be profoundly anti-woman. Despite the propaganda of elite feminists, this has been the historic position of the feminist movement. For over a hundred years, feminists have warned us that abortion is oppression and violence against women and children. They called it "child murder" (Susan B. Anthony), "degrading to women" (Elizabeth Cady Stanton), "most barbaric" (Margaret Sanger), and a "disowning of feminine values" (Simone de Beauvoir).

How have we lost this feminist wisdom? Listen to these words of penetrating insight from Frederica Matthews-Green:

A woman with an unplanned pregnancy faces more than "inconvenience;" many adversities, financial and social, at school, at work, at home confront her. Our mistake was in looking at these problems and deciding that the fault lay with the woman, that she should be the one to change. We focused on her swelling belly, not the pressures that made her so desperate. We advised her, "Go have this operation and you'll fit right in." What a choice we made for her. She climbs onto a clinic table and endures a violation deeper than rape . . . . then is . . . grateful to be adapted to the social machine that rejected her when pregnant. And the machine grinds on, rejecting her pregnant sisters. It is a cruel joke to call this a woman's "choice." We may choose to sacrifice our life and career plans, or choose to undergo humiliating invasive surgery and sacrifice our offspring. How fortunate we are - we have a choice! Perhaps it is time to amend the slogan - "Abortion: a woman's right to capitulate." If we refused to choose, if we insisted on keeping both our lives and bodies intact, what changes would our communities have to make? What would make abortion unnecessary? Flexible school situations, more flex-time, part-time and home-commute jobs, attractive adoption opportunities, safe family-planning choices, support in handling sex responsibly: this is a partial list. Yet these changes will never come as long as we're lying down on abortion tables 1,300,000 times a year to ensure the status quo. We've adapted to this surgical procedure, to the point that Justice Blackmun could write in his Webster dissent, "Millions of women have ordered their lives around" abortion. That we have willingly ordered our lives around a denigrating surgical procedure - accepted it as the price we must pay to keep our life plans intact - is an ominous sign (The Pro-life Infonet (infonet- net@prolife.org), December 14, 1997).

That the feminist movement has become one of the most strident proponents of such anti-woman practices is among the saddest signs of our slide into the barbarity.

Because all know that it is wrong to deliberately kill human beings, some account must be given of the logic of the pro-abortion stance. There would seem to be four options (following the analysis of J. Budziszewski, "Revenge of Conscience," First Things, June/July, 1998, p.24): 1. We can deny that the act is deliberate - thereby short-circuiting the moral argument at it's inception. If I do not act, I cannot be responsible for acting immorally. 2. We can deny that it kills - if I do not kill, I cannot be responsible for murder. 3. We can deny that its victims are human - most of us condone the killing of animals for food and clothing, and all of us condone the killing of bacteria. What we know is wrong is the killing of human beings. Therefore, abortion is not wrong if the fetus fails to fulfill some essential requirement for being human. 4. We can admit that abortion is a moral ill, but claim that it is for some reason still justifiable - Self defense is obviously not murder, so there are some exceptions to the rule which forbids killing human beings. Perhaps abortion can be justified for the same kind of reason.

The first two are not very promising. Abortion does not just happen; it must be performed. It's proponents not only admit this, they celebrate it as a "choice." As to the second option, millions of us have viewed sonograms of babies kicking, sucking their thumbs, and turning somersaults. Whatever these little ones are, they are busily alive, and successful abortions are 100% lethal to them.

Option three is most common among pro-abortion advocates. But a denial of the humanity of the fetus founders on scientific fact. From the moment of conception we know that a genetically distinct human being exists. We also know that human development proceeds along a seamless continuum from conception through birth and beyond. In this light it is ironic that discussions of fetal "personhood" are allowed to drift upon a sea of speculation without seeking any anchorage in an account of the fetal body. The idea, for instance, that there is a moment of "quickening" is now known to be false. Further, if the new-born child has intrinsic worth, then the same child located in the womb just prior to birth must have equal worth. The new-born child exhibits the uniquely human characteristics only as potentialities. Since we know that newborn infants have human dignity despite the fact that they posses the uniquely human virtues only as potentialities, we cannot reasonably deny dignity to the unborn, who possess those same potentialities. For this very reason, the German Constitutional Court ruled unanimously in 1975 and unanimously reaffirmed in 1993, that the constitutional right to life must extend to the unborn child throughout pregnancy. In the words of the German court:

The process of development . . . is a continuing process which exhibits no sharp demarcation and does not allow a precise division of the various steps of development of human life. The process does not end with birth; the phenomena of consciousness which are specific to the human personality, for example, appear for the first time a rather long time after birth. Therefore, the protection . . . of the Basic Law cannot be limited either to the "completed" human being after birth or to the child about to be born which is independently capable of living. . . No distinction can be made here between various stages of the life developing itself before birth, or between unborn and born life (First Things, February, 1999, p.19).

This seamless developmental continuum represents a significant challenge for all thinking about the moral and legal status of the human fetus. Not surprisingly, sincere pro-life folk differ among themselves about where in the very early stages of development we should begin to protect newly created life. Some are impressed with the importance of implantation of the embryo in the uterine wall as the critical stage of development. Without this step, they reason, there will be no birth or fully human life. And this consideration is pressed on us by advancing technologies like in vitro fertilization and by the frequency of spontaneous miscarriage in the very early days of pregnancy. Others point to developmental stages that, to their minds, signal the emergence of life that we could confidently call "human." They identify a beating heart or the production of brain waves or sentience (ability to feel pain, for example) as the critical moment when we can confidently say that the developing fetus is human. Still others stress the moment of conception as the critical juncture. What are we to make of this variety of opinion?

First, all of these folk would argue for a very conservative approach. All would emphasize that the developmental stage they view as critical for entering the status of fully human is very early in the process, that absolute certainty is not possible at the current stage of our knowledge and may never be, and that, therefore, we should actively resist any intentional destruction of human fetal life. In short, all would be committed to a pro-life moral vision and its legal and social practice.

Second, however, there is much to say in favor of the moment of conception as the point when fully human life begins. The just-conceived embryo shares all of the humanly significant characteristics of the new-born infant. The uniquely human characteristics of the new-born infant are membership in our species and design for human community with its virtues of reason and love. These attributes are fully shared by the embryo from the moment of conception. Intentional destruction of either would amount to the same sort of evil.

The other standards for being fully human, by comparison, seem inadequate. Non-human life manifests heart beat and produces brain waves, so it is hard to see how they would be sufficient criteria. For many, human-like appearance is highly significant. All would agree that, if a creature looks human, we have no rational basis for its wanton destruction. But what we deem as human-like appearance seems an inadequate standard for determining whether a life should be protected. Awful episodes of experimentation with eugenics should alert us to the inadequacy of this line of thought. Failure of implantation or very early term miscarriage raise another range of issues. Clearly they do not represent "intentional destruction" of human life, so their relevance to our concerns are less immediate. They are highly relevant to the related discussion of contraception and will undoubtedly make some forms of contraception much less attractive to those who hold a pro-life ethic. They also raise interesting and finally unanswerable questions about the status of these lives in eternity. Perhaps it is not inappropriate to defer these discussions to another day. In vitro fertilization is actually the "intentional creation of life" for parents who are eager to welcome the developing child in life. Again, its direct relevance is limited for the consideration of the morality of abortion. In the end then, it seems most prudent to afford the full protection to developing human life from its very beginning.

Third, within the basic "logic of life" there should be wide latitude for conversation. Medical research will continue to inform this discussion and require periodic re-thinking of particular aspects of the ethic of life. Interestingly, advances in science have consistently worked to strengthen a pro-life vision. We must also allow wide scope and genuine freedom for continuing moral reflection and conversation and disagreement. Narrow and legalistic insistence on our own formula will cripple a vital ethic of life. The differences among pro-life folk are insignificant compared to the coherence of their shared pro-life vision. There is scant comfort in these differences for those who would deny that the developing fetus is a human being.

Invariably and ominously, those who deny that the fetus is human must redefine "human" so that the infant in utero is less "human" than an adult person. Various criteria have been advanced to accomplish this redefinition, including "personhood," "deliberative rationality," and "self awareness." No one has been able to come up with a criterion that makes babies in the womb less human but leaves everyone else as they were. Nowhere have these "facts" been expressed more bluntly than in the pro-abortion editorial in California Medicine (#113 (1979), no. 3, p.22), the official journal of the California Medical Association:

Since the old ethic has not been fully displaced, it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death. The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking human life would be ludicrous if they were not often put forth under socially impeccable auspices.

Here, indeed, is one of the most troubling results of the abortion license. The arbitrary redefinitions of what it means to be human, set without reference to biological fact, lead to an inhumanity which threatens to engulf us. A climate is created where the claims of vulnerable human lives are casually disregarded, discounted, and eliminated. More than a decade ago Nat Hentoff asked, "If fetuses have no rights, handicapped infants have no rights, and can the aged and infirm be far behind?" (Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 1985, p.16). Today, pro-abortion scholarship denies that there is anything intrinsically wrong with early post natal infanticide (See the survey by Don Marquis, Journal of Philosophy 86 (April, 1989) 183-202). And the legal reasoning in Supreme Court abortion decisions provides precedence for euthanasia. We cannot re-define the human community without raising the specter of the Nazi eugenics effort and the Holocaust, the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia and Rwanda, or the slaughter of female infants in China. These people too redefined what it means to be human to fit their own agenda. Whether this cheapening of what is precious happens through right-wing death squads in Central America or left-wing abortionists in an American campus community makes little moral difference. Both injustices must be protested emphatically.

Option four also seems quite unpromising for the pro-choice view, even literally nonsense on the face of it. That something must not be done is what it means for it to be wrong, and the fact that a rule has exceptions does not mean that anything can become an exception to the rule. The exceptions to the murder rule are already well understood - self defense, war, capital punishment. Despite these hurdles, this sort of justification is being offered for abortion.

One justification conjures up the image of illegal, back alley abortions as the inevitable consequence of any serious legal restriction of the abortion license. We might call it the "coat hanger" justification. Abortions will be performed. Better we should make them "safe." Illegal abortion provided by untrained, non-medical outlaws constitutes a greater evil than our current abortion practices, these folk insist.

Of course, the coathanger is not the real alternative. Were abortion outlawed in response to a pro-life moral vision, there would no doubt be some illegal abortions. The technology of abortion is inexpensive and readily available. Abortionists will not need to resort to coathangers. What is arguable is that, in fact, they never did. And more importantly, the over-all threat to the "safety" of women would certainly be no greater than what occurs under today's abortion license. Given the sheer quantity of abortions and the inevitability of medical complications and the unaccountability of today's abortion clinics, the physical harm to women might well decline significantly if abortion were made illegal.

Here we must engage the complex problem of the formulation of public policy. History reminds us that the best public policy is not always obvious. Indeed, the complexity the task, the extent of our ignorance, and the devastating impact of unintended consequences of well-intentioned changes ought to produce a larger measure of humility in all of us. Where we would want to agree with those who raise this objection to the pro-life vision is that abortion is exactly a matter of public policy and public justice. Attempts to reduce the discussion of abortion to a matter of private preference and choice are hopelessly reductionistic and doomed to failure.

The "coathanger" alternative reminds us, rightly, of the horror of medically unsafe abortions. But somehow it never quite allows itself to face the undeniable fact that abortion in 100% unsafe for the infant in utero. When, we assert, as most do, that public policy should be shaped so that abortion becomes "rare," we are allowing this lethal dimension of all abortions to begin to impress itself upon us. Wisdom seems to dictate that abortion should be both safe and rare. This is the appropriate direction for public policy to pursue in our widely pluralistic society. And if this is the case, then we need to acknowledge that saying, "Abortion is OK; it's a matter of your private preference" has been a tragic failure. It would be far better for our opening assumption to be, "Abortion is wrong; let us compassionately sort out the hard cases."

Another justification regards abortion as a form of self-defense in the face of problem-pregnancy. The self defense justification has some validity if the mother's life is directly threatened. In our wildly aberrational sexual culture we will have to confront an awful range of extremely tragic moral dilemmas. In confronting these tragedies we must summon both tough-minded moral clarity and tender-hearted compassion. What has deepened this tragedy, however, is the effort of pro-choice advocates to turn this line of justification into a metaphor. Women who acknowledge that they are killing their children nonetheless say it is the lesser of three evils. The two greater evils, they say, are keeping the baby and disrupting life plans or giving birth to the baby who will be adopted. Either of these options, these women believe, would be a kind of "death" to them. Better the baby should die.

It seems impossible not to view this as the extreme of rationalization and hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of the pro-choice position has been identified by pro-choice author Cynthia Gorney. In an interview in the New York Press, Gorney observes:

Another problem is, if you're going to take a pro-choice position in this country, you have to be willing to be to say, "I understand this is moral hypocrisy, I wish it weren't so, but it's better than the alternative." It is moral hypocrisy when we say, "In this room, you get rid of your twenty-weeker and we'll call it a fetus, and in that room, we're going to do everything we can to save your twenty-weeker and call it a baby." (First Things, January 1999, p.66-67).

No pro-life advocate has expressed these things more eloquently.

There is a real alternative to pro-choice rationalization, denial, nonsense, and hypocrisy. It demands, however, a return, a costly return, to our original affirmation of the value and dignity of every human life. If fetal life is human life, it deserves legal protection and loving nurture. In our legal and social life, even animal life is more carefully protected. Such a situation is a moral and legal monstrosity. We must do everything we can to work toward a society in which every unborn child is protected in law and welcomed in life. There is no more urgent and public question than the question of who belongs to the community for which we accept common responsibility.

II. THE GOSPEL OF LIFE

The Biblical gospel deepens the basic assumptions of the above argument. To understand ourselves and God in terms of the Bible is to know that we are God's creatures. We neither create ourselves nor belong to ourselves. Our God is the one "from whom are all things and for whom we exist" (I Cor. 8:6). Whenever new life begins to develop in any pregnancy, the creative power of God is at work. The prologue of John's Gospel asserts that all life comes into being through the creative agency of the Logos, the Word who became flesh in Jesus Christ.

All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it (John 1: 3-5).

So Karl Barth remarks, "The true light of the world shines already in the darkness of the mother's womb" (CD III.4,416). Within this world view, abortion - whether it be murder or not - is wrong for the same reason that murder is wrong: it presumptuously assumes authority to dispose of life which does not belong to us. We are called to act as stewards who bear life in trust. The normal response to pregnancy within Scripture is one of rejoicing in God's gift, even when that gift comes unexpectedly.

Further, Scripture places a very high value on human life. Our essential humanity comes from the Creator of the galaxies, who selected human beings alone, out of the created order, to bear the divine image (Genesis 1:28). God prohibits murder precisely because our neighbor bears this unique divine stamp (Genesis 9:6). So precious, indeed, is every person, that the Sovereign of history suffered the hell of Roman crucifixion so that whoever believes may live forever in the presence of the living God. Human life is more valuable than the highest secularist opinion ever imagines.

Jesus burst onto the scene in ancient Palestine embodying and proclaiming the Gospel of Life. His whole mission was an invasion of the culture of death by the Lord of Life. His ministry of healing and exorcism, his welcome of the outcast to table fellowship and joy, his tender care for children, his association with and advocacy for the weak and oppressed breathe the grace of life. He could summarize his life and mission in terms of the gift of life:

All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep (John 10: 8-11).

Three aspects of Jesus' teaching are particularly relevant to our view of abortion. The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) is a category-smashing answer to the question, "Who is my neighbor?" The lawyer in the story presses for a more precise definition of "neighbor," implicitly seeking to narrow the definition. Jesus reshapes the whole question in two ways: the hated Samaritan becomes definitional of "neighbor, and the "neighbor" is redefined as one who shows, rather than receives, mercy. The point here is that we are called upon to become neighbors to those who are helpless and needy. Such a standard would apply to both the mother in a crisis pregnancy and to her unborn child. When we ask, "Is the fetus a person?" we side with the lawyer who attempts to circumscribe and narrow the circle of the human community and our moral obligation. We are imitating the wrong character. The concluding word of the parable calls us to imitate the despised Samaritan. It addresses us all, "Go and do likewise."

Jesus' teaching also highlights a resounding repudiation of violence. The key statement is found in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5: 38-48. Here Jesus' words are not a story, but a recounting of typical indignities encountered by an oppressed people who suffer under an unjust regime. His call is to love these exploitive enemies and not to retaliate against them. There is a long history of interpretation and discussion of these statements and the Christian tradition has long been divided on their precise application to issues like war, self-defense, and government (for two different sample discussions see Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the NT (Harper, 1996), pp. 315-346 and John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (IVP, 1978), pp. 103-124). But what shines out crystal clear is a repudiation of violence for the disciples of Jesus. If violence is ever mandated, it is only under the most egregious situations of evil and wrong-doing employing limited, morally circumscribed means. Violence is never a private option, the solution to personal moral and relational problems. Violence is a symptom of the culture of death and not a sign of the righteousness and grace of the Kingdom of Life.

Consequently, we must reject the use of violence to solve social problems. We condemn violence, even for reasons which may sound admirable and progressive. We condemn violence because we recognize that no individual is a problem to be solved but a person to be loved and a neighbor to be cared for and served. The selective destruction of innocent life is always the triumph of the powerful over the powerless, the triumph of despair over hope. It is always the triumph of will over love. A society ruled by the will of the powerful is a hazardous place for the weak. It is a society swallowed up by the culture of death.

There is also a word here to pro-life advocates about the means of protest they might choose to employ against this culture of death. Jesus calls us to love our enemies as a critical aspect of his repudiation of violence. Certainly this must include the active repudiation of violence against advocates and practitioners of abortion. Great harm has been done to the cause of life by its violent, over-zealous, mean-spirited activists. Shouting "Murderer!" (or worse) through faces twisted with anger and hatred is a renunciation of the Lordship of Jesus. Protest of injustice is appropriate only when it seeks to love adversaries and enemies. The real unsung heros of this battle for the hearts and minds of our culture are the folk who operate three thousand pregnancy counseling centers, who struggle, unfunded and unrecognized and often ridiculed, to help women with housing, clothing, medical care and job training. They embody the conviction that not only must unborn children and their mothers be protected in law but also welcomed and loved in life.

Jesus taught by word and deed that the center of the Kingdom of God is grace. The King has determined to seek and forgive and welcome all sinners, even the most despicable and despised of sinners. To his little, rag-tag community of disciples Jesus says, "Do not be afraid little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom (Luke 12; 32)." Jesus' table fellowship with moral outcasts, with poor folk and prostitutes and political traitors and fraudulent oppressors, scandalized the conspicuously and proudly "upright," and was the occasion for his reminder that he had come "to seek out and save the lost (Luke 19:10)." Jesus' tender acceptance and forgiveness of the "sinful woman" who anointed his feet with ointment and tears (Luke 7:36-50) and his strong personal invitation to the wealthy outcast tax collector, Zacchaeus (Luke 19: 1-10) are examples of the way the Master reclaimed lives ruined by sin. The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18: 9-14) is another category-smashing story. All of the original hearers "knew" that the Pharisee was right with God. But not the Lord Jesus, who actually knows God. Those who would plead their own moral uprightness and achievement as the ground for being right with God are exactly wrong. Only those who can say, "God be merciful to me, a sinner," who cannot even look up under the burden of their sin, can go home right with God. Only if we are right with God, "justified" to use Jesus word, can we know the moral transformation for which we long and which the Kingdom of God alone brings.

Consequently, we must speak and act according to this Gospel which roots life in grace. Our unflinching insistence on the non-negotiable value of human life must be wedded to a gentle insistence on the Master's forgiveness to broken sinners. Our unyielding proclamation of the Father's ownership of men and women in life and death must be wedded to a tender proclamation of the Father's welcome to even the most wayward. Our bold denunciation of the cheapening of life must be wedded to a bold welcome of those we are tempted to despise. Our radical call to end the abortion license must be wedded to the understanding that real moral transformation must be rooted in grace and the message of grace must be embodied and proclaimed in graciousness of life. Alas, one can quite readily envision a proud modern-day Pharisee saying, "I am thankful that I am not like these sexually promiscuous, these adulterers, these butchers of their own children. I stand on the picket line at Planned Parenthood every week and give thousands to Right to Life." May this pride be far from us. May we be able to proclaim the Gospel of Life without compromise in its full truth and grace with gracious words and gracious welcome to sinners, among whom we count ourselves.

The closest Scripture comes to addressing the question of abortion is in Exodus 21:22-25:

When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman's husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe( NRSV).

This translation seems to imply that, because only a fine applies in the case of miscarriage, the fetus is viewed, in contrast to the mother, as less than fully human life. Such a translation and interpretation is quite disastrously misleading. First, this law is situated in a section dealing with personal injury resulting from someone's striking another (Exodus 21: 18-27). This might be considered a minor crime for which the death penalty was not required. However, if the attack was premeditated and the wound sustained leads to death, the guilty person was to be put to death (see Exodus 21: 12-14). The Old Testament, too, rejects gratuitous violence. If the attack was not premeditated or was accidental, then the person was afforded the protection of the cities of refuge (Ex. 21:13; Num. 35: 9-15; Dt. 19: 4-10). For the law we are examining, one would have thought that the unintentional harm would have been covered by the above provisions. The only difference here is that the injured person is a pregnant woman, and this would also open up a potential range of damage to both mother and her child. So the "eye for an eye" formula is introduced, and the severity of punishment corresponds to the degree of damage. We note that this is the most extended statement of the lex talionis in all of the OT, indicating something of the significance of the issues involved. Further, it is appropriate to observe that this law affords the pregnant woman with the highest possible protection in law.

Looking at our verses in more detail, the translation "miscarriage" is misleading if not incorrect. The Hebrew literally reads "so that her children come out." Now this expression is used in connection with stillbirths only with some form of the word mwt ("dead"). Since our passage is not qualified in this way, pre-mature birth must be envisioned. Indeed, the Hebrew word for miscarriage, shakal, is not used here. Therefore, we assume that the blow to the pregnant woman led to a premature birth. Nothing in the text requires us to understand that the fetus is born dead.

In addition, the Hebrew language lacked a word for "fetus" or "embryo." The word zera means "seed," "semen" as well as "offspring." A second word, yeled, used here in Exodus 21:22, means "child." This suggests that in Hebrew thought there was no distinction between a fetus and a baby. Therefore, what would happen to the mother or fetus would be of equal concern to God and to the law we are considering.

The next phrase of verse 22 reads, "and yet no harm follows." This statement does not specify whose injury or possible injury was in mind. However, the ambiguity lies more in the English translations than in the Hebrew text. The grammatical antecedent of this phrase in the NRSV text above is "miscarriage." But in the Hebrew text it is "her children." On grammatical grounds "harm" should apply primarily to the prematurely born child. It is the case that the statements about harm could have been constructed so that one might know for certain whether the mother or the child was meant. Perhaps this ambiguity was intended and the law of retribution expanded and detailed to allow for harm to either mother or child. So the NIV translation is more faithful to the Hebrew text:

If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

Working out the implications of this law leads us in a very different direction than what was initially suggested by the NRSV translation. The two parts of this law imply that if there was no harm, no serious or life-threatening injury, then a fine was imposed. The reason for the fine would seem to be to protect the fetus from danger. Presumably a bump from two fighting men would not be life-threatening to a woman who was not pregnant. The fact that the life of a man is demanded in this case of involuntary manslaughter places an extremely high value on the life of the mother and the developing child. The reason given for the application of capital punishment is that humankind is made in "the image of God" (Genesis 9:6; Lev. 24: 17-18). Since the Hebrews did not distinguish between an unborn or born child and because the fetus was considered to be a divine image bearer, we need go no further than the sixth commandment ("Thou shalt not kill") to find the deepest roots for the prohibition of abortion in Holy Scripture. It is hard to believe that the God who orders the protection of a bird's eggs in the nest (Dt. 22:6) should not do the same for human beings, his special, image-bearing creation. We are reminded again of the words of the Lord Jesus:

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's will. . . . Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows (Matt. 10: 29-31).

Rather than creating an opening for abortion as a legitimate option, the law in Exodus 21: 22-25 points us decisively away from the culture of death to the value of life.

Some make a great deal out of the silence of Scripture about abortion. It is true that the Bible does not specifically condemn abortion. It is also true that it does not specifically condemn infanticide or slavery either. But silence is not neutrality. It cannot be stressed enough that the New Testament documents, in particular, are occasional. They arise against the background of the particular problems and challenges faced by the earliest followers of Jesus. Under God they were never intended to be exhaustive. Rather, the Bible speaks with the full authority of God to the range of issues which it addresses. In the process, it defines principles which can be applied to any human problem and provides us with enough sample applications of principles to get us started on a life of faithful and creative obedience and faith. Certainly it is not without significance that when, in the course of time, the challenge of abortion surfaced in the early centuries of the church, the response was unequivocal. The Didache, a very early Christian document from the era just after the time of the apostles, says, "You shall not kill an unborn child by abortion or murder a newborn infant."

To follow the Lord Jesus faithfully, bowing to the authority of Holy Scripture whole-heartedly, demands an equally forthright and unequivocal response from us. Either we follow the Lord of life in seeking to create a culture of life or we side with the culture of death he came to overthrow.

III. WHY US, WHY NOW?: The Call to InterVarsity

In the light of these considerations, we must acknowledge the very grave significance of the abortion license for our culture. It is the root of the culture of death, whose tentacles threaten to choke out the value and dignity of human life. Those of us who claim to follow Jesus, in particular, must speak on behalf of the innocent and voiceless child, before and after birth. We must issue a call to repentance, to renounce our complicity with and involvement in the culture of death. We must announce the free offer of forgiveness to all sinners, to those who have chosen citizenship in the culture of death by word and deed. We must proclaim the Gospel of Life in its Biblical fullness, including its rather pointed application to abortion as the central bastion of our culture of death. We must love our enemies actively in the costly and painful way of the cross.

These imperatives come with particular force to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship as a movement of university-based Christians for the following six reasons:

1. Consider the typical profile of a woman who seek an abortion: white, relatively affluent (certainly at least middle class), college educated, in her early to middle twenties, unmarried. That should have a familiar ring to it; these are the women we work with every day on campus. And the men involved almost certainly look very familiar as well. How will they ever develop the moral sensitivity and backbone to resist the convenience of the abortion license if we are silent? How will those who have destroyed their children know the forgiveness that comes from repentance and faith in the Lord of life if we are silent? Our silence is deafening!

2. Our university campuses are ideological centers of the culture of death. We often make the case for our ministry by talking about the strategic character of the university. It has historically had the power to shape ideas in culture, and ideas have consequences. Just so. Witness the harrowing consequences of our most prestigious and influential academic centers promoting the abortion license and the ideology of the culture of death. On this issue we in the campus world are engulfed in near total darkness. Too often we have hidden the light of the gospel under a bushel. Have we the courage to risk disapproval and censure and verbal abuse by bringing the light of the Gospel of Life to sight in the heart of the ideological darkness? Our self-censorship is appalling!

3. Often, even characteristically, our university and college communities are the very places where the killing happens. University health centers and hospitals and the abortion clinics in our communities are the killings fields of the culture of death. During the Holocaust, Germans who lived near the concentration camps often denied knowledge of what was going on. Their hardness of heart and self-imposed ignorance made them the proper object of moral scorn and revulsion. Dare we risk a similar fate? Are we not obliged to allow ourselves to be shocked into action by the knowledge of the moral horrors taking place in our neighborhood to our neighbors? Our passivity and self-imposed ignorance are morally repulsive!

4. We are missing an opportunity to call for repentance at a point where the pro-choice camp is finally beginning to manifest a distinctly uneasy conscience. Advocates of abortion are often outraged by any representation of the extent of the destruction of life. In my chicly leftist university town many decried the placing of one cross for each aborted child per day (a sea of thousands of small crosses!) in a field at the edge of town. Why the outcry? It seems obviously to be the expression of a guilty conscience. Recall the comment above by Cynthia Gorney about the hypocrisy of the dominant pro-choice view. Defending hypocrisy is hardly desirable or morally comforting.

Many have been turned away from the myth of human autonomy by confronting the horrific carnage of abortion. It was so for Thomas Oden, who observes:

It was the abortion movement, more than anything else, that brought me to movement revulsiveness. The climbing abortion statistics made me movement weary, movement demoralized. I now suspect that a fair amount of my own idealistic history of political action was ill conceived by self-deceptive romanticisms, in search of power in the form of prestige, that were from the beginning willing to destroy human traditions in the name of humanity, and at the end willing to extinguish the futures of countless unborn children in the name of individual autonomy (Agenda for Theology (Harpers, 1979), p.25).

Of course, we rarely encounter such a clearly thought out set of reservations about abortion. But we do encounter the intuition that all is not well, that something is quite distinctly out of whack. Is this not an important entry point for conversation about our message about sin, guilt, grace, repentance, and forgiveness. Can we not summon the courage and grace to interpret their grief and sorrow in the light of the Gospel of Life? Our failure of nerve is a denial of the grace of God and the God of grace!

5. The infection that started with the abortion license is spreading very rapidly in our culture. We were assured that the sorts of considerations that were adduced to support abortion would never be used to license euthanasia. Now they supply legal precedence. Consider these sobering words from J. Budziszewski:

Things are getting worse very quickly now. The list of what we are required to approve is growing ever longer. . . . As any sin passes through its stages from temptation, to toleration, to approval, its name is first euphemized, then avoided, then forgotten. . . The pattern is repeated in the house of death. First we were to approve of killing unborn babies, then babies in the process of birth; next came newborns with physical defects, now newborns in perfect health. Nobel-prize laureate James Watson proposes that parents of newborns be granted a grace period during which they may have their babies killed, and in 1994 a committee of the American Medical Association proposed harvesting organs from some sick babies before they die. First we were to approve of suicide, then to approve of assisting it. Now we are to approve of a requirement to assist it, for Ernest van den Haag has argued, it is "unwarranted" for doctors not to kill patients who seek death. First we were to approve of killing the sick and unconscious, and then of killing the conscious and consenting. Now we are to approve of killing the conscious and protesting, for in the United States, doctors starved and dehydrated stroke patient Marjorie Nighbert to death despite her pleading "I'm hungry, "I'm thirsty," "Please feed me," and "I want food." ("Revenge of Conscience," First Things, June/July, 1998, p.21)

The darkness is thickening and the inevitable consequences of embracing evil will be visited upon us. The Lord will not revoke the law of sowing and reaping to suit our convenience. Though we are late coming to this conflict, now is the time to declare ourselves and enter the fray. Can we not seek the Lord in repentance for His guidance of our witness and obey now? To delay is self-deception and cowardice. Our dithering increases the wreckage!

6. InterVarsity has long been associated with "progressive" evangelicalism. Our historic positions on education in the secular university, race, and gender have shaped us as a movement associated with "progressive" causes. This identification and noble tradition disincline us to be clear and consistent on the issue of abortion for fear of guilt by association. For the pro-life position is anything but "progressive" in the contemporary university or culture of the United States. We enter a day, a post-modern and relativistic day, when the need for moral and spiritual clarity has never been greater. "Progressive" has become an arrogant ideological marker that identifies the party of extreme individualism and autonomy. That such an ideology makes for any progress is another matter altogether. C. S. Lewis reminds us that when everyone is headed in the wrong direction, the only progressive thing to do is to turn around and head in the other direction. "Turn around" as in repentance. And the most progressive person is the one who turns around first.

Alas, as a movement we can be "most" progressive in neither sense. The ideological "progressives" will never embrace us. While we can learn from them and be challenged by them, we should not desire to be identified with them, if we are faithful disciples of the Lord Christ. And we are not the first to turn around. Many have long ago embarked on this costly path of discipleship for the sake of the Lord of Life and the Gospel of Life. Special mention must be made of our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers who have maintained a consistent pro-life witness despite the continuing scorn of elite "progressive" culture and media. But the humility our failure to be among the "best and brightest" could engender in us would be good for our souls. Could we not embrace this humility as a movement in a formal, committed way? Our tradition of counter-cultural discipleship is in danger of becoming hollow ideological conformity!

IV. TOWARDS COMMITMENT TO THE GOSPEL OF LIFE

What might InterVarsity look like if we agreed with this analysis of the Gospel of Life and moved to implement it in our fellowship and in the student movement on campus? In earliest discussions some asked if we were proposing a change in the Fellowship's Doctrinal Basis. That seems unnecessary. Others have expressed concern that we will be deflected from our basic calling. Certainly we will need wisdom from the Lord to apply these truths to our situation in a balanced way. And that wisdom is promised those who ask for it (James 1: 5-8). But if it is correct to say that the abortion issue touches our lives at the point of the gospel itself, we who claim to believe and love the Biblical gospel must be moved to action. Otherwise we risk distortion to the very foundations of our identity and calling. Still others are concerned that we will be turned into a mere political lobby. But this issue of abortion is not a political issue, and certainly not a partisan political issue, in the first place. It is first a moral and spiritual issue with roots deep in what we believe. At a minimum we ought to engage the abortion question on this level for the sake of the students and faculty we love and for the sake of the Lord of life whom we serve. Our calling is to contribute to the formation of disciples who believe and practice the Gospel of Life in obedience to the Lord of Life.

What follows, then, are proposals, offered in a tentative way. They seem consistent with the whole gospel of life spelled out above. They are also modest. They could be implemented without wholesale change in our corporate life and mission. They also doubtless miss some important practices and can be improved upon. But, as the Lord of life leads us, they could stimulate creativity, dialogue, and, above all, faithfulness.

1. Every staff applicant should be faced with this issue as a requirement for being in good standing in our fellowship. We currently do this sort of thing about our practice of including women in leadership at all levels of our fellowship. It is at least arguable that the issue of life is more clearly and consistently articulated in Scripture than the issue of women's role in leadership. If we can raise this less clear issue with prospective staff, could we not raise the gospel ethic of life in the same manner? Needless to say, this does not settle the exact form of our pro-life activism nor does it endorse any particular course of corporate action, nor should it. But it would begin to make us all consciously pro-life if we are not already. And it might begin to form a strategy for engagement.

2. We must direct our Press to publish within a consciously pro-life ethic.

IVP has published some excellent pro-life works. I think of Michael Gorman's Abortion and the Early Church and Peter Kreeft's Unaborted Socrates as outstanding examples of what I would like to see in the future. But I find myself troubled by a more recent work by Gabriel Fackre, "Preaching About Abortion," Restoring the Center, pp. 144-148. I trust that no evangelical will follow his advice and preach with a view to finding the "center" on this issue. While the bulk of this chapter points in a pro-life direction, the counsel it offers is so dithering and fearful that it will lead to more paralysis for the church in the face of moral and spiritual crisis. My hope would be that this does not signal a new direction in our publications. There is still much to be thought about and said, as comments above indicate. And we confront a real battle for the hearts and minds of young Christians and the church. I would hope that we could sponsor real reflection on how to carry out a consistently pro-life ethic in the face of the relativism and the increasing anti-life violence of our culture and in the face of extremist pro-life activists (who seem to be collapsing into the culture they seek to protest!). Our press could continue to serve us well here, if it chose.

3. Include this ethic of life in all of our teaching about sexuality.

One of the sad aspects of the moral license we encounter is the separation of the relational and unitive and procreative aspects of sexuality. What God hath joined together, let no one put asunder! Watching the late Walter Trobisch discuss the full range of sexuality with both guiltless candor and reverent openness was a revelation to me. While we might not be as gifted as Trobisch, we should emulate his example. We should be quite open in our discussion of sexuality, including its role in bearing children.

4. Provide training to front-line Campus Staff in how to care for the victims of the abortion license.

Two related concerns need to be raised here. First, we need to be aware that one unintended consequence of proclaiming our high, Biblically based sexual ethic might be to drive women who become pregnant through sexually illegitimate behavior into the arms of abortionists. These women would rather abort than face the shame of such a pregnancy. Indeed, there is some anecdotal evidence that just this sort of thing is happening at Christian colleges.

We all know that this choice would only deepen the guilt they face. But care must be taken in our teaching about sexual ethics to express and model the grace of the Gospel of Life. We must learn to be gentle in affirming both the judgment of God and His forgiveness for repentant sinners. "Sinners" and even "sexual sinners," I believe, describes us all. So forgiveness is precious to us. Truly it is the best good news we have to offer our sexually aberrational culture.

Second, we all have encountered women who carry a tremendous burden of guilt over their choice to kill their own child. Experience reminds us that guilt is tremendously potent and threateningly destructive. Unless it is dealt with honestly and graciously it can engulf and destroy these women (and sometimes, though alas less often, the men involved as well). Pro-abortion advocates insist that this is only "feelings," since no moral wrong has been done. Counseling and unconditional acceptance will set things right. But our hearts tell us otherwise. Resisting and repressing the voice of conscience will never free us from a deadly burden of real guilt. What is needed is forgiveness. On the other hand, angry, hard-hearted, legalistic pro-life advocacy will never commend a message of forgiveness to conscience-stricken folk. The tenderness of the Lord of life must characterize us if we are to commend the Gospel of Life to the victims of the abortion license.

We also need to help Campus Staff find their own limitations. Occasionally, the pathologies involved are so intense that special help is needed. Staff need to learn when to seek help through professional counselors and experienced, holistic ministries of healing. Too often, young staff appoint themselves the saviors of needy people in a way that is neither appropriate to their calling in campus ministry nor finally helpful to needy people. While some staff will find this sort of caring ministry closer to the heart of their calling on campus than others, we need to do some serious thinking about the focus of our ministry and about how to provide help to front-line staff who are often the ones who encounter these problems first.

5. Challenge the people in our Graduate Student-Faculty and NCF ministries to step up to the challenge of research and professional integration guided by the Gospel of Life.

Our whole movement has historically stood for the development of the Christian mind as a part of holistic discipleship to the Lord Jesus. We have called for this even when it was difficult, misunderstood, and ridiculed by unbelievers. We should do no less in faithfulness and obedience to the Gospel of Life. There are clearly many matters awaiting further creative, scholarly, understanding and clarification and expression. The genetic, medical, legal, social science, ethical, and public policy dimensions of the issue of abortion demand rigorous study, and such study would advance the cause of life. It would also be risky and even dangerous as are most forms of public discipleship to the Lord Jesus. But faithfulness demands no less from us as a community and from the appropriately gifted folk in our midst.

6. Annual efforts, in every campus fellowship to educate our folk about the crisis day we live in, the Biblical ethic of life, and the richness of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I doubt if any IVCF chapter in the country goes through a year of meetings without addressing the issue of relationships and sexuality. If this is so and we are silent about the decadent abortion practices of our campus communities, we are guilty of an awful oversight (or worse!). I suspect that there is an appropriate time in the life of each of our chapters to raise this issue, and we must do so with great courage. How else will be form a gospel culture of life in the face of the culture of darkness and death?

7. Encourage volunteer involvement in pregnancy counseling centers and adoption agencies..

I said, above, that I thought these folk were conspicuous among the heroes of pro-life activism, caring in a sacrificial way for women and their children, born and unborn. Many of our students are engaged in volunteer activity, but rarely do we promote this sort of option. We should do so vigorously.

8. Encourage every IVCF chapter to express a civil, thoughtful, loving, high-profile, non-violent protest of current abortion practices in our campus communities.

If we could further massive mobilization to make a pro-life statement on campus, we could educate and give campus people pause to think. I am thinking now, not of clinic blockades and shouting at pregnant women. But if every IV chapter and student joined, for example, a candle-light prayer vigil on the evening of the anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision (January 22) in a very visible campus location, we would make a notable statement of protest in the heart of the culture of death.

Additional and better ideas will be forthcoming, God helping us. What we lack in InterVarsity is not creativity. The challenge to us is to a life of faithfulness in following the Lord of life. Like him, we must be fearless and forthright in addressing the evils of our society. And, like him, we must be gracious in tenderly welcoming repentant sinners, even notorious sinners, to full fellowship. And like him we must face the destruction and devastation around us with deep remorse and even tears. I think of Jesus' denunciation of the cultural elite in Matthew 23. He is unstinting in portraying the moral hypocrisy, and self-absorption, and evil of the scribes and Pharisees. No OT prophet was more eloquent or uncompromising or hard-hitting than our Master. His seven "Woes" ring across the ages with a tremendous rhetorical and moral power (Matthew 23: 1-36). Jerusalem had become a deadly dangerous place for those who spoke the truth and its rage would soon be directed to the Lord himself. In his death is our life. Truly this Lord will one day judge us. Jesus concludes his prophetic sermon, however, not with moral outrage, but with tears; "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets. . . .How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wing. But you were not willing (Matthew 23: 37-39)!" Like many OT prophets, particularly like Jeremiah, Jesus is supremely the weeping prophet. He is the Lord. Can we aspire to any less as we confront our own culture of death?

The zeal for truth and the tears of the Lord of Life call out to us. Let us not be slow and reluctant in answering. O Lord, fill InterVarsity with the zeal and the tears that will move us to affirm and practice your gospel of abundant life, for the sake of your great name, Amen!