Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
Introduction: Understanding Abortion
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an abortion is the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy, most often performed during the first 28 weeks of pregnancy.
Other definitions of abortion intentionally obfuscate the meaning of the word to include miscarriages that occur naturally to conflate the purposeful act of ending a pregnancy with natural fetal death. This is akin to conflating dying of cancer with being murdered; it makes no sense to do such. We understand the difference between dying of natural causes and being intentionally killed for all post-birth humans; there is no logical reason to reject such reasoning when considering unborn human life.
Furthermore, we reject the conflation of abortion with miscarriages due to the insensitive nature of lumping women who desperately wanted to follow through with the pregnancy and raise a child with women who didn’t seek such an outcome. So, as you read this report, the term abortion does not apply to miscarriages or any other non-intentional acts that result in a lost pregnancy.
Considering the aforementioned, we must also consider what human pregnancy is. Although there is disagreement on when pregnancy starts, be it during ovulation, conception, after fertilization, or after implantation, there is no disagreement with the basic fact that male sperm must fertilize a female’s eggs to create a new human life. The sperm alone will never create human life, nor would an egg. Likewise, this means that the first physical manifestation of any human comes into being at conception. At this point, the journey from zygote (the state of a fertilized egg) to birth is a process of human growth and development that continues well past birth.4
Understanding the facts above, the unborn are indisputably human, genetically distinct from the pregnant woman the unborn child resides within, and innocent of any culpability of a crime. Thus, we contend that abortion represents the purposeful ending of innocent human life.
Some may reject our reasoning, but they must defy logic to do so. If the unborn are not human, then what exactly are they? What would a deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) test of the unborn show? Likewise, if the unborn are not alive then what exactly does abortion do? There is no need to stop the growth and development of inanimate objects. Similarly, we reject the valuation of human life based on stages of development. Sane people would never argue the life of a 5-year-old child is worth less than that of a 30-year-old human adult. We recognize the inherent potential of allowing the 5-year-old to grow. There is no logical reason to not apply the same reasoning and understanding to all stages of human growth and development.
Even the most rudimentary understanding of embryology makes it clear that the abortion debate is not a question of when human life begins. It is a debate about when human life warrants legal protection. Pro-life advocates contend that innocent human life has inherent value in all stages of development and is not disposable at whim, but the abortion lobby rejects or ignores this assertion.
Our Position & Values
The Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE) is a pro-life Christian organization. Our faith guides us on contentious issues. We believe any basic understanding of what abortion truly is should lead most people to reject abortion in most circumstances regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, or religious creed. We will not hide from our faith; we lean into it! As Christians, the Bible commands us to speak up and defend the weak and vulnerable.
“Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and righteous, for I will not acquit the wicked.” -Exodus 23:76
The Bible makes it clear that the unborn are the products of our Creator and deserving of the same respect and protection as all humans.
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” – Psalm 139:13-167
We call on Christians of all denominations to honor our sacred text and join us in the defense of life. We further urge non-Christians and people of no religious faith to follow science and value human life at every stage of development.
Abortion & Black America
“I became a physician in order to help save lives. I am at once a physician, a citizen, and a woman, and I am not willing to stand aside and allow the concept of expendable human lives to turn this great land of ours into just another exclusive reservation where only the perfect, the privileged, and the planned have the right to live.” – Mildred Jefferson, M.D. The first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School.
The 1973 Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision to declare a non-existent right to abortion has led to more than 63 million unborn babies being killed in America over the last 50 years.
This gross injustice perpetrated against the innocent was thrust on America by a Court well out of its depth. However, there has been a positive development. On June 24, 2022, The United States Supreme Court corrected the decades-long error that was Roe and relegated that decision to its rightful place in the ash heap of history with their Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. Now that Dobbs is the law of the land, abortion falls squarely within the purview of elected officials. This means protections for the unborn can be enacted by legislatures, but such an outcome is far from guaranteed and may not even be likely in some parts of America.
Read the full report at CURE.
