[0:00] The God's Word to the psalm we read at the beginning, Psalm 139. We'll read verses 13 and 14. Psalm 139.
[0:11] For you created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well.
[0:23] Now there are enormous dangers in coming to look at the subject of abortion from a biblical perspective. Not least because for many, many people it is an intensely personal thing.
[0:40] I would be very surprised if there was people here who have not had experience of abortion. Either through friends having abortions.
[0:50] Maybe you yourself have had one. Maybe you've had children. Or maybe you've had what's called a spontaneous abortion. I have three living children.
[1:03] But my wife has had three spontaneous abortions. And as you'll see I'm going to say that I believe that we've had as a family six children. But it is immensely personal.
[1:16] It is immensely emotional. And what usually happens when you have a debate on abortion is you get on the one hand people, standing up and saying it's a woman's right to choose, and then asking, well what about rape, what about severe handicap, and so on.
[1:31] And on the other hand, you get very often many Christians standing up and saying, well it's God's word that abortion is wrong. In fact, someone said to me, this sermon is going to be very short.
[1:44] What does the Bible say about abortion? The Bible says it's wrong. That's it. Right, now let's all go home. But it's not that simple. Because what I want to do is I want to look at what the Bible has to say, going back a step further than abortion.
[1:58] In other words, the reason that people end up being so bitterly divided and so irrational and emotional when it comes to abortion. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't be emotional, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't get upset and work tough about it.
[2:12] But I'm saying that let's get our basis right first. It's because the reason that this happens is because people don't approach this with the same presuppositions.
[2:26] And that is the same ideas. Now, I want to begin by just asking the big questions and then coming on to abortion. And I hope that you'll follow where I'm going to, and you'll understand what's being said.
[2:39] The first big question is just simply this. Does human life have any special value? Now, there's life. I go into my garden and I see life.
[2:53] There's one or two people here who study plants, and that is life. There are animals that have life. Your cat and your dog have life. But does human life have any special value?
[3:04] Is it just a more sophisticated form of life? Well, Jesus thought so. Matthew 12, verse 12. It's the reason I read that passage. How much more valuable is a man than a sheep?
[3:16] How much more valuable is a man than a sheep? The biblical teaching about human beings is that there is a distinct difference between being human and being an animal and also being a plant.
[3:28] Now, as you approach this question, I'm not that sure that there are only two main philosophies that you can have.
[3:40] Either the universe, everything that is materially is explicable, only in personal terms. It is created and sustained by God.
[3:52] Now, we're not talking about what he used, the Big Bang, evolution, and all the rest of it. We're talking about is the universe. If it's created by God, a personal God, that's one philosophy.
[4:05] Or the other philosophy is what we might call mechanistic materialism. That all existence is an uninterrupted continuum from the hydrogen atom to the human brain, from the amoeba to man.
[4:19] And that, therefore, no one part can intrinsically have any more value. Who's to say that it has any more value? Now, that second philosophy is, to my mind, it's a logical one, but it's a disastrous one.
[4:37] The first one is also logical. There are, to my mind, only two logical philosophies and world views that any thinking person could really take on. One is that there is a God who created, and the other is that there is not a God who created, and that there is a kind of mechanistic materialism.
[4:59] The trouble with mechanistic materialism is simply this. What if this process from the hydrogen atom to the human brain, what if this has resulted in the emergence of a being with greed and cruelty, enough to destroy the whole of his and other species' environments?
[5:15] How can it be reasonably argued that this is higher than other species and not lower? I want to suggest to you this, that there can be no basis for any form, in any form of materialistic philosophy, which ignores the spiritual and ignores God, for the belief that human life has an intrinsic value greater than that of a rabbit or a fly.
[5:39] Now, some of us may like the cuddly seals that go and gobble up all the salmon at the mouth of the Tay. Some of the fishermen won't like it. But I'm not so sure that you would like cuddly cockroaches if you lived in the southern states, as we were there in the summer.
[5:53] And if there was a rat in your bed tonight, I'm not so sure that you would think, well, that rat has a right to be there. It's a human being, or not a human being, but it's a form of life, the same as I am. We just don't live in that way, and there are very few of us that think that human life has the same value as anything else.
[6:12] I suppose if you were a very consistent vegan, that you could argue that you do, but most of us are not in that position. My concern is simply this, that if we adopt a materialistic philosophy, then there's nothing to stop us from adopting the practice of Nazi Germany, where the medical profession cooperated in the mass extermination of the chronically sick and of those who were considered socially disturbing, racially impure, and ideologically unwanted.
[6:42] And it made sense, because the whole philosophy behind the Nazi movement was that of creating a super race. And the most advanced geneticists at the time were in Germany, and they understood this whole aspect of the gene pool and so on, so they said, well, let's get rid of the weaker genes.
[7:06] And the Nazis began, not first of all with the Jews, but they began, first of all, with the handicapped. Now that made and makes sense only if human life has no particular value, dignity, or sanctity.
[7:26] And I would argue that there is a very good case for abortion if your attitude is that of a materialistic philosophy where you are prepared to argue that human life has no particular value, dignity, or sanctity.
[7:44] It is illogical, and it doesn't make sense to say that human life has a particular value, a particular dignity, a particular sanctity, and then not be able to give a reason why that is the case.
[7:58] The Christian perspective is very much different. If you are not a Christian, it may be that in actual fact you do have a Christian perspective on a lot of things, but the basis for it is Christian.
[8:13] The Christian perspective on human life is just simply this, that for two things, firstly, we believe in the existence of the unlimited but personal God who has created the world and revealed himself in the scriptures.
[8:28] And secondly, we believe that human beings are created in the image of God. and the ultimate reality in the universe is not the impersonal, but the personal. And that's why I read out of Matthew, that's just one person, Matthew chapter 12, here was a man who was handicapped.
[8:47] He had a withered hand, a severely withered hand is the idea behind it. And here were other human beings who were prepared to treat this man as some kind of tool in some kind of religious warfare.
[9:01] Now, Jesus treats the man with dignity. Jesus heals the man. And as we go through scripture, you will find that no matter how poor, how weak, how handicapped, how demented or deranged a human being becomes, that human being does not descend to the status of an animal because unlike the animal, that human being can be restored, if not by the power of man, then by the power of God.
[9:32] In other words, throughout scripture, human life is protected by God. Right from the beginning in Genesis all the way through to Revelation, there is the teaching that human life is above that of other forms of life created by God and that there is immense value in human life.
[9:53] So, the first big question is, has human life any special value? and the answer to that, according to the scriptures, is quite clearly, yes, human life does have special value.
[10:06] The best, perhaps, simplest way to explain that is when you look through the story of the creation in Genesis chapter 1, God saw that it was good as he created the world. We read again and again after each day, God saw that it was good and after the creation of mankind, God saw that it was very good.
[10:22] There's a stress. God is really pleased with mankind, with human beings as being the epitome of his creation made in his image. Now, the second question I need to ask then is this, what are human beings?
[10:38] What is it to be human? I can never pronounce this word right. I have a great difficulty pronouncing some words. Psychomatic. The psychomatic unity of the human person. A human being, in Genesis 2, 7, the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being.
[10:57] A human being is a combination of biology and something we call the breath of life, spirituality. As soon as man was living, he was a living soul.
[11:13] There are very few absolute materialists in this world. There are some, but very few. And that is because deep within every one of us there is a concept of the spiritual.
[11:26] We, as Christians, we understand that from God's word. We know what that means. We know that we have a human body and that somehow we have a spirit or a soul. Now, it seems to me again fairly clear that if it can be shown that an embryo or a fetus is a living human body, then the presumption has to be that it is also a living soul.
[11:52] We'll go on to see something about that in a moment. And I want to just say some things about what the Bible says about human life before birth.
[12:04] Human life does not begin where there are very few people who would be prepared to argue that human life actually begins at birth. any of you who have ever been involved with maybe your wife or you yourself or a friend has been pregnant or you've been involved in treating someone.
[12:24] There's no way anyone can go to an antenatal clinic or to a scan and say, well, there's no life. Human life does not begin at birth and the Bible recognized that.
[12:35] In prenatal life, in biblical thought, the words that are used are exactly the same for the child as the words that are used after the baby is born. For example, Genesis 25, 22.
[12:46] We read, the babies jostled each other within her and she said, why is this happening to me? So she went to inquire of the Lord. The word that's used there for babies is the same word that's used for a baby out of the womb as in the womb.
[12:59] Psalm 139, which we read there, verses 13 to 16. That is describing a personal history. Now, it's using a poetic language. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
[13:11] This is not some kind of primitive belief that somehow people were knit together and then they were transplanted in some way to their mother's womb. It uses poetic language but it's describing, it's saying, you knit me together in my mother's womb.
[13:29] Psalm 51, verse 5 says, Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. From conception. And there's a word that's used in the Bible that we, in modern English, we don't really have a suitable translation for.
[13:44] It's the word beget. You know, you talk about God's only begotten son and so on, or you read in Genesis, and so and so begat, so and so and so and so and so begat, so and so. Well, it's an important word because it really, it means to bring forth, to bring into being, or to generate.
[14:03] And that's very much tied up with life beginning within the womb. So in biblical teaching, long before people had this kind of detailed understanding that we now have of prenatal life, that the Bible is quite clear that there is, that there was human life.
[14:28] Interestingly enough, there's another aspect of this. In the New Testament, twice, I'm sorry, three times in Galatians 5 and also in Revelation, there's a word used for a particular sin.
[14:40] It's pharmakia, from which we get pharmaceutical. It's really describing, it's translated usually sorcery, but it's describing doctors, but not doctors who are primarily there to heal people.
[14:53] It is describing doctors who go against the Hippocratic oath in that sense, who's, they were kind of medicine men who mainly provided abortion drugs at the time of the New Testament.
[15:06] And in Revelation, that is linked together with fornication, sex outside marriage, and it is linked together with murder. And it states quite clearly that that is something that is wrong.
[15:22] And that is because it uses the word and it's saying that there is life. And these men are giving drugs in order to take away life. But of course, in a biblical sense, the most important and the most essential grasp of prenatal is Jesus himself, the incarnation.
[15:45] salvation. Now, I don't have time to go into all this, but I hope that you'll accept this if you want to look at it further, go and read the whole of Hebrews. Or you can get the tapes of all the sermons we did on Hebrews, but for fundamental theological reasons, it's necessary that Christ is fully human.
[16:03] Christ had to be both fully man and fully God. Now, when did Christ's humanity begin? His divinity, his godness, did not begin when he was born.
[16:16] We know that John chapter 1, verse 1, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. That's speaking about Jesus Christ. In Colossians 1 or in Ephesians 1, it talks about Jesus having existed from all eternity.
[16:31] But when did Christ's human life begin? Well, if you accept that Jesus was born on Christmas Day, which he almost certainly wasn't, he was almost certainly born in April, but supposing that he had been born on December the 25th, his life did not begin the day that he was born.
[16:51] The New Testament is quite clear in that. Christ's human life began at conception in the womb. Matthew 1, verse 20, after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
[17:09] Now, there was nothing at that point that Jesus had which he did not have when he was born. I mean, it's an incredible thing to think of the Son of God as an embryo.
[17:24] But that is what the Bible teaches. And that is, to me, a very important and very wonderful thing. we accept, I hope, that there is something special about human life.
[17:42] Human life does have some special value. We recognize that human beings are physical and spiritual, that we are knit together in that way.
[17:55] I hope that we have seen a little bit that the Bible indicates that human life does not just begin when a child is actually born. So when does it begin?
[18:06] Now, I hope that you will excuse just a little bit of history and biology. And if I get the biology wrong, then you can correct me afterwards. I hope that this makes sense to you anyway.
[18:19] It used to be that theologians argued about something called ensoulment. What they said was, we don't know when life begins, but it must begin when the soul is fused into the body.
[18:31] And they argued about that back and forth. Now, maybe wiser men said, no, no, no, life begins with conception. And people said, no, how can that be? But, since about 1960, when the first genetic codes were really broken, then, that has become a much more plausible understanding and fits very well with what the Bible teaches.
[18:56] Some people will argue that human life begins at implantation, when the embryo implants in the womb. Some people will say that when there's the formation of the central nervous system that human life begins.
[19:12] Some people say that human life begins when there's possibility of viability. In other words, when a child can live outside the womb. And yet others, though not as many, would go so far as to say that a human being does not exist until there is actual physical birth or until they actually come out of the womb.
[19:35] Now, I want to argue that our current understanding of biological science fits the biblical position very well and fits the biblical data very well. Let me read to you a quote from a biologist.
[19:48] It is an axiom, a fundamental axiom of biological sciences that natural life begins at fertilization with the irreversible union of the nuclei of the sperm and ovum to form the zygote, the one-cell embryo, which has the whole genetic code to spell out the characteristics of the new individual, sex, color of eyes, hair and skin, facial features, body type, and certain qualities of personality and intelligence.
[20:14] Now, I want to personalize this here. My wife was very ill once and we lost a child at five months and we had to go for genetic counseling because it involved a certain genetic abnormality.
[20:34] And I sat in with a consultant and we talked about things, the three of us talked about things and I must admit that my ignorance is quite astonishing about medical matters.
[20:47] And he, this consultant, was not a Christian and he said, you know, it's absolutely incredible. He says, you've got 23 pairs of chromosomes and that one-cell embryo is a living human individual and he went on and talked about the chromosomes and what was involved and male and female and so on.
[21:09] And I found it totally astonishing and I said to him, that's incredible, that's amazing and he said, yes it is. He says, it almost makes you want to believe in a creator. And I said, well yes I do and he says, well I thought you would.
[21:20] He says, I've got down on my form here that you're a minister so I kind of figured that that's where you were coming from. But to me, it's absolutely astonishing and wonderful. It's why I believe that those of you who are scientists of any kind, you have a great privilege to be able to look at the ways of God in what he has created.
[21:44] The one-cell embryo is a living human individual. That embryo has the basic attributes of life, growth, and reproduction. It is a distinctively human organism and it is a whole individual organism.
[22:01] Each human being begins with a single fertilized cell. While an adult, most of us here, have about 30 million cells. Between fusion of that one cell and maturity, 45 generations of cell division are necessary and 41 of those occur before birth.
[22:24] Now, if you, this is for me is the most wonderful book I've ever seen on the subject. The Swedish photographer Lennart Nelson's A Child is Born, which goes right from the very, very beginning and looks at everything and it is quite incredible.
[22:39] At three weeks, the heart is beating. At eight, within the womb, when abortions begin to be formed, all the child's limbs are apparent and the fingerprints are all there. It is unbelievable.
[22:52] You just look and it's just amazing. So it seems to me that the biblical evidence, insofar as we have it, would suggest that from conception, human life begins.
[23:08] There is no evidence for anything else and it would also suggest, I mean, I would also suggest to you that our current understanding of biology fits with that extremely well and that to come and say, well, no, it's some other place, it's some other place, is at very best doubtful and certainly not a basis for putting our whole policy towards human life.
[23:36] Now, if that's the case, let me just say something about the current situation as regards abortion and how the Bible would interpret that.
[23:47] If the embryo is an individual human being, that of course has an enormous impact or implication for embryo research.
[23:58] I think that most Christians I know do not think that the Bible teaches against contraception nor even against IVF treatment.
[24:10] But what it would teach against is experiments on embryos because we regard them not as potential human beings but as, in effect, having all the necessary qualities of human beings and that we would oppose that.
[24:24] it may be, in fact it is, that if you're interested in this subject we don't have time to look at things like the morning after pill or the coil in terms of contraception but going on that basis they would then be wrong.
[24:41] But what I'm concerned with looking at is mostly abortion. There's a great deal of misunderstanding here. In Scotland, abortion is still a criminal offence. There is only one exception.
[24:53] abortion if it is authorised by section 1 of the 1967 Abortion Act which requires two doctors to express their opinion formed in good faith that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve either 1.
[25:07] risk to the life of the pregnant woman or 2. risk of injury to her or her existing children's physical and mental health and then this is the qualification that is usually missed out or we don't hear greater than if the pregnancy were terminated.
[25:23] Now, in practice this act was drawn up to do away with backstreet abortions and it has now become so liberally interpreted that we've ended up with a ridiculous situation.
[25:36] In 1968, a year after this act was passed, 24,000 abortions were performed in Britain. In 1983 it was 184,000. Now there are 200,000 abortions per year.
[25:49] In America, it's a lot worse. Some of you will know the Roe v. Wade case where Jane Roe took on the state of Texas and argued that their law against abortion was unconstitutional and she won.
[26:05] Up until that point, there were very few legal abortions, about 20,000 a year in the states, though some people believe that there were up to 100,000 illegal ones. But now, one and a half million babies are killed every year in the womb in the USA.
[26:20] One and a half million. Incidentally, Jane Roe has now become a Christian and bitterly regrets what she did. In the whole world, it's estimated there are 55 million abortions per year, one per second.
[26:37] You know, I used to read about the Roman Empire that when it began to decline, unwanted babies were left out to die exposed.
[26:48] I remember being horrified about how with the strict policy that there is in China that sometimes baby girls were just thrown away and thought, well, how can you call that a civilized society?
[27:00] Until one of my Chinese friends pointed out that we have the same policy. It's just we put it in technical jargon a bit more. Someone's put it this way, we consign our unwanted babies to the hospital incinerator instead of the local rubbish dump.
[27:18] And maybe there's one thing that's worse, that abortion has now been commercialized in that there are people who make their living and their money out of providing abortion.
[27:30] I want to give you two quotes that indicate I think what's really wrong with this. The first is, I believe, a summary of the biblical teaching that actually comes from Mother Teresa.
[27:43] She said this, only God can decide life and death. That is why abortion is such a terrible sin. You are not only killing life, but putting self before God.
[27:55] Yet people decide who has to live and who has to die. They want to make themselves almighty God. They want to take the power of God in their hands. They want to say, I can do without God. I can decide. That is the most devilish thing a human hand can do.
[28:12] Do you know, I remember visiting the island of Kos and the tree under which Hippocrates wrote his famous oath that doctors were meant to take.
[28:23] It says this, the original says this, I will follow that method of treatment which according to my ability and judgment I consider for the benefit of my patients and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.
[28:34] I will give no deadly drug to anyone if asked nor suggest any such counsel and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to procure abortion. Now in the Declaration of Geneva 1948 that oath was amended to the following, I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception.
[28:54] That has always been the understanding of any civilized society. It is clearly the teaching of God's Word. Now now we come on to the kind of objections that people have to that.
[29:08] What about a woman's right to choose? Not the church, not the state. Let the woman decide her fate. Our right to choose is always limited. If the fetus was a lump of jelly, a blob of tissue and not a person in their own right like teeth or tumours or tonsils then of course a woman would have a right to say, well I wish to remove my tonsils.
[29:33] I wish to have my tooth out or not to have my tooth out. But if you do not accept that that is the case and the evidence and the teaching of Scripture and the evidence I think of science is overwhelmingly against that being the case, then you cannot turn around and say, well it's just about a woman's right to choose.
[29:55] I think as Christians we would argue for the right to choose. But to choose what? You know, it's as simple as this for me in many ways.
[30:09] Supposing one of my children was to become severely handicapped. Do I have the right then to say, look it's my right to choose, they're my child, I can't cope with this.
[30:21] It's better for us all if we, I wouldn't, we probably wouldn't say die, we'd say put them out of existence or whatever. The right to choose is always limited especially if it involves another life.
[30:34] And the onus of proof has to be on those who would say that what is inside them is not life. That what is inside them that is in the womb is not yet human.
[30:45] At the first international conference on abortion, which was not a Christian conference, it was a conference of medics, some of whom were opposed and some of whom were for and some of whom were just approaching it from a scientific they hoped neutral approach, they made this following statement.
[30:59] We can find no point in time between the union of sperm and egg and the birth of an infant at which point we can say this is not a human life. There is no point in time between the union of sperm and egg, the moment of conception, and the birth of an infant at which point we can say this is not a human life.
[31:21] Now of course it's then that these arguments come on about well what about handicap. Well this is where I have great difficulty. If I wasn't doing the job that I'm doing just now my intention had been if I wasn't to become a politician my intention had been to work with a handicapped.
[31:40] I spent a great deal of my time at university working with what was then the Scottish Plastics Council and I went down with the attitude of saying I'm going to help these poor people and when you've got a man of 25 years old who can fit in that space and who's scrunched up and you think well that's just absolutely horrible.
[31:59] Well that guy was called Vincent and he was a great guy and he could communicate in some ways.
[32:10] I'm not saying that what happened to him wasn't horrible but I'm saying that I had no right I couldn't go to Vincent like that and kill him because he was handicapped. Alison Davis who suffers from spina bifida spoke at a rally in London and said this I can think of few concepts more terrifying and chilling than saying that certain people are better off dead and may therefore be killed for their own good.
[32:41] Do you know when she said that one doctor spoke afterwards and he said this no one can judge their own quality of life. Other people might well consider a life like hers miserable but she insisted most handicapped people are quite contented with the quality of their lives.
[33:01] Now I don't know whether that is true or not but I do know this that there is no logic to killing a handicapped baby a month before or two months or three months or four months before it's due to be born and not killing a handicapped child four months after they're born.
[33:18] There is no logic there is no biological evidence for it it's just entirely the remains of society's way of thinking the Christian remnants and having gone down that route of saying handicapped people are not worth letting live before they are born it will not take too far before we eventually adopt the philosophy that handicapped people are not worth letting live after they are born.
[33:43] And I believe that in one sense it can sound incredibly cruel and callous to say well you have to go through with handicapped again can I make this personal?
[33:55] When we were aware of this genetic abnormality in one of our children it's not easy to say no whatever happens no abortion because suddenly it's real and suddenly it's personal and suddenly it's not about theory and it's not about standing up making great principles and all the rest of it but like others who have had to do this and gone through with this we said well if the child is born and everything you know and a child turns out handicapped you don't love that child any the less I once had to speak on the subject of suffering at a home bible study and I went there and I was a young man and I was probably full of having all the right answers and I mentioned in this bible study about being born with a handicapped child and you know how God helps and so on and I got a phone call saying that there was a woman who wanted to see me the following day and I went to see her and she was very upset a program had been made about her son a boy called Richard she was at that bible study and her son was severely severely handicapped and we spent a great deal of time together after that just talking about things and so on and you know what she said she said although this may sound really horrible and although in one sense
[35:19] I would much much rather that Richard had been born normal I'd much rather that he was born than not born at all because he's brought so much into our lives now for me I I find it very difficult to accept at all the idea that we can kill the handicapped Stuart let me see if I can get his name right I want to quote from it's not Stuart it's Jean Ronstan who is a French biologist said this for my part I believe there is no life so degraded debased deteriorated or impoverished that it does not deserve respect and is not worth defending with zeal and conviction I have the weakness to believe that it is an honour for our society to desire the expensive luxury of sustaining life for its useless incompetent and incurably ill members I would almost measure society's degree of civilisation by the amount of effort and vigilance it imposes on itself out of pure respect for life and all this stuff about getting rid of handicapped babies is to a large extent tied up with a society that can't be bothered to look after them and in many ways
[36:27] I almost feel that you can't blame the parents that we're just saying we don't want other people's problems we just want our world to be perfect what about are we saying then at all times that save the mother's life was in danger well of course abortion in all circumstances is not wrong always wrong there are there are almost exceptions to every circumstance and if in order to save the mother's life a child had to be killed then that's that may happen who knows but that's to use that as a rule for allowing abortion full stop is a ridiculous way to proceed what about in terms of rape well again that's a very very difficult circumstance but does killing the child take away the effects of the rape does that get rid of the rape or would it make it worse how then as Christians can we approach this if human life is sacred if human life is God given if human life begins at conception and I believe that all these things are demonstrable from the scriptures or at least as regards the human life beginning that there is no other point at which we can definitely say it begins and given that most abortions are performed after the brain the central nervous system the brain and all the rest of it is formed then
[37:52] I believe that we have to be opposed to abortion how do we respond let me just briefly say this firstly there must be repentance now I want to say that if anyone has had an abortion or been involved in an abortion it's not the end it's not the unforgivable sin I was once on a mission involved in bringing the gospel to some young people and there was a girl who came along and seemed to be very interested she wasn't there on the Wednesday night she came back on the Thursday night and seemed to be very weepy and eventually she asked if she could speak to a couple of us we went to speak to her where had she been on the Wednesday she'd been away to have an abortion her parents didn't know most of her friends didn't know when she'd gone to the doctor and she was pregnant the doctor against what he is supposed to do had said well the simple solution is to go and get an abortion but the thing that stuck in my mind more than anything else was she kept saying nobody told me how it would feel nobody told me how it would feel nobody told me and I personally have probably spent more time involved with people who 20 30 years after having had an abortion still feel the pain it's never the easy option to go and have an abortion and that's where for people who had an abortion we can come with the forgiveness of Jesus Christ it's not the unforgivable sin and Jesus can and does forgive it is a sin but it there is forgiveness there but when I'm talking about repentance
[39:32] I'm primarily talking about those of us who are Christians and perhaps even our whole society in this sense that we might say well abortion is wrong yeah we agree with what you've said but we we don't make any effort to do anything about it and I'm not suggesting that we go and chain ourselves to hospital doors and all the rest of it I'm saying that we need to think about things I'm saying that those of you who are involved in the medical sciences need to take your opt-out clause which you have in the 1967 act one of the consultants that we were involved with in Raguemore in Inverness he absolutely refused to do abortions and that was his right that was he was entitled to it's very difficult if you're in a gynae ward to be like that it's very difficult to get promotion but there is no option for the Christian in that if we accept that this is what the scripture teaches but I want to suggest that as Christians we need to repent because although we're prepared to say abortion is wrong if we're prepared to say that we have to be prepared to help those who feel the need to have an abortion because there are plenty people who can't cope with having children there are plenty difficulties and problems and I think the quote again of Mother Teresa is we'd rather help than abort we believe in making a better world for babies to come into has to be something that we look at this is a subject that needs to be dealt with with a great deal of sensitivity and care but if as I believe
[41:14] I believe that there are more people killed in Britain and in America each year than were killed each year in the Second World War that is the most dreadful sin in our society we may call ourselves civilized I do not accept that that is the case and I really believe that that is the only the beginning I believe that we as evangelical Christians should wholeheartedly support the Catholic Church who take a much stronger stand on this than most Protestant churches and I believe that we should ourselves work out the implications of human life being absolutely sacred before God may God bless his word to us the ejemplo