Curt Flewelling, FISM News
[elfsight_social_share_buttons id=”1″]
Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams is the latest prominent Georgia politician to attempt to square her faith in God with her pro-abortion views.
“While your faith tradition may tell you that you personally do not want to make that choice, it is not my right as a Christian to impose that value system on someone else. Because the value that should overhang everything is the right to make our own choices, the free will that the God I believe in gave us,” Abrams told Yahoo News.
Abrams claims she was pro-life when she was a young woman. She explained her evolution on the issue in a recent campaign ad saying, “In fact, I was anti-abortion until I went to college. And there, I met a friend who shared my faith values. But we started having conversations about what reproductive care and abortion care really is. And when I talked about that, it was an experience that I had because she was able to give me a different perspective.”
Prioritizing the ideas of fellow believers over the teachings of the Bible and lauding the virtue of using the free will God gives us as justification for infanticide is troubling to many Christians, who see it as an extremely selective interpretation of the Gospel, at best.
Former NFL player, Super Bowl champion, and pro-life activist Benjamin Watson attended the University of Georgia. In response to Abrams’s campaign ad, the football great tweeted:
Respectfully if you identify as a Christian your authority is the Word of God not the opinion of a friend who shares your faith. This ad conveys empathy but it also conveys baseless compromise. If your holy scripture sanctions abortion as it does love/justice/charity explain how https://t.co/B6kw1BjFh5
— Benjamin Watson (@BenjaminSWatson) August 9, 2022
Watson is not the first prominent Christian to take a progressive politician to task on the issue of life. Evangelist and fearless advocate for the unborn Alveda King has routinely chastised Georgia senator and self-proclaimed “pro-choice pastor” Raphael Warnock.
“If you’re a pastor, you must stand for Christian values first and foremost, so politics cannot supersede what the Holy Bible says,” King said. “I’m very convinced that he is manipulating his pulpit, the Bible, and everything else.”
Abrams and Warnock both face tough political battles this November. The recent Supreme Court ruling that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion has led both politicians to make reproductive rights a prominent issue in their campaigns.
Editor’s Note:
True Christian value gives ultimate authority to the Word of God, not to the opinions of friends, for “All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
While Abrams claimed that “the value that should overhang everything is the right to make our own choices,” Jesus said that the most important commandments are to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” and to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30-31). Within our free will, Scripture commands that “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31).
Though the Bible does not explicitly address abortion, it does declare that a person’s life exists while they are still in the womb (Gen 38:27, Job 3:10-12, Job 10:18-19, Hosea 12:3), where God carefully forms us (Psalm 139:13, Isaiah 44:2). He knows the plans He has for us before we are born (Gen 25:23-24, Isaiah 49:5) and He is Lord over even the unborn still in the womb (Psalm 22:9-11, Jeremiah 1:5, Luke 1:41-45).
Since it is clear both Scripturally and scientifically that human life exists in the womb, that life is protected in Scripture in the explicit commandment to not murder (Exodus 20:13, Deut 5:17, Matt 19:18, James 2:11).
Scripture teaches that “children are a gift of the Lord” and a reward (Psalm 127:3), a blessing (Psalm 128:3-4, Psalm 113:9), and a gracious gift of God (Gen 33:5). It also commands us to not lead children to sin (Matt 18:6, Mark 9:42), to “not kill the innocent and righteous” (Exodus 23:7), and to “discipline your son, for there is hope; do not set your heart on putting him to death” (Prov 19:18).
Jesus said that, at the final judgment, He will say to us, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matt 25:40).
Additions and edits by Jacob Fuller, FISM News