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When King Lemuel’s mother tells him to defend the rights of others, she has a specific group in mind. Pay attention to Proverbs 31:8-9—Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.  

Mute. Destitute. Poor. Needy. In those four terms we see a challenge to care for the rights of the vulnerable. Yesterday I argued that the evil of abortion is the greatest horizontal injustice in our world today because there is no more foundational human right than the right to life. Today let’s consider a second reason: there is no one more vulnerable than the unborn.  

No One is More Voiceless than the Unborn

King Lemuel is instructed, “Open your mouth for the mute.” The mute referred to those who could not defend themselves in the courts of justice.” This was likely a direct reference to those who didn’t have a voice in the court of law, but it would extend to anyone who couldn’t speak up for themselves. Although we could apply this to many vulnerable groups today, I believe there is nobody who has less ability to speak up for themselves than the unborn. Even someone who is deaf and mute can still communicate. Even a one-day-old baby can speak up for himself with a newborn scream. But the unborn cannot. The unborn is truly voiceless.  

Some might say that the fact they don’t have a voice is proof that the unborn are not persons. Consider what is happening as the unborn child is developing in the womb of her mother:

  • 18 days after conception her heart is forming and eyes start to develop.
  • 21 days her heart pumps blood throughout the body.
  • 28 days she has budding arms and legs.
  • 30 days she has a brain and has multiplied in size ten thousand times!
  • 35 days her mouth, ears, and nose are taking shape.
  • 40 days her brain waves can be recorded, and her heartbeat, which began three weeks earlier, can be detected by an ultrasonic stethoscope.
  • 42 days her skeleton is formed and her brain is controlling the movement of muscles and organs.
  • 8 weeks her hands and feet are almost perfectly formed.
  • 9 weeks  she has “already perfected a somersault, backflip and scissor kick.” She can respond to stimulus and may already be capable of feeling pain.
  • 10 weeks she squints, swallows, and frowns.
  • 11 weeks she makes a wide variety of facial expressions including smiles.
  • 12 weeks she turns her feet, curls and fans her toes,  makes a fist, moves her thumbs, bends her wrists, and opens her mouth.[1] 

All this happens in just the first trimester! Surely the Psalmist is correct when he writes, “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” (Psalm 139:13-14).  

Christians believe that the unborn are persons. They are the most vulnerable persons there are because there is no one more voiceless than them.  

No One is in Greater Danger than the Unborn

Proverbs 31:8 says, “Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute.” That word destitute literally means those who are “passing away, vanishing, or appointed to destruction.”[2] It’s referring to those who are in great danger. In King Lemuel’s day that likely would have been the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant. Today, I believe that no one is in greater danger than the unborn.

Consider the following:

  • Abortion is America’s most frequently performed surgery on women.[3]
  • In 2017, 18% of American pregnancies ended in abortion.[4]
  • Abortion causes approximately 2,400 infant casualties every day in America (not counting chemical abortions).[5]
  • In New York City, more black babies are aborted than born.[6]
  • According to the United Nations' 2013 report, only nine countries in the world have a higher reported abortion rate than the United States. They are: Bulgaria, Cuba, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Romania, Russia, Sweden, and Ukraine.[7]
  • Globally, one in four pregnancies end in abortion.[8]
  • Since Roe v. Wade became the law of the land in 1973, over 62,541,000 babies have been aborted[9]

There is no one more vulnerable than the unborn because no one is in greater danger than the unborn.

No One is More Powerless than the Unborn

Proverbs 31:8-9—"Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.” To be poor and needy was to be powerless. To be sure, there are many people who are (and feel) powerless in our world today. This certainly includes mothers who are contemplating abortion. Some are financially struggling. Some are young and unprepared to raise a child. Some are victims of rape or domestic abuse.  

How should we respond to these women who feel powerless? We should help them! We should serve them! But let’s not respond by punishing the unborn child within them that is even more powerless!  

Christians throughout church history have stood up for the powerless, including the unborn.[10]

  • The Didache, a second-century catechism for young converts, states, “Do not murder a child by abortion or kill a newborn infant” (2.2).
  • Augustine warned against the terrible crime of “the murder of an unborn child” (On Marriage 1.17.15).
  • John Calvin said “The fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being and it is a most monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man’s house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.”
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who lost his life standing against Hitler’s murder of the innocent in Germany, argued that abortion is “nothing but murder.”  

The evil of abortion is the greatest horizontal injustice in our world today because there are no humans more vulnerable than the unborn.

 

[1] Alcorn, 9–10. [2] Strong’s Hebrew #2475, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament   [3] Alcorn, Pro-Choice or Pro-Life: Examining 15 Pro-Choice Claims—What Do Facts & Common Sense Tell Us?, 6.   [4] Alcorn, 6.   [5] Alcorn, 6.   [6] Thaddeus Williams, Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth: 12 Questions Christians Should Ask about Social Justice (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2020), 169. [7] U.S. Abortion Statistics, https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics/. Accessed January 16, 2021.   [8] Alcorn, Pro-Choice or Pro-Life: Examining 15 Pro-Choice Claims—What Do Facts & Common Sense Tell Us?, 6.   [9] US Abortion Clock, http://www.numberofabortions.com/. Accessed January 17, 2021.   [10] The following quotes are cited in Alcorn, Pro-Choice or Pro-Life: Examining 15 Pro-Choice Claims—What Do Facts & Common Sense Tell Us?, 62–63.