The Facts 

On March 27, 2007, Day Gardner, President of the National Black Pro-Life Union (NBPLN) located in Washington, DC, and Director of Public Relations for NPLAC on Capitol Hill, submitted a response through Christian Newswire to a press release she had read called Reproductive Rights and African-American Women. Her response included these facts:

• Since 1973, more than 44 million unborn children have been legally killed in this country—of those killed almost 15 million of them were black.

• The abortion rate among black women is more than three times higher than that of white women.

• Since 1973, there have been a grand total of 22 million deaths in the black community. The breakdown is like this: Eight million African-Americans died from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, crime, accidents, HIV-AIDS, etc., while almost 15 million black Americans died from abortion. In other words, abortion is the number one killer of African Americans—killing more black people than all other deaths combined! In the black community this atrocity has reached epidemic proportions.

Day Gardner makes the point: "The question here is not whether black women have access to reproductive ‘choices,’ but rather why we are fooled into thinking that we have to make a choice at all. It’s the pro-abortionists who are trying to suggest that we fix societal

problems by reducing the number of black Americans through abortion." 

Abortion in a Theological Context 

There is no shortage of sources that give us information concerning abortions in the black community. We are able to find out who are having abortions, how many babies are being aborted and the reasons why these abortions are being performed. While it is possible for us to diagnose surface-level reasons for abortions for blacks and whites alike, this leaves out a far more important fact about humans, to which all humans are susceptible.  

In fact, the root cause of all abortions is the same root cause of every sin that has ever been committed and will ever be committed. What underlay the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden was selfishness. That has been the basic motivation for each and every sin from that point on. What do I think is best for me? That is the question behind every sin.

We have God’s Word, which tells us what is best for us, namely, to love Him with all our hearts, minds, and souls and to love our neighbor as ourselves. (Matthew 22:35-40) If we could only keep the greatest commandment, loving our God with all our hearts, minds, and souls, then we would indeed seek what is pleasing in His sight before anything else.

But the sin of selfishness is so pervasive and rooted so deeply in our being that we love ourselves far more than we will ever love God; and doing what we think is best or more convenient for ourselves takes priority over God and His law and His will for our lives.  

Unheard in the din of the many reasons given for the desire to have a right to choose life or death for the unborn child is this diagnosis of Scripture.

All reasons boil down to the basic human problem of doing what we think is best for us. Whether the reason is that the baby was not conceived in love or that the conception was the result of rape, or that the mother is merely a teen who has her life ahead of her and a baby would ruin the plans she has made for her future or that the family just can’t afford another mouth to feed—in all of these scenarios the underlying factor is still what we think is best for us at this time.

Not only that, but the appeal of all of these reasons is enhanced for the 21^st century ear by the modern secularist tendency to look only to the "here and now," leaving eternity out of account. But Scripture and the Triune God gaze upon all things in view of eternity. 

That which is conceived by human means will live forever. We who believe that life begins at conception also know that life at its earthly termination will live on—a Word of God that speaks both Law and Gospel to us. Children are a heritage given to us forever, and to abort them is to spit in the face of the God who gave us such gifts. And yet, even as Christ and His Gospel fly in the face of our sin and free us from the curse, so also can we be confident that those children who in the womb have heard the Word of God, even if they are aborted, may also be saved—by the same means we are, by Christ in His Word, who saves us from the evils of this world. 

Comforting us with this knowledge, the Gospel also speaks loud and clear in all its sweetness to Christian parents who, for whatever reason, opted to abort a child. Our Lord Jesus died on the cross even for such a sin as abortion. And to those who repent of their sin, we are able to share with them the Word of God in Psalm 103:12, "as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us."  

The Church’s Work in Context 

What does this all mean for the Lutheran Church? In an article for First Things magazine by Father Richard John Neuhaus entitled The Evangelical Moment, (August/September 2005) Neuhaus comments on the best selling book, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Steven Levitt and co-author Stephen Dubner. Neuhaus writes:  

What is morally odious is the cool and disinterested way in which the commentariat is discussing what might fairly be described as racial cleansing. It’s too bad about all those dead babies, but it is a kind of solution to the crime problem, if not a final solution. Meanwhile, those who style themselves black leaders, especially political leaders, are overwhelmingly in support of the unlimited abortion license, thus maintaining their distinction of being the only ethnic or racial leadership in history to actively collaborate in dramatically reducing the number of people they claim to lead. If they had been allowed to live, there would be about twenty million more blacks in America. White racists have reason to be grateful for what is sometimes still called the civil rights leadership. In another lifetime, before he succumbed to national ambitions, Jesse Jackson regularly declared that the war on poverty had been replaced by a war on the poor. There is more than a little to that. Having despaired of preparing young blacks to enter into the opportunities and responsibilities of American life, the society apparently decided to eliminate them before they had a chance to become a threat. 

One of many things that could be said in respect to Neuhaus’ quip is that the Church is the communion of those reconciled to the Father, who is "philanthrôpos" (a lover of mankind), who wishes all men (anthrôpoi) to come to the knowledge of the truth, and in whose Son there is neither Jew nor Greek (and hence neither black nor white). This Church, under the Gospel and for the sake of the Gospel, has the duty to spare, to the best of its abilities, the lives of all people, that their time of grace may be lengthened and that they might by the Holy Spirit be called by the Gospel, enlightened with His gifts, and sanctified in the One True Faith. To the extent, then, that the Church wittingly falls prey to policies that support the "black genocide," we act contrary to nature of the communion into which we have been drawn and we bar—albeit unwittingly—from the means of grace those whom God would save. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon us, poor sinners!