Update: Here’s a URL with an article by reporter Martin Bashir: http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=1495429&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
Last night, Nightline profiled an abortion clinic in Arkansas. A few scenes (with comments):
An 18-year-old in for an abortion said she was not “ready” to be a mother. (Then why was this young, unmarried girl having sex? Didn’t she know the connection?)
The doctor, who had “performed” somewhere around 10,000 abortions in his career (he had lost count), tried to tell the reporter that the fetus was a “blob of tissue.” But under sharp (and surprising) questioning, he was forced to concede–when confronted with the scientific realities of brainwave activity and the beating heart within weeks of conception–that the unborn are human life. He fell back to the old canard that, well, they are not “persons.” (And how does he know this? And if he doesn’t, what gives him the right to kill these living “blobs of tissue”?)
The doctor said giving up a child for adoption is harder than having an abortion. He said adoption is “not like giving a puppy away.” (So, by this reasoning, you might as well kill the puppy.)
He said the women who get abortions from him are “born again,” with new leases on life. (He said nothing about the many real risks to their psychological or physical health via abortion, nor the fact that many of the women who make this choice feel subtle–and sometimes not so subtle–pressure to abort from boyfriends and others.)
The doctor said that abortion is “just another form of birth control,” and that the life of the mother is more important than the life of the unborn. (It must be much more valuable, as he had no qualms about giving the same person eight or even nine abortions.)
Most abortion-rights people (such as Bill Clinton) at least say that they want to make it “safe, legal and rare.” Hillary Clinton has even conceded that abortion is a “tragic choice.” Not this guy, who has a financial stake in making it safe, legal and commonplace.
One could say that many women who come to this doctor’s office don’t grasp the gravity of what they are doing. You can’t say the same for him. God, have mercy.
About Stan Guthrie
Stan Guthrie is an editor at large for Christianity Today magazine and for the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. His latest book is God's Story in 66 Verses. He also is author of All that Jesus Asks: How His Questions Can Teach and Transform Us, Missions in the Third Millennium: 21 Key Trends for the 21st Century, and A Concise Guide to Bible Prophecy. He is co-author of The Sacrament of Evangelism. Besides authoring, writing, and editing books, Stan is a literary agent, bringing together good authors, good books, and good publishers.
Stan writes the monthly Priorities colum for BreakPoint.org. He has appeared on National Public Radio's Tell Me More, WGN's Milt Rosenberg program, and many Christian shows, including The Eric Metaxas Show and Moody Radio's New Day Florida. A licensed minister and an inspirational speaker, he served as moderator for the Christian Book Expo panel discussion, Does the God of Christianity Exist, and What Difference Does It Make?
