Karen Swallow Prior has quite the resume. She is an award-winning English Literature professor at Liberty University. She is a research fellow with the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), of the Southern Baptist Convention. And she is a member of the Humane Society’s ecumenical Faith Council (yep, there’s a committee for everything). She’s a published author and, in addition to writing for Christianity Today, she also writes for The Atlantic.
Karen Swallow Prior is Wrong
Today, at this moment, Karen Swallow Prior is best known for what she said in her most recent Christianity Today article:
“Rallying for the defunding of Planned Parenthood isn’t inflammatory rhetoric; it’s political engagement. Videos depicting the self-damning words and actions of Planned Parenthood officials isn’t yellow journalism; it’s investigative reporting. On the other hand, referring to abortion providers as ‘abortion ghouls,’ clinic volunteers and workers as ‘deathscorts’ or ‘bloodworkers,’ and women who obtain abortions as ‘murderers’ is worse than inflammatory: it is unchristlike. Calling legal abortion “murder” when it isn’t (it is, to our shame, lawful) is to say what isn’t true, at least in a civil (not church) context.”
You read that correctly. Karen Swallow Prior, a woman with significant influence in the lives of young men and women attending the largest Christian university in the country, a woman who has a voice in the Southern Baptist Convention’s ethics commission, does not believe abortion is murder. And why doesn’t she believe abortion is murder? She doesn’t believe abortion is murder because the government says abortion is legal.
Karen Swallow Prior professes to be a Christian. But it’s clear from her words that her worldview is not Christian. Her worldview is secular. The reason: the Word of God is not her final authority. In this case, the government is.
That’s all I have to say about Ms. Prior. Others are already setting social media aflame, as their fingers fly across their keyboards, writing about Ms. Prior. This article isn’t really about her. She has simply provided me with an opportunity to write about a subject that is important to me: the reality that abortion is murder and those who participate in abortion–from hypocritical, Hippocratic Oath-takers to expectant mothers, and everyone in-between–are murderers.
Ms. Prior also provides a face for the many professing Christians around the country who think like she does. It’s you folks with whom I want to communicate.
Abortion IS Murder
Regardless of what the United States government says, regardless of what individual state governments say, regardless what you who are reading this might believe: abortion is murder. Abortion is the premeditated killing of a human being (the unborn child), with malice aforethought. The fact that governments legalize one form of murder while outlawing other forms of murder, is irrelevant.
God has set the standard. God has commanded all of mankind not to murder one another (Genesis 9:6; Exodus 20:13; Deuteronomy 5:17; Matthew 5:21-22; Matthew 19:18; Mark 7:21; Mark 10:19; Luke 18:20; Acts 3:14; Acts 7:52; Romans 1:29; Romans 13:9; 1 Timothy 1:9; James 2:11; 1 Peter 4:15; 1 John 3:15; Revelation 21:8; Revelation 22:15).
The question regarding when life begins is not even a legitimate discussion in the medical community, anymore. Most of medical academia, as well as the courts understand that life begins at conception. The only ones who still believe otherwise, so it seems, are high school and college students (you know: open-minded, free thinkers) who believe whatever their professors tell them, and the men and women going to abortuaries who want to be told (by people who want their money) the baby in the womb is not a human being, making it easier to kill him or her.
However, even if all the world still believed a baby in a womb was a blob of tissue or a parasite, it would be utterly irrelevant. Why?
God makes it clear that those who He creates are human beings, in the womb (Psalm 22:9-10; Psalm 139:13-16; Luke 1:39-45).
Malice Aforethought
Abortion is a malicious act. Maliciousness is defined as an intentional, spiteful, and harmful act toward another. What can possibly be more intentional, more spiteful, more harmful than mothers, fathers, and grandparents (as you will see below) walking into an abortuary to have an unborn child intentionally and brutally torn limb-from-limb, and then thrown out with the garbage.
Abortion is malicious because it is a crime of convenience. Men and women are choosing to murder their unborn children because they can’t afford to raise a child, or because they are not emotionally ready or mature enough to raise a child, or because they don’t want to have to drop out of school, or because the man (term used loosely) will leave her if she has the baby, or because they simply don’t want a child.
When people like this are presented with viable options and genuine offers to help, more often than not they ignore the extended hands of help, march into the abortuary, kill their child, and leave with their babies’ blood on their hands.
Men and women maliciously kill their children for convenience-sake. When assistance with adoption is offered, most abortive women say, “I don’t want someone else raising my baby. That would be too hard!”
Too hard on who? Not the baby. It would be too hard on the mother’s conscience. So, she murders the baby instead.
Life is hard. Bad things happen–some things that shouldn’t happen. Sin happens, too. Everyday. There are consequences for sin. Killing an unborn baby in order to solve problems or make life easier is malicious. It’s murder.
Meet the Murderers
I can say with confidence that most professing Christians who are uncomfortable with referring to abortion as murder and referring to abortive parents and abortion providers as murderers, are probably also uncomfortable with standing outside an abortuary and pleading with people not to murder their children.
American Christians love to be comfortable. Many see it as a right. Like evangelism, trying to save the lives of unborn children, especially while standing at the edge of death’s doorstep, would infringe upon the comfort to which most American Christians have grown accustomed. Since many Christians in America live their lives in such a way as to keep themselves as far away as possible from spiritual or physical discomfort, they certainly aren’t intentionally going to put themselves in a place where they might face persecution–a place like outside an abortuary.
This is a situation in which “being there” makes a difference. If I could get Karen Swallow Prior, and professing Christians who think like her, to spend just a few hours with me outside of any one of a number of abortuaries around the country, I think most would change their minds about whether or not abortion is murder–about whether or not those who kill unborn children are murderers.
Since the likelihood is Ms. Prior will never spend any time outside an abortuary with me, and since most Christians who think like her probably won’t either, allow me to introduce you to some of the people I’ve met over the last few years.
Meet the murderers.
VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED…..
In this video, parents bring their daughter (late teens, early twenties) to an abortuary to kill her baby–to kill their grandchild. The girl, the mom, the murderer crudely wrote on the back of her white shirt: “Kiss my pro-choice @#$%^&!”
If these three people aren’t murderers, then what are they?
In this video, two young women come to an abortuary. One has come to murder her child. The other has come to “support” her.
If this woman isn’t a murderer, then what is she?
For some mothers, killing one child isn’t enough. The woman in this video came to an abortuary to murder…..twins.
If this woman isn’t a murderer, then what is she?
In this video, a couple comes to an abortuary to kill their child. Listen to the murder and hate coming out of this man’s mouth.
If this couple aren’t murderers, then what are they?
In this last video, you will meet Yasmine. Unlike the others in the previous videos, Yasmine was pleasant. Sadly, after offering her every conceivable kind of help, Yasmine committed the ultimate crime of convenience–the murder of her own child.
If this young woman isn’t a murderer, then what is she?
There are Many Others
I just gave you a few examples of what murderers of unborn children look and act like. Sadly, there are so many more. Too many more.
I could tell you of the time when a woman, visibly with child, walked toward the back door of an abortuary, smiling, and making stabbing motions toward her stomach.
I could tell you of the time when a woman boasted of having her fifth abortion. She danced around the parking lot and said, “Maybe I’ll kill Jesus today!”
I could tell you of the time a woman tried to extort $5,000 from me. That was the ransom she put on her child’s life. If I would give her $5,000, then she wouldn’t murder her baby. I didn’t have the money, and her baby died.
I could tell you of the many times I have been physically assaulted by men and women who arrived at abortuaries with murder in their heart. Why would it surprise me; why would it surprise you that those bent on killing their unborn children would think nothing of assaulting others?
The only victim who enters an abortuary is the only person who never comes out alive–the unborn child. The mothers and fathers walk out. The grandparents walk out. The friends who drove the pregnant mother to the abortuary walk out. But the babies don’t.
Yes, they are murderers.
Update
Posted: December 2, 2015, 1304 hrs. Screen shot provided by Frank Turk, on Twitter.
Karen Swallow Prior updated her article to include the following:
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