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This paragraph is going to be difficult to read. The ones following it should be more difficult. The picture on the right depicts a metal statue of the pagan god Molech. It is being heated with fire as a priest places a baby into its searing hands. He, and the gathered worshipers, will watch this baby burn to death, all in attempt to earn their god’s favor. This was a part of ancient pagan worship.[1]  

 

Repeatedly in Scripture God condemned this practice: “You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord” (Lev. 18:21). Tragically, Solomon erected a high place in Jerusalem to this god to placate his foreign wives!

 

We moderns like to believe our culture enlightened and far removed from these detestable, morally depraved ancient practices. The truth, however, may reveal otherwise. Consider a full-page advertisement featured in June in The New York Times. It was published in response to a number of recently passed pro-life laws. Under the misleading title “Don’t Ban Equality,” it read in part:

 

It’s time for companies to stand up for reproductive health care…  Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion, threatens the health, independence and economic stability of our employees and customers.  Simply put, it goes against our values, and is bad for business.

 

Put a bit more succinctly: “Restricting abortion is bad for business.” Or, phrased a bit more honestly: “Abortion is good for business.”[2] In other words, abortion must be preserved for the sake of business. How does that sit with you?

 

To be as charitable as possible, the ad’s sponsors were trying to address this underlying reality: pregnancy and babies unequally affect women’s professional careers. This cannot be denied. But is abortion the answer?

 

Justice Anthony Kennedy, in his 1992 majority opinion for Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld Roe v. Wade, wrote  

 

For two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail. The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.

 

In other words, for women to participate equally in the professional business world, abortion must be preserved. Ask yourself, What is the underlying assumption here? What is being held up as the most important thing, the thing before which everything else should be sacrificed? A person’s career. So the assumption is: nothing should stand in the way of a person’s career. It is the highest good.

 

Do you believe this?

 

Are our careers the highest good? Isn’t this the definition of a god, the thing before which everything else should be submitted and sacrificed? Are our careers God?

 

You can see now why abortion is so vigorously defended. It protects the god called career, business, personal advancement. Both the Times advertisement and the Kennedy decision make this point. Abortion must be preserved for the sake of our careers. Children must be sacrificed before the god career.

 

Don’t misunderstand; careers are fine things to have, good gifts of God to be enjoyed (Scripture repeatedly makes this point, especially the book of Ecclesiastes), but careers are terrible gods. Go back to the opening image. Molech was a horrid god, demanding the lives of his followers’ children – an abomination of the worst sort! Our culture may not build metal idols in which our children are burned to death, but are we really morally superior? Every year millions of our unborn children end up dismembered and discarded as medical waste. King Solomon set up the shrine to Molech in the Valley of Hinnom, which became the Greek word for hell. How else would you describe landfills of dismembered and discarded unborn babies? Is it any wonder Scripture repeatedly warns us to be on guard against false gods? They destroy us.  

 

But what are we to do about the underlying reality of inequality? Pregnancy and babies do unequally affect women’s professional careers, and like we said, a career can be a good gift from God to be enjoyed. First, acknowledge reality, but then ask whether this means that men and women are unequal? Does the ability to bear and nurture new life devalue a woman? Absolutely not! Should it not do the opposite? Shouldn’t this God-given capacity elevate the status of women? Shouldn’t it move us to doxologies of praise before the Creator who has bestowed this honor upon women? And shouldn’t we all begin viewing our careers not as something that exists for ourselves, for our personal advancement, but as the means by which we bless and provide for the children women bear? Should not careers be what call us to sacrifice ourselves (time, energy, etc.) for the welling being of our children and not our children for our careers?

 

Second, consider the validity of the assumption pulsating through so much of our culture’s euphemistic language. The Times ad spoke of equality, an equality that must be achieved through abortion. Here’s the unspoken underlying message: if women want equality in the professional business world, they have to become more like men; babies must be removed from the picture. This part of their God-given capacity must be denied. 

 

At its core this is anti-woman because it devalues one of the unique capacities God has granted to women – the ability to bear and nurture new life. In the name of business, this beautiful and godly capacity is being denied and devalued. This should stop. And it must begin with Christ’s Church. God calls life good. He calls woman and man good. And children are His blessing to women and men in marriage. The Church must confess this with confidence and joy. Careers are good gifts from God, but they are not God. We have one God. He is good and His Word is good and for our good. And when it is received in faith, it’s good for women, good for children, and good for men. – Pastor Conner