| November 19, 2000 |
Vol. III, No. 29
|
“Eighty-six: to refuse to serve (a customer); also, to eject.”
In late September, the United States Food and Drug Administration approved the drug, RU-486 for distribution by physicians as an alternative to surgical abortion of unborn human beings.
Scientists and activists hope that this new development will eventually quell the abortion debate in America, since it is presumed that a pill will be far less offensive than actual surgery. Like popping an aspirin to relieve a headache, so a woman may pop a pill and abort the headache in her womb.
The drug is ironically named. RU-486 sounds like Are you for "eighty-six," a slang term for refusing, rejecting or killing something. And so the abortion debate is not quieted at all by the availability of this wonder drug, which proposes to eliminate all the pain, guilt and controversy of surgical abortions. Or will it?
It turns out that RU-486 (mifepristone) is not as simple or effective in treating unwanted children as Tylenol is in treating unwanted headaches.
The function of RU-486 is to block end organ receptors of various hormones, thus interrupting any process dependent upon them, including pregnancy. Imagine that just after conception, God begins to construct a tiny nest in the mother's womb, where the unborn child will be nurtured and nourished until he is ready to spread his wings in a delivery room. All things work naturally and properly until RU-486 is introduced into the body and the nourishment of the nest is terminated. The unborn child soon dies, but does not disappear. His remains must be ejected from the body, thrown from his mother's nest, which suddenly turned deadly.
A decade ago, RU-486 was promoted as the "morning after pill," the panacea for the sexual revolution, promising to permit promiscuity without consequence. The drug, however, proved to work poorly that early in pregnancy when progesterone levels were low.
Next it was promised as a menstrual regulator, which could be taken every month and thus abort any fetuses that might have developed somehow during the month. This way, a woman would never know if she were really aborting her child and would not need to feel any guilt. Further research showed, however that RU-486 actually deregulates menstruation by unlinking the process from ovulation.
Finally, in 1987, Dr. Beaulieu, the discoverer of RU-486, determined that RU-486 could become a replacement for surgical abortions in the first ten weeks of pregnancy, when most unborn humans are terminated. That window turned out to be too large, however, because the drug does not work well after the seventh week of pregnancy and is only safe after the fourth week.
But it is still safe and free of blood, pain and guilt, right? Wrong.
Its effectiveness in aborting babies varies from 60 to 80 percent, leaving behind a few cases in which surgery is still required. Women over 35 are not eligible for the drug at all.
According to an International Inquiry Commission on RU-486, the proper use of the wonder drug involves not a simple home administration of pills but up to six or sevenvisits to the doctor. Here it becomes already more complicated than the old-fashioned abortion mill.
After a doctor confirms the pregnancy and administers the pill, the mother must spend 12 hours in the hospital for injections of prostaglandin, to help along the abortion process. Then she must expel the fetus, which most always results in hemorrhaging and great discomfort. Some cases require more injections and even a surgical abortion if the drugs are ineffective. Several days later, the former mother must return to make certain all the parts of her unborn child have been killed and expelled. Such unspeakable horror and evil.
An RU-486 abortion is not less intrusive and painful than a surgical abortion and will not end the controversy in America. The controversy centers on when life begins, at conception or at birth. When does God invest a developing human body with an immortal soul?
The Bible tells us that it is at conception. David writes in Psalm 139: "For you formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb .... My frame was not hidden from you. When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed, And in your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them."
[Information for this article was obtained from an article by Dr. Eugene Diamond, "RU-486: The Rest of the Story," published in the January 1993 issue of Family Resources Center News.]
--Jeff S. Smith, Electronic Gospel
Matthew records in Matt. 18:11, that Jesus said of Himself, “The Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.” Luke tells us on the occasion when Jesus visited in the home of Zacchaeus, and was maligned by certain self-righteous individuals for eating with sinners, that once again He reiterated, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).
In John’s account of the gospel, Jesus also is quoted as to His reason for leaving heaven and coming to earth to dwell among men: “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). In the process of providing for men to have everlasting life, it was also necessary that Jesus do some work of a negative nature. John explains in 1 John 3:8, “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.”
This mission of destroying the works of the devil and saving the souls of men necessitated Jesus’ living a completely sinless life so that He did not deserve to die -- then dying as a sacrifice for those who did deserve death, so that they might live forever. Having died for the remission of the sins of others, He must triumph over death, hell, and the grave. Jesus now offers salvation to all who will believe and obey His gospel. He told His apostles in Mark 16:15-16 to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved...” The Hebrew writer tells us in Heb. 5:9 that “having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.”
Jesus, in His own personal preaching, was laying the ground-work for the gospel He would later send His apostles into all the world to preach. In recognizing that the one underlying purpose of Jesus’ coming to earth was to bring about the salvation of sinners, we can perhaps see the importance of preaching the truth in Jesus’ statements recorded in Mark 1:38 and Luke 4:43. As He was about to leave Capernaum to go to other cities of Galilee, the Lord said, “Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also, because for this purpose I have come forth.”
Though there is no particular preacher in the world today who is absolutely necessary to the accomplishing of the will of God, there is a Divine message that IS necessary. As Paul shows in Rom. 10:13-17, a person may be saved by scripturally calling upon the Lord -- but men cannot know how to do that unless God’s message is preached to them. In Biblical times, no one ever became a Christian without first hearing the gospel of Christ. The same is true today. As Jesus said, the gospel must be preached. Then, “he who believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mark 16:16).
–CRJ