LAST YEAR’S INCIDENT
In Grand Rapids’ Advance newspaper of April 15, last year, Gary Melow reported on a meeting at Calvin College on the subject of abortion. “Opposing sides of the abortion issue must compromise and unite . . . two health care professionals said at a forum last week. Gayla Jawell, associate professor of nursing at Grand Valley State College . . . and Dr. Doug Diekema, M.D., who is researching medical ethics at Calvin College, joined two representatives of the pro–life/prochoice at the college’s Gezon Auditorium for an informal forum sponsored by the Calvin College Pro-Life Association. ‘Both groups are far too rigid and their stances dogmatic,’ Diekema said. He is currently studying the ethics of euthanasia, abortion and infanticide.” “. . . The Wisconsin medical resident said, the opposing sides should concentrate their efforts on life and its quality; not its biological existence.” “There is no ‘good’ choice for the woman contemplating abortion, he said, ‘Abortion is not a good option, but it might be the best option.’ Diekema lashed out at pro-lifers who spend more time addressing the issue when that energy could be spent bettering the lives deeply affected by abortion.” “Picketers outside hospitals protesting abortions anger him.” “Diekema and Jewell called for the opposite sides of abortion to soften their stance and accept the other’s right to maintain their own value systems and beliefs.” We filed. but did not publicize this report.
FAMILY PLANNING COURSE
Clearly indicating much broader and more significant movement toward such compromise with the increasing and increasingly accepted practice of abortion are recent reports about the Calvin College course on the Planned Family. The new (1987) textbook for the course entitled FAMILY PLANNING CHOOSING WHAT’S BEST FOR YOU, a Pyranee Book published by Zondervan, was written by the two sociology professors who taught the course. Peter De Jong and William Smit. Its contents are listed: “1. Why Plan? 2. Which Contraceptive? 3. Should We Even Have Children? 4. How Many and When? 5. Will My Baby Be Healthy? Can I Choose Us Sex? 6. Can Both of Us Work? 7. What About Sterilization? 8. What If I Can’t Get Pregnant? 9. What about Adoption? 10. Is Foster Parenting For Us?”
Reading the basic textbook, one observes after an introduction which stresses the need to plan “what kind of family we want,” (p. 1), an extensive explanation and discussion of methods of birth control. The book then raises the questions whether each desires any children, and, if so, how many, stressing the disadvantages as well as advantages of having them and tending to discourage larger families. The book notes especially the economic disadvantage of having to spend an estimated average of over $200,000 to rear each child, and cites the sociologists’ concern about over-population, as factors to be considered in arguing for small families. It advises that anyone who wants to cut down on the probability of physical, psychological, social and moral problems “begin childbearing after the wife is twenty years of age and . . . end it before she is thirty-five” (p. 73).
The section on sterilization cites changing views and practices as that becomes more common. While Roman Catholic leadership opposes it, “most Protestant denominations do not have an official position” and two prominent Methodist clergy and an Episcopalian are cited as endorsing and defending it. Artificial insemination gets an extensive discussion (pp. 183 ff.) including the use of donors. Again on this matter, Christian opinion is said to be divided, with some citing the Biblical examples of Abraham and Hagar (Gen. 16) and levirate marriage (Deut. 25) as precedents. The subjects of adoption and foster parenting get an extensive discussion.
The reader’s over-all impression of the book is that. although it shows a concern about a Christian perspective, especially in its last chapter. its emphasis falls heavily on acquainting the student with current scientific opinion and changing practices in our society, in order to help each plan what his or her own course will be. Repeatedly, when Christian opinion is brought in it is said to be divided. with little or no apparent discrimination between what is legitimately “Christian” and what is not. The title, “Choosing what is best for you” accurately reflects the point of view that is being encouraged.
In the past standard Christian treatments of moral questions were commonly structured around the revealed law of God. Here the sociologists are lecturing, with occasional observations of what various Christians think about the subject being treated. It is illuminating to compare this book with a “Birth Control Testimony” formulated by our churches’ synod a half century ago (in 1936). Appealing to Genesis 1, that document noted that marriage was instituted by God for a double purpose, companionship and children. While stressing the need to consider the health of mother and children, it warned against the “perverted” idea that “the size of one’s family is to be determined by mere considerations of personal preference, instead of by the ordinances of God.” It urged the duty of the church to uphold “the sacred ordinance of God and the Christian ideal of marriage and parenthood, which are increasingly being ignored and flouted in our day.” Clearly, that Christian, “covenantal” view of marriage and parenthood gets little attention and no clear direction in the advice being given today’s Calvin students about “family planning” as each is advised to “choose what is best for you.”
SPECIAL TREATMENT OF ABORTION
Although the textbook occasionally mentions abortion, students were informed that a section on that subject has been left out because of Zondervan, the publisher’s objection. Therefore the material was given in an oral lecture. It was also very extensively covered in a required supplementary textbook, Life in the Balance Exploring the Abortion Controversy, By Robert N. Wennberg, published by Eerdmans (1985).
Wennberg developed this material as a professor at Westrnount College. He aims to provide, in his 184-page book, a “philosophical” and “academic” treatment of the whole subject, systematically surveying the various views and arguments regarding it, and discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each. The result is-an extremely complex discussion with all kinds of ambiguities. His statement of the problem is revealing: “Three principal factors have combined to make abortion the serious moral and social problem it is today: (1) abortion is a relatively low-risk. pain-free operation when performed by skilled medical practitioners, (2) there are impressive reasons prompting women to seek abortions, and (3) abortion involves terminating the life of what is (minimally) a potential person endowed with some measure of value that warrants respect” (p. 20}. The relativism of that formulation predicts the direction of the following very complicated discussion around such questions as “is the fetus a person?” Is there a right to life, and if so, when? And what does or should the law say about abortion? Although the author at some points cites Biblical material, his primarily philosophical and academic treatment leads ·him to defend the conclusion that “abortion is not murder” and should not be made a crime (p. 165). His “conclusion from all this is then, that women ought not to be forced to carry through with unwanted pregnancies (encouraged perhaps, but not forced), even if (Notice his uncertainty about that!) it is the case that a fetus is a person with a person’s right to life” (p. 167).
The effect of this presentation by lecture and textbook was reportedly to persuade the large class of over eighty students that abortion was an acceptable option in certain cases.
It is hardly accidental that this kind of relativism regarding the moral evil of abortion becomes apparent at the same time as the book , The Fourth Day is highlighting the triumph of evolutionary thinking at our college. J. G. Vos, in the article reprinted in the April Outlook, pointed out how and why an inevitable result of accepting the evolutionary vision is the destruction of morals. I remember a public school sex lecture, delivered, no doubt, in somewhat cruder terms than that in Calvin’s family planning course, but not too different in content. It was given by the same teacher who told us that what our parents believed was right and wrong we no longer believed and that our children would not believe what we believed. That clearly reflected the evolutionary perspective that was everywhere not so much argued as assumed to be a starting point of anyone who had an education. That thoroughly demoralizing kind of public education was an important spur to our parents to pray, work and sometimes fight for Christian schools. Now we are· seeing some dramatic examples, beginning in our college, of the way these schools are surrendering in principle to the same secular relativism· that characterized those public schools. Thus our “Christian education” is “joining the mainstream” of our culture which/more and more obviously, like that of the first century, follows the “father of lies” and the “murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44).
2 Kings 24:3, 4 gives this explanation of the destruction of God’s Old Testament people: “Surely at the commandment of the LORD this came upon Judah, to remove them from His sight because of the sins of Manesseh, according to all that he had done, and also because of the innocent blood that he had shed; for he had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, which the LORD would not pardon.” If the mass murder of the innocent was what finally exhausted the LORD’s patience, what must He say of the nearly 18,000,000 unborn children that have recently been murdered with the approval of our courts and, what is even more intolerable, the increasing acceptance and support of “Christian” preachers and educators! This sophisticated acceptance of what has to be one of the most heinous atrocities of our time, shows, not our increasing sensitivity to the complexity of current problems, but the progressive blindness of our hearts (Eph. 4:17) when we surrender to contemporary pagan society instead of persisting in faithful testimony to the Lord’s gospel.