Doctrinal Library

What Are People Asking About Us?

Abortion is an ugly thing, a debasing thing, a thing which inevitably brings remorse and sorrow and regret. While we denounce it, we make allowance in such circumstances as when pregnancy is the result of incest or rape, when the life or health of the mother is judged by competent medical authority to be in serious jeopardy, or when the fetus is known by competent medical authority to have serious defects that will not allow the baby to survive beyond birth.

Walking in the Light of the Lord

What is happening to our appreciation of the sanctity of human life? Abortion is an evil, stark and real and repugnant, which is sweeping over the earth. I plead with the women of this Church to shun it, to stand above it, to stay away from those compromising situations which make it appear desirable. There may be some few circumstances under which it can occur, but they are extremely limited and for the most part improbable. You are the mothers of the sons and daughters of God, whose lives are sacred. Safeguarding them is a divinely given responsibility which cannot be lightly brushed aside.

Families Can Be Eternal

Abortion has reached plague proportions. There have been, for instance, “more deaths from abortion in England in the decade since the English Abortion Act than there were deaths in the First World War.” Of this, Malcolm Muggeridge said: “I was brought up to believe that one of the great troubles of our Western world was that in the First World War we lost the flower of our population. Well, now we have destroyed an equivalent number of lives in the name of humane principles, before they were even born.” (Human Life Review, Summer 1980, p. 74.)
The time will come when only those who believe deeply and actively in the family will be able to preserve their families in the midst of the gathering evil around us.

God Will Not Be Mocked

One-third of our firstborn children in the United States in two tabulated years were said to be conceived out of wedlock. In one year there were an estimated 400,000 illegitimate births in the United States; and many other countries have like records. About half of the female dropouts from high school were pregnant. The ugly estimates continue: More than a million American women each year resort to illegitimate abortions. This is one of the most despicable of all sins—to destroy an unborn child to save one from embarrassment or to save one’s face or comfort.

Strengthen the Stakes of Zion

The secret of the strength of this church may be found in the statement of a president of a student body at one of our state-operated universities, whose identity, of course, is confidential. This is a quotation from his personal letter addressed to me: “With the rule of the radical ideas which are sweeping the country, there has come a breakdown of family ties which is despised in many intellectual circles. The country is seemingly plied with sex education, abortion, planned parenthood, pornography, women’s liberation, communal living, premarital sex, and postmarital permissiveness. …President Lee, I want you to know that the Latter-day Saint students on campus who keep the commandments are 100 percent behind you. Thank God we have leaders who stand firm against the subtle battle of the adversary who is striking at the home, the most vital unit of the world. Thank you for being the kind of a person that we, as young people growing up in this mixed-up world, can understand and can follow."

Lessons from Eve

Your foes in a sordid society demean the sacredness of women and the sanctity of motherhood. Your world, sickened by unchastity and plagued with sexually transmitted disease, needs your righteous example. For the wrath of God is provoked by governments that sponsor gambling, condone pornography, or legalize abortion. These forces serve to denigrate women now, just as they did in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Protect the Spiritual Power Line

The ashes of burned “love” smolder with the smoke of sadness. Yet the embers of evil still burn. But as loud voices argue on, let us remember that those who advocate abortion have already been born! Those who freely deny God with their amoral and agnostic practices will one day find that He may just as freely deny them! (See 3 Ne. 28:34.)

Weightier Matters

If we say we are anti-abortion in our personal life but pro-choice in public policy, we are saying that we will not use our influence to establish public policies that encourage righteous choices on matters God’s servants have defined as serious sins. I urge Latter-day Saints who have taken that position to ask themselves which other grievous sins should be decriminalized or smiled on by the law due to this theory that persons should not be hampered in their choices. Should we decriminalize or lighten the legal consequences of child abuse? of cruelty to animals? of pollution? of fraud? of fathers who choose to abandon their families for greater freedom or convenience?

Job 31:15

15 Did not he that made me in the womb make him? And did not one fashion us in the womb?

Deuteronomy 30:19

19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: