EDITOR, The Tribune.

Bahamian evangelical Christians must play close attention to the Progressive Liberal Party’s (PLP) impending policy announcement on abortion.

According to The Nassau Guardian, Health Minister Dr Michael Darville stated that this is a matter that the Davis administration intends to confront. Darville’s reluctance to publicly state which side of the fence he is on regarding abortion on demand underscores the sensitivity of the subject in the Roe vs Wade case. Maybe his reticence is due to his profession as a medical practitioner, although there are prominent physicians who have publicly declared their opposition to abortion on demand.

For example, the Americans Dr C Everett Koop, Dr Ben Carson and Dr James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Koop and Francis Schaeffer wrote a polemic, “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” which was an evangelical response to the US Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v Wade ruling. The Roe v Wade ruling declared that the US Constitution gave women the freedom to abort their unborn babies without restrictions from the federal government.

Between 1973 and January 2021, there has been an estimated 62 million abortions in the US - over ten times the number of Jewish Holocaust victims murdered by the German Nazis.

The United Nations (UN) is headquartered in New York. I suspect that the PLP government is facing mounting pressure from the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to emulate Roe v Wade. The matter of abortion cases emanating from incest and rape is a thorny issue.

Both forms of sexual violence can scar the victim emotionally and psychologically. Ministries such as the US-based Focus on the Family and Jeff Durbin’s Apologia Church in Arizona have extraordinary outreach ministries for women with unwanted pregnancies. Foster homes are sought for the babies of rape and incest victims. This is a far better alternative than ending the life of the unborn baby.

I believe Bahamian ministries with deep pockets and influential parishioners should emulate the ongoing work of Focus on the Family and Apologia Church. The call by the CEDAW for the Bahamian government to “decriminalise abortions in all cases” is really a call for abortion on demand, which is already an unspoken rule in this jurisdiction.

Abortion procedures, such as medical abortion, vacuum aspiration, dilation and evacuation and labour induction are routinely carried out in the lucrative Bahamian underground abortion industry. Young Bahamian women, some who are adolescents, are given abortion medications such as misoprostal and mifepristone. These young people are engaging in unprotected recreational sex with multiple partners. A pregnancy, in many instances, is unwanted, especially if the suitor is an undesirable.

Hence, a thriving underground Roe v Wade industry. One of the dire side effects of abortion is heavy virginal bleeding. Another is infection in the uterus. The dilation and evacuation procedure can also cause significant injury to the uterus. Many of those seeking to terminate the life of the unborn baby usually do so within the first trimester, which is from conception to 12 weeks. Under the guise of reproductive healthcare for women, pro-choice advocates such as the CEDAW and Planned Parenthood usually seek to downplay the significance of the side effects, injuries and emotional trauma abortion causes.

Bahamian women who have terminated the lives of their unborn babies are guilt-ridden, knowing that what they have done is murder, according to the Sixth Commandment in Exodus 20. The UN and its CEDAW are walking contradictions. While the UN has no qualms ending the lives of innocent unborn babies, it opposes capital punishment for convicted murderers and rapists. In an address to the seventh World Congress against the Death Penalty in February 2019, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that “the death penalty has no place in the twenty-first century”.

The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah was told by Yahweh that he was sanctified and called to be a prophet in the womb of his mother (Jeremiah 1:5). In Galatians 1:15, the apostle Paul said that Yahweh had set him apart from his mother’s womb. Obviously God views the fetus, from moment of conception, as a human being created in His image. Whatever legislation the PLP enacts, Bahamian lawmakers must bear in mind that there will be eternal ramifications. I can assure Parliamentarians that the Nuremberg excuse will never fly before God’s tribunal.

The state hasn’t carried out an execution in over 22 years, yet it might regulate the Roe v Wade industry. Something has to be wrong with this. Bahamian evangelical Christians must continue to submit to the civil authority, which today is the Davis administration. However, any law that subverts biblical law must be respectfully rejected unanimously by the church. The PLP should instead focus its attention on ending the underground abortion industry.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport, Grand Bahama

February 16, 2022.