America Is A Civilized Society, Right?

What would a civilized society in the 21^st century think about child sacrifice?  We would be abhorred by it even though it is something that still happens all around the world among people groups who believe that for the sake of needed rain, greater fertility, or better crops the death of an innocent child will produce some beneficial result for the community.  Do your own research and you will find this to be the case.  And we know of civilizations such as Carthage in ancient Tunisia where child sacrifice was very common to the god Molech.  The bronze statue of Molech had outstretched hands over hot fires and infants would be placed on the hands to be burned alive in sacrifice for the benefit of those whose lives and welfare was deemed more valuable than the lives and welfare of the children.  So what does this have to do with our “civilized” America?  The latest celebration of the new abortion law in New York which makes it legal to abort a baby anytime up until the moment of birth is exactly what this has to do with.  But to be precise, the new law states that abortions may be performed any time up until birth IF the life OR health of the mother is endangered. But therein lies the question: What defines danger to a woman’s health and who makes that call?  Is it her mental health? Her emotional health? Could her doctor think that she might have a difficult delivery and therefore abortion at 9 months could be justified? 

How many women actually die each year in America because they were pregnant? According to the CIA World Factbook 2017 the US ranked 112^th in the world for maternal mortality at 14 deaths per 100,000 live births which is about 500 maternal deaths for the nearly 4 million babies that were born.  Yet there were between 1 and 1.5 million abortions in America last year.  And why are there so many abortions when clearly the life of the mother is by far not threatened by pregnancy?  According to the Guttmacher Institute three-fourths of aborting women have an abortion because they can’t afford a child, three-fourths have an abortion because a child would interfere with their life (work, school, etc.), and half of aborting women have an abortion because they don’t want to be a single parent.  The killing of a child in the womb is primarily done for the benefit of those whose lives and welfare are deemed more valuable than the lives and welfare of the children.  So how far have we really come from child sacrificing?   Listed among the things that the LORD hates in Proverbs 6:16 are “hands that shed innocent blood.”  God forgive us, for we know not what we do.