Whenever we talk about abortion, it's important, as Christians, to say three things:
But for those in society who don't agree with those statements ... Dawkins is right.
Here’s why.
If you don’t think that abortion is wrong, then why is abortion for one particular reason or another wrong? If you believe in a woman’s right to choose, then, as Dawkins says on his blog:
“What I was saying simply follows logically from the ordinary pro-choice stance that most of us, I presume, espouse.”
In other words: if you are pro-choice, how can you have a problem with a woman making her choice on the grounds of her child not being the one that she wanted? If you oppose abortion on the grounds of health, then you’re not pro-choice; you’re just pro-some-choice (and do you really want to be pro the choice of the woman who just doesn’t want a child full stop, healthy or not, while being anti the choice of the woman who doesn’t want a child that has a chromosomic abnormality)?
The problem with Dawkins (or, perhaps, the joy of Dawkins) is that he will keep pushing a position to its logical conclusion. That’s what he’s done here, with a pro-choice position. Now, if you’re pro-life, of course you take huge issue with his position, and feel deep sadness about those children who weren’t given the chance to live, either because they had Down’s Syndrome, or because they suffered from being inconvenient to their mother.
(By the way, notice that Dawkins uses the word immoral. He does seem unable to push his atheism to its logical conclusion; that he has no basis for morality, indeed that he has no reason even to talk in the categories of morality and immorality; and that he has no reason or right to go advising others on the basis of his own opinions anyway. But that’s for another day).
Put simply, if you’re pro-choice, and don’t like Dawkins’ remarks, it’s because you don’t like your own position.
So here’s the prayer: that many people will see the logical outcome of the pro-choice argument, and will think again about the whole issue. The prayer should be that God would delight in using Dawkins to cause a whole load of people to think again about what it is that he is knitting together in the womb, and to defend those babies’ right to life.
Carl is Editorial Director at The Good Book Company and is a member of Grace Church Worcester Park, London. He is the best-selling author of The Garden, the Curtain and the Cross and God's Big Promises Bible Storybook, and also serves as series editor of the God's Word for You series. Before joining TGBC, he worked as a journalist and then as a teacher, and pastored a congregation in Hull. Carl is married to Lizzie, and they have two children. He studied history at Oxford University.
