Posted on September 13, 2011 - by Chris Lazenby

THE SILENT HOLOCAUST

In the UK, at the time of writing there has been much coverage over the proposals by Nadine Dorries MP and Frank Field MP to change the way counselling about abortion takes place. As far as I’m aware, Nadine Dorries claims to be a Christian, and so some of us were hopeful about the possibility of an MP taking up the gauntlet in this area.

However, it turns out that Ms Dorries is quite firmly ‘pro-choice’. Her desire is not to see the number of abortions in the UK reduced (from the horrendous figure of 200,000 per year). What she is actually after is ‘independent help’ for mothers seeking abortion, rather than counselling from any organisation with a vested interest in the performing of abortions. ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14822710 ).

During my years as a Christian, the topic of abortion has haunted me. I don’t quite know what I can do. I’ve tinkered around the fringes – been a member of the SPUC (Society for the Protection of Unborn Children) almost since my conversion; always argued against people who are ‘pro life’ and always try to counter the old chestnuts about women who’ve been raped, or the life of the mother being threatened if the birth goes ahead. The truth is, of course, that such cases – in the UK at any event – are a miniscule percentage of the total number of abortions performed each year.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw – for the first time – the film of the book The Boy in Striped Pajamas. The horror of the Nazi death camps was conveyed in such a way as to make my blood run cold. I literally wept and found it difficult to sleep after watching the picture. I, no doubt like you, always ask myself ‘how could ordinary people have known about this (both in Germany and around the world) and allowed it to go on?’ And yet here we are, sitting right in the middle of an even bigger holocaust – a ‘silent holocaust’, as it’s been called, which is going on constantly all around us. Just as with the death camps, how can otherwise decent seeming people be content to allow this to go on? And how it must break God’s heart!

How can we refer to the destroying of an unborn child so casually as a ‘termination’? How is it that a wanted child is a baby and an unwanted child is a foetus? How is it that we can kill millions of children world-wide each year and not accept they are babies? After all, if a woman loses a baby as a result of a failure in the health system, or, for example, the failure of a car seatbelt, she can take legal action against those responsible for the failure. In such cases, the unborn child is clearly not simply considered a foetus, but an unborn human being.

This crime against humanity must be challenged by Christians with as much energy as we can (peacefully) bring to bear. It’s my prayer that God will bring Christians everywhere (including me) to take this issue more seriously.