Hagee on abortion

The Rev. John Hagee gives us his insights on abortion from his FAQ section. Yes, this is not an off the cuff answer, but rather the standard response he gives to everyone.


Q. Abortion is legal, but is it morally wrong? What about abortion in cases of rape or incest?

A. That no one should have the right to take the life of the unborn has been a principle of medicine from ancient times.

Really?!? I seem to have missed the great debates on this one in the Roman senate. And I’m missing the part where – and this might be some small bit of importance – we could actually abort a pregnancy in ancient times without insane risk to the woman.

If you want to make stuff up out of whole cloth, you really need to do better than this.

The Hippocratic Oath, first formulated as a sworn rule of conduct for doctors and physicians in ancient Greece some 2,400 years ago,

So you’re swearing to Apollo, Asclepius, Hygieia, and Panacea now? You might want to stick with your religion. I hear that your god is a jealous god.

says, "I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest such counsel; and in a like manner I will not give a woman a pessary to induce an abortion."

Good council! We have much better, safer, and easier ways to have abortions now. It’s all about that march of scientific progress.

Even then, four hundred years before the birth of Christ, people were clamoring for euthanasia and wanting to kill their unborn babies.

Yep, especially women who were raped.

If Hippocrates-a pagan physician who believed in all sorts of mythological gods and goddesses

Which is, of course, much worse than simply believing in one mythological god

-knew that it was wrong to take a life, what defense do we have today after the intervening two millennia of research and learning?

Is this a trick question? As stated, we have 2,000 years of understanding, progress, and abilities that Hippocrates did not have, a far better understanding of what life actually is, and far, far better ways to make choices about childbirth than a young girl failing to be able to run away from a marauding barbarian rapist.

When it comes to abortion, I believe God is pro-life.

Tell that to all the people who weren’t on Noah’s Ark.

Let me demonstrate that in Scripture.

Please do! It won’t mean a thing since that’s a made up book of stories, but it’s fun to watch you thrash about in it!

Speaking through Moses, God told his people: "I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live" (Deut. 30:19).

A clear quote directly talking about unborn children, obviously.

God created us as free moral agents, with the capacity to choose our course of action.

So God is Pro-Choice then!

But He certainly gave us explicit direction for making wise choices: "Choose life."

Again…he wants us to be able to choose!

The Bible places great value on children. They are the "heritage" of the Lord, His "reward" (Ps. 127:3).

Absolutely. It’s tough to brainwash other people’s kids, so it’s better to have your own.

The Bible also makes it clear that a child's life is to be protected, even while the child is in the mother's womb. Among the ancient Hebrews, penalties were prescribed against a person who injured a pregnant woman and thereby caused her to miscarry (Ex. 21:22-23).

Just like the abortion laws today.

God's Word says that if you hurt a pregnant woman and she loses the baby, you have to pay a penalty-not because it was a "blob of tissue," as abortion proponents would have us believe, but because it was a living human being.

Either that or the ancient goat herders who wrote the bible had never heard of genetics, modern abortion techniques, and accepted massive infant mortality rates as common.

Furthermore, God knows us, and even speaks to us, while we are in the womb. God called both Isaiah and Jeremiah to be prophets while they were still in the womb (Isa. 49:1, 5; Jer. 1:4-5). Would God name and ordain a meaningless blob? That unborn child in the womb is not a blob of flesh but a life sophisticated enough to have a relationship with God Almighty!

Judging from the sophistication of this argument, I’d say that you’ve set the bar way, way too low.

It is tempting to rationalize abortion in dire circumstances, such as pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. Statistically, such pregnancies are very rare.

True. But when rape or incest actually happen, rape or incest is 100% common.

If pregnancy does occur, the woman's trauma and guilt

Guilt?!? For being raped?!?

should not be compounded by the taking of innocent human life.

Rather we should torture a poor girl for her entire life by forcing her to raise a rapists’ child.

Abortion does not solve the problem of violence or abuse-it increases the problem.

Removing a woman’s decisions does not help her life, it destroys it.

We should punish the criminal, not the victim.

Agreed! Please start by not punishing the victim. That might help!