Is our Adventist Policy on Abortion due for a Review?

[Nic Samojluk]

The Seventh-day Adventist church is a "we" church. Not a "me" church. Some people have the attitude that if the church doesn't make decisions according to their personal understanding of Scripture, that the church must be wrong. They do not give room that they may be wrong and the church right. They take the attitude that their understanding of the Scripture is superior to the understanding of the church. Thus they set themselves up as a human authority over the church, much like the pope does.

You are forgetting that there exists another possibility: that you might be endorsing what the church does regardless of what Scripture says. Our church was wrong when it supported the Nazi program in Germany and recently the church had to publicly apologize.

The church also participated in the Rwanda genocide, and now it is actively participating in the genocide of the unborn. Do you see the killing of innocent human beings as the mission of the church? For two thousand years the Christian church tried to adhere to the Hippocratic Oath which forbade abortion.

Then came the sexual revolution of the sixties powered by the sinful desire to ignore the Seventh Commandment, which created the problem of the mushrooming in the number of unwanted pregnancies, and the U.S. decided to legalize the killing of innocent unborn babies. Adventist saw in this an opportunity for profit, and the church decided to now engage both in healing and killing at the same time.

If I am wrong on this, then we need to re-write the Ten Commandments, and this is exactly what our church did when they adopted our “Guidelines on Abortion.” There is a curse in the Bible for those who attempt to alter what the Lord himself has inspired holy men of God wrote. I don’t want my hands to be stained with the blood of innocent human beings.

The Bible is very clear on this issue, and we do not need for prone-to-err human beings to water down what the Lord himself wrote on stone. There is no need to clarify what is already crystal clear. Southern Baptists do not have any abortion guidelines. They simply adhere to the Bible and refuse to perform abortions.

[Nic Samojluk]

I don't think that many Adventists are as extreme as Nic. I consider myself to be pro-life. I think most Adventists that identify themselves as pro-life are much closer to my position than Nic's.

You may be right about North American Adventists, but wrong—I believe—about the rest of the world. I have evidence that in many other countries of the world our Adventists hospitals are not allowed to offer abortion services, except to save the life of a pregnant woman.

But, I can tell you that my investigation into this issue revealed that two thirds of our magazine readers between 1970 and 2006 held to the pro-life position on abortion. I invested thousands of hours into this research, and nobody so far has shown me contrary credible evidence based on statistical data.

If you have some data, please share it with me. I am the only Adventist in the world who has done serious work on this issue, which you are trying to dismiss as irrelevant. Please, give me some real meat to chew on. I could be wrong, but someone needs to show me credible evidenc that I am in error.

[Nic Samojluk]

I don't buy into Nic's whole conspiracy theory. The guidelines are great. Those that don't abide by them will be judged by God. That's not on me. Nic doesn't want a woman to be able to have an abortion even in cases of rape and incest. You can't get any more extreme than that. Most Adventists that claim to be pro-life are not to that extreme.

You seem to be happy with what society and Adventists are approving. When rape takes place we have a criminal and two victims of his crime: the woman and her unborn baby. Justice demands that we punish the guilty. Is this what we do? No—we punish one of the victims with death and let the guilty live. And you support this travesty of the justice system?

How can you do this with a straight face? This was not so before the advent of the sexual revolution. The desire to do away with the prohibition against adultery and fornication paved the way for the legalization of abortion. Please, Shane, put two plus two together—it equals four and not five or six. Take the blinders from your eyes. The Bible is right and the church is wrong on this issue.

[Nic Samojluk]

This topic is not ordained of God. It is a satanic diversion to get people off track.

Does what you stated mean that you are happy that our church is actively participating in the killing of innocent unborn babies in our Adventist hospitals and medical institutions? I this the mission of the Remnant Church, or is it healing the sick instead of killing them by the hundreds. Do you think that Ellen White would support what we are doing? Is this what she envisioned for our medical work?

[Nic Samojluk]

hch said: “Famous American preachers that claimed to uphold the word of God getting caught in sex scandals with single women, married women, and even other men. And we don't have to look far from our own church to find men that were once called of God putting their wives away and marrying younger women.”

I say: I have no idea who you had in mind when you wrote this. It must have been somebody else, because I am neither famous nor what you described applies to me. I am still married to the same woman I promised to love and care for almost six decades ago.

[Nic Samojluk]

hch said: “This topic is not ordained of God. It is a satanic diversion to get people off track.”

I say: Let me get this straight: According to you then, killing innocent unborn babies by the hundreds is of divine origin, but speaking in defense of those who are being mercilessly killed is of satanic origin. Is this what you are saying? I am having a hard time following your logic!