Is It a Moral Dilemma?

We are expanding on a conversation we have been having at the Christian Post under the article- What the Church Must Do Post Roe— The topic is not Dr. brown’s content but about a 10-year-old girl getting pregnant. This discussion is related to the content found in this Fox news article that was published earlier in the week or last week- Gov. Kristi Noem asked if South Dakota will force a 10-year-old to have a baby on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’

For some people, this is a real dilemma and also a good excuse to continue abortion practices. We did some research on this topic after reading one comment under the latter article. While this is rare in comparison to the number of births in a total year, it is not a rare event.

“According to Statistics South Africa, 899 303 babies were born in 2020, and of those 34 587 were born to girls aged 17 and younger. Of the 34 587 births from teen mothers, 16 042 were aged 17, while 688 were [9 and] 10 years young. 

Early pregnancy and motherhood in South Africa creates a greater risk in terms of maternal complications, resulting in low survival rates of babies and forcing many girls to prematurely take on an adult role which they are not emotionally or physically prepared for,” said Stats SA.” (source)

That statistic is just for South Africa and we have not looked at the statistics for other nations. They would just add to the number. What is surprising is that a ten-year-old is NOT the youngest girl to have a baby. According to this Wikipedia article, the youngest girl to be pregnant and have a child is 5 years 7 months.

If you count the ones listed under 10 you will see that 39 girls under 10 had babies or were pregnant. Move over a couple of columns and you will see that the countries of birth are not all 3rd world countries nor are they all Muslim ones.

This may sock you and this is where the supposed moral dilemma comes in for some people. This is also where those who are pro-abortion use this scenario to promote the idea that abortion needs to be available and legal.

Should young girls who are raped or had sex at this young age be allowed to have abortions? We already know that most unbelievers will disagree with what we will say here but our view is that age is not permission to kill.

The Bible is very clear when it says thou shalt not kill. There is no age limit on that command and no exceptions are made for children. They are not allowed to kill and their parents cannot make that decision for them.

No matter how old the woman or girl is, abortion is wrong and sin. We say that in spite of one female reporter’s words:

Would anyone in their right mind think it reasonable that a 10-year-old carry a pregnancy to term? This is not a thought experiment but the horrible story of a real child in Paraguay: raped by her stepfather and now denied an abortion. (source)

We are and God is in our right minds as biblical instruction is very clear. The problem doe snot come from the age of the child but the sinful behavior of the adults around her. As this article so clearly points out:

The babies cradled in these young girls’ arms could easily be their little brothers or sisters.

But this is Guatemala, a country where nearly a quarter of all babies are born to teenage mothers. Some haven’t even reached their milestone 13th birthday – in 2011, 35 new mothers were just 10 years old.

In some ways, the numbers are the less shocking aspect of this epidemic, which puts both the mothers and their children in mortal danger. 

Nearly all teenage births, 90 per cent, involve a relative, an uncle or cousin – a horrifying 30 per cent of children are born as a result of the girls’ own father. (source)

Whether these young girls are ready or not to handle the changes their bodies and lives are going through is also due to the fact of the behavior of their parents.

The trauma of what has happened to these girls, many too young to understand what was happening to them and some who had never heard of contraception, is etched on the faces of the mothers (Ibid)

It is also immaterial to the discussion. Why, as crimes and other events happen when people are unprepared for them in all aspects of life. This one does not make it special but may be used to draw more sympathy from the readers of that article. The failure of the family and relatives is exposed in these situations.

This is something that needs Christ and Christians to get involved and change. But that is not part of the moral dilemma. What is part of the moral dilemma is should these child mothers carry to term or have an abortion.

Our next point in our conversation was the person who should be gone after and dealt with is NOT the unborn child but the person who created this problem in the first place. We are not blaming the pregnant child here.

The lustful actions of the father, the rape they committed, and other things they did to have sex with the child are what make the father guilty and he should be punished. The child should not. Since people already know the risks of a childhood pregnancy, they also know how to care for the expectant mother and the unborn child.

Abortion is not part of that care. It is the easy out for most people and one they can sweep it under the rug and forget about. But the mother will not forget about the rape nor will they forget about the loss of their child.

This will take years for them to get over the trauma which is much worse than any so-called trauma of carrying the baby to term. With the right help, this ‘trauma’ is not really trauma. But rape and abortion are real trauma with the addition of the guilt or other feelings that they committed sin.

That is something no one in their right mind should put a young child through. The comment we got in response to our point about going after the father was not only that trauma issue but the prospects of death for both the mother and the fetus. Their exact words were “the fetus you seem to worship.”

For the first part, death from pregnancy or birth has been a part of this life since the beginning of time. It is a fact of life that even 20 to 40-year-old women must face. It is not a monopoly held by young girls. Death happens and we must be prepared for it.

It is the line that we quoted that bothers us as we and every pro-life person are not worshipping the fetus. Trying to protect them and let them be born is not an act of worship but an act to stop people from sinning and killing innocent children.

But that is how unbelievers or believers in abortion will phrase their arguments. It is a moot point that distracts from the topic. The same person came back with the line ‘spoils her childhood’.

We have run into that term n South Korea as one person we disagreed with through newspaper articles, said he wanted his child to ‘a have a childhood.’ Whatever that means. There is no such thing as a childhood as children are born into different circumstances.

Plus, this concept of ‘having a childhood’ is very subjective and defined by people in different ways. There is a hint of hypocrisy to that attitude. These same people only care about ‘a childhood’ when their preferred method of taking care of a bad situation is excluded.

They do not apply that concept to the children of Bangladesh, Africa, or other countries who lost their childhood due to hunger and a lack of food; war, crimes, and so on. it is only selfishly applied by those who want the child to have an abortion.

There is no thought for the child that has yet to be born. Why are they not allowed a childhood? The reason people have a moral dilemma is that their morals are not rooted in God’s word but in their own concept of morality.

We have run into that many times as atheists, unbelievers and nominal Christians think they are greater than God when it comes to moral thinking. Or they think that dying is a punishment robbing them of life. They dismiss heaven and God’s salvation so they have no reward to look forward to.

Thus aborting an unborn child is not a problem for them as long as those women who are alive get to live a little longer or even pursue the accepted goals those people groups have decided are okay.

Having a 10-year-old carry a pregnancy to term is not wrong nor is it sinful. Nor is it a moral dilemma as technology has made so many advances that the care of these child brides is done properly and protects the life of both the mother and the child (forgoing any complications).

The unbelievers believe in technology and medical advances, they should be applying that belief to this subject as well. Instead of heaping lots of trauma on a little girl by forcing them to have an abortion and having them sin.

What Christians and unbelievers should be doing is going after those fathers and their sinful decisions that put the young girl in this position in the first place. That is the cause of all the problems and it is those men or boys who should be punished not the innocent unborn child.

The Bible supports that last point. To solve this problem we do not commit more sins, we fight to get rid of those sins and let Christ redeem those men and lead them to better moral behavior.

There is no other answer. Abortion is not for young girls or older women. Rape and incest are sins of the father or mother or both not a sin of the unborn child. They should not be punished for sins they have not committed even if the mother is as young as 5.

 

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