I’m often critical of the Seventh-day Adventist Church for effectively being pro-abortion, but fortunately the Church is beginning to take steps to change that. We have adopted a new official statement that declares abortion to be “out of harmony with God’s plan for human life”
And let us pause for a moment to note that Dr. Ben Carson, who—by virtue of his fame as the world’s foremost pediatric neurosurgeon, his presidential run in the 2016 cycle, and his service as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the current administration—is the most prominent representative of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, is strongly pro-life.
Here is Dr. Carson at last year’s CPAC convention on a panel moderated by Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America. Joining them was Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), who spoke about the joy of parenting a child with Down syndrome. “Cole reminds us every day of the value and potential of every human life. I knew it my head before, but now I know it in my heart.”
Carson used his knowledge and experience as a physician to discuss the horrors of abortion, including the fact that preborn children do in fact feel pain in the womb.
“I’ve had the privilege of being able to operate on little babies that were 25, 26, 27, 28 weeks’ gestation, and I can guarantee you, they can feel, they can react. You have to give them anesthesia if you’re going to cut them, believe me,” he told the crowd. “For somebody to say that’s a meaningless bunch of cells, honestly, is just totally ignorant.”
Carson went on to describe exactly what happens during an abortion, calling the procedure “barbaric” and describing late-term abortion as “murder.”
He also addressed the long-term psychological damage abortion inflicts on a woman who aborts, saying, “How many of those mothers end up psychologically damaged? They talk about, ‘they’re doing this for the health of the mother’ but what about the mother’s mental health as she has to endure [the guilt] for the rest of her life?”