“I just talked to your doctor. You don’t have to have an abortion. We can help you and your baby. We have several treatments we can use,” said the specialist when she called our home nine years ago.
He Was Worth It!
“What?” I asked in response to her call. The specialist explained my doctor had called her, told her we were going to terminate the pregnancy, and there was no need for further consultation or research.
“When she gave us the bad news, she mentioned abortion, but Richard and I told her we weren’t interested,” I answered.
“I must have been misinformed,” concluded the specialist.
That conversation ended my lifetime of support for supposed “choice.” My husband and I were again riding on the roller coaster of having a baby. We had already ventured around turns of miscarriage, neural tube defects, and Down's Syndrome, but had a happy, healthy toddler. We had just learned that we had a rare blood incompatibility that meant my body would destroy the platelets of every baby in every pregnancy, and each pregnancy would be worse than the one before it. Our baby had a 30% risk of a brain hemorrhage in utero without several interventions (translation: expensive).
Our misguided doctor thought she was helping us when she urged us to terminate the pregnancy. She thought our baby wasn’t worth the risk or expense. Consequently, she called the specialist and tried to discourage us from further hope.
We changed doctors. (In fact, she was fired from that clinic soon afterwards.)
With a combination of PUBS, four in utero platelet transfusions, and blood treatments — and a lot of help from God Almighty — our son was born 6 months later, albeit a month early. Our son was — and is — a spirited fighter who had survived the surgeries, placenta previa, and my hemorrhages. He toughed out a month of high-dose blood treatments that put me in contractions and once gave him tachycardia.
Richard and I knew — from the beginning of that pregnancy — that God’s providential hand was upon us and He would guide us every step of the way. We did not pray for a specific outcome, but instead for wisdom to make the right decisions and choose the best treatments — and strength to deal with whatever outcome happened. God answered our prayers. When our son was born, he defied every medical prediction. There was no human explanation for such a dramatically good outcome.
Our fertility issues were the tool God needed to peel the scales from my eyes so I could learn to appreciate life. Our society still has those scales, and they are growing thicker.
We have so devalued infant life that a woman can strangle a pregnant mother, cut out the baby and pass it off as her own, and most major news outlets still refer to the living baby as a “fetus.” In Amsterdam, doctors now practice “mercy killings” of terminally ill babies. They are encouraged to inject fatal doses of sedatives into terminally ill people with “no free will” — children, the severely retarded, and people in comas. It’s a short step to mandatory killings and the warped worldview of Adolph Hitler. Further, it’s a closer step down the road to forced abortions like those imposed on women in China. I shudder to imagine what would happen to my children and me if I had the misfortune to be pregnant in Amsterdam today. There would not be a happy ending.
We Have Been Warned
Our world has become filled with modern-day Molechs who sacrifice children to a new god — one of convenience and cost-cutting. Molech is described in the Old Testament as a false god whose followers routinely practiced child sacrifice. Those who worshipped him often sacrificed their firstborn children to him. Huge, hollow statues with the head of a bull were built to worship him. Children were placed into the hands of the statues, and a fire was stoked inside the statue. The statues were built so the hands would rise up to the mouth and the children would fall into the flames within while the people cheered. The sacrificed children were said to have “passed through fire.” John Milton describes Molech in Paradise Lost, Book 1 as one of the primary warriors for Satan:
First, Molech, horrid king, besmeared with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears,
Though, for the noise of Drums and Timbrels loud,
Their children's cries unheard that passed through fire
To his grim Idol.
We are warned in Leviticus 18:21, “And you shall not let any of your descendants pass through the fire to Molech, nor shall you profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.” Solomon ignores this in his later years when he marries wives of other tribes. In 1 Kings 11:6-8, we are told, “Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord, and did not fully follow the Lord, as did his father David. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, on the hill that is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech the abomination of the people of Ammon. And he did likewise for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.” Several in our post-Christian culture can identify with Solomon’s ways. He was multicultural and practiced so-called tolerance to the point he turned from the Lord and put false gods on the same level as the one true God. The seeds he plants in doing so had long-term consequences for the Hebrew nation.
Ahaz did more than simply honor the high places of Molech; he participated in their deadly sacrifices. In 2 Kings 16:3, the Bible notes that, “He even made his son pass through the fire, imitating the abominations of the nations the Lord had dispossessed before the Israelites.”
Manasseh went further. Second Kings 21:6 tells us that “[h]e made his son pass through the fire, practiced witchcraft and divination, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did a great amount of evil in the Lord's sight, provoking [Him].” Fortunately, Manasseh repented. Josiah later put the Hebrew nation back on the right path. “And he defiled Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire to Molech” (2 Kings 23:10).
Jeremiah further condemns this practice in Jeremiah 32:3: “They have built the high places of Baal in the Valley of Hinnom to make their sons and daughters pass through [the fire] to Molech — something I had not commanded them. I had never entertained the thought that they do this detestable act causing Judah to sin!”
After Israel returned from Babylonian captivity, there is no more record of this idolatry being practiced.
The Sound of Life
But the false god Molech, has resurfaced in our day and has taken new names of “choice,” “convenience,” and “progress.” In Paradise Lost, Milton portrays the demon Molech as the boisterous one whose main goal is battling the one true God. Molech doesn’t care if he wins the final battle so much as he hopes to cause as much destruction as possible before then
Lives, especially those of children, are sacrificed to Molech in our culture — through abortion and neglect. The consequence is a cheapening of life for us all.
Abortion clinics are the modern, hollow statues that are worshipped and hide a fatal fire within their doors. Decisions are made, and sometimes coerced, by those closest to the baby. The new mantra — choice, choice, choice — is banged upon the media drum so we don’t see the picture of the ultrasound and ignore evidence that those tiny babies can feel pain. When we call attention to the pictures, they merely bang the drums louder and attack those who defend life. If we point out the science or results of abortion — the future risks of miscarriage, breast cancer, depression, and suicide — the timpani and bass drums are begin to beat: choice, choice, choice. Those who question the choice are attacked as being judgmental, extreme, and compassionless.
Isaiah 5:20 tells us, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” Life has become a commodity that can be traded, sold, and ended in the name of convenience.
Manasseh repented. Josiah cleaned up the mess of his ancestors.
During the Exodus, as the Israelites wandered for 40 years, they slowly turned from the false gods of Egypt to the one true God and learned obedience. Joshua told them, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” When we draw that line and proclaim His truth, the fires of the hollow Moloch grow dimmer and can dampen. The drums will one day stop, and we will hear a child cry. That cry, the sign of life, is the most hopeful sound parents hear when their babies are born. Often it’s not a quiet sound but a loud, vigorous yell. That cry can destroy the Modern Molechs.
I pray that we will all hear it.
Come, you children, listen to me;
I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
Who is the man who desires life,
And loves many days, that he may see good?
Keep your tongue from evil,
And your lips from speaking deceit.
Depart from evil and do good;
Seek peace and pursue it.
The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry. — Psalm 34:11-15
Mary Biever is a homeschooling mother of two who publishes encouragement articles and runs Encouragement Workshops For Today's Families.
This article was adapted from one of her columns.
