Is the Adventist Church

Really Pro-life?

by Nic Samojluk

The Question. Two and a half years ago the president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists publicly declared that the Adventist church is pro-life. [1] My question is: Is this a factual statement? Is our church entitled to be described as pro-life? Have we been acting as truly pro-life organizations? Do we deserve the pro-life label? Could it be that the opposite is true?

Perhaps we should consider some hipothetical situations first before trying to answer this question. Suppose a young man never ever mentions anything about his girlfriend. Should we conclude that he has serious intentions towards the young woman he is dating? Or just imagine a man who never ever talks about his wife and family, should we conclude that his home life is uppermost in his mind and affection? Or imagine a tribe leader who sets specific guidelines detailing which members of his clan should be allowed to live and which ones could be killed at will. Would we be safe in concluding that such a chieftain really cares about the community and about the right to life of its members?

The Evidence. You may wonder what this has to do with the question at hand. Well, the answer is quite simple. Our church president claimed that our church is pro-life, but we never talk about the main pro-life issue in our sermons and magazines. We avoid the subject as if it were a plague, and we have officially adopted a set of Guidelines on abortion [2] which specify which members of our community could be deprived of life with impunity. Of course, I am including the unborn as an integral element of our community.  The unborn represents in fact the future of our church. We complain that our church is not growing in the U.S. How can our church grow if we are decimating its future?

If you have heard the topic of abortion discussed by our leaders in our sermons or our leading magazines, then please let me know, because I can only hear myself talking about this topic, and for all practical purposes it is rather a monologue. Some years ago the editor of the local SDA church newsletter wrote an editorial criticizing the activities of pro-lifers. I asked for equal time to respond. The answer I got was that the topic was controversial. Well, isn't this the case with other topics dear to our heart like the Sabbath and the addiction to tobacco products? Have we kept silent on those issues because they are controversial?

We have used a ton of ink on those issues, ignoring in the process that some individuals might take offense. We have championed the fight against smoking with the aim of extending the life of smokers by four or five years. Have we ever considered that by fighting abortion we could extend the life of the victims by their entire life span? We have filled our books and magazines with the topic dealing with the Sabbath. Tell me, how many lives have been lost as a result of worshipping the Lord on the wrong day of the week? How does this compare with the 50 million lives lost to abortion?

The Official Guidelines on Abortion. Someone may wonder whether our president had read our official Guidelines on Abortion before making the pro-life pronouncement I quoted above. I think he did, but he might have missed the fine print. If you read the document, you will discover that human life is described as a magnificent manifestation of God's creative power and that it deserves to be protected. Well, this in fact sounds very much like pro-life--no doubt! It is the list of exceptions and the fine print that messes things up. The list of exceptions is rather long, and I will not attempt to replicate it in an exhaustive manner here. A few examples should suffice:

If the father of the unwanted unborn baby is a certain type of sinner, then the criminal can be  executed? No way! The document says that in that case--not the guilty--but rather the innocent baby may be killed! Likewise, if the pregnant woman is underage. But this is not all. The document also includes a mental exception, which is what abortionists have been fiercely fighting for. All the depressed woman needs to do is to find a sympathetic physician willing to authorize the execution of the innocent. Of course, that is precisely the mission of abortionists. This is where their profit is. Why should they refuse to solve the poor girls problem? Does Jan Paulsen still believe that our church is pro-life? We don't know, but a follow-up call to the General Conference by Theresa Beem revealed that, according to Dr. George Reid, the church is not pro-life, but rather "pro-choice but under strict guidelines." [3] And you think that these guidelines can be adequately described as strict? Really?

The Fine Print. If you are still wondering, then consider some details found in the fine print of these guidelines. You will find there a reference to Jesus death, coupled with the argument that Jesus died to restore our "freedom of choice," which is the abortionists mantra. Freedom of choice to do what? I ask. Freedom to take the life of innocent unborn children? Is this what our Savior died for? Perhaps we should also argue that he died to insure our freedom to steal, fornicate, and sexually abuse young children! Do I need to say more? Do you think that our president was right in referring to our church as pro-life? If you do, then let me tell you about a great real estate deal I have for you! I can sell you the Eiffel tower for a bargain price, and I can add the London Bridge on top!

The Elective Abortions Dilemma. If you think that I am done, you are wrong! My doctoral dissertation dealt with the role our church played in the legalization of abortion, and I discovered that one survey revealed that at one time five of our medical institutions were offering elective abortions to their patients. And I am not talking about therapeutic abortion, but rather elective ones, where the babies in question presented no abnormalities of any kind. And, by the way, I have a question for you: Since when abortion has become a therapy for any patient? Such therapy ends with a dead baby. How dare we call this "therapy"? Would the defenders of therapeutic abortion accept such therapy for themselves?

And I must add that the first Adventist institution that dared to offer elective abortions did so under financial pressure. The non-adventist staff of said institution demanded the right to offer such services under threat of taking their patients elsewwhere, and the church caved in for fear of loosing the coveted revenue needed to survive financially. How did this happen? A man who had donated a large sum of money for our Castle Memorial Hospital [4] in Hawaii requested an abortion for his daughter. This was coupled with the demand by the non-Adventist physicians in said medical facility for the privilege of offering elective abortions. These demands were sent to the North American Division of the church, and our SDA leaders yielded to the pressure.

A 180 Degree Turn. My investigation into this topic revealed that the church has recently made an 180 turn as it relates to our official attitude towards abortion. Our Adventist pioneers were adamantly oppossed to the destruction of the unborn. James White, the founder of our publishing work and president of the General Conference os Seventh-day Adventists described abortion in the strongest terms, labelling such practice as "murder."[5] Some have argued that Ellen White, the most influental writer in our denomination, never used the word "abortion." True, she never did; nevertheless, she referred to the neglect of the unborn as "almost murder." [6] I ask: what is the difference? If neglecting the need of the unborn is almost murder, then what is the actual posisoning or dismembering of the baby in utero? Wouldn't it be murder? Would she call it "therapy"? Other SDA pioneers used even stronger language.

The Broken Blueprint. How did we manage to make such a drastic turn in our attitude towards the value of human life? The answer is found in a book written by Vance Ferrell entitled "The Broken Blueprint." [7] In it, he documents how two influential SDA leaders ignored a basic element of Ellen White's blueprint for the future of the Adventist movement. She advised them not to yoke themselves with the world. In spite of the Kelloggs fiasco, like this talented physician, they thought that they could improve on the isnpired plan for the church, and started hiring non-adventist physicians and teachers. This is how the theory of evolution got infiltrated into the Adventist schools, and as I have described above, it is the way we made a complete turn around and embraced both therapeutic and elective abortions.

A North American Phenomenon? It is interesting to notice that the pro-choice/pro-abortion attitude towards abortion manifested by the SDA church seems to be mainly a North American phenomenon. Some may wonder why I place both the pro-choice and the pr-abortion in the same category. The reason is simple: They represent the same enchilada with a slightly altered name. I grew up in Argentina, and even today abortion in said country is illegal. Pregnant women who are not ready to raise a child have only one option: adoption, instead of abortion. Recently I received an electronic communication from Dr. Ronald Noltze who assured me that there were no abortions in the hospitals that were under his care in South America, Africa, and Europe while he was in charge of those SDA medical institutions. [8] There are many countries in the world where abortion is still illegal, and in fact, for two thousand years physicians were bound by the Hippocratic Oath, which forbade the practice of abortion. This medical practitioner's oath was discarded by the SDA church two years before the legalization of abortion by the U.S. Supreme Court.

A Recent Adventist Apology. You mignt be aware that not long ago the German and Austrian Adventist leaders publicly apologized for the role the church played during the Nazi extermination of the Jews. They acknowledged the church's cooperation with the Nazi regime, and apologized for its lack of moral power to stand for what was right. [9] My question is: Should we not as a church avoid the need to issue a similar apology in the future by admitting that we erred as a church on the issue of abortion? We have granted our denominational hospitals todal freedom regarding the killing of the unborn. Each medical institution is free to issue their own guidelines on abortion. This means that said agencies of the church are free to ignore even the liberal official guidelines described above and set their own version of them and set their own policies. And, by the way, consider the following: Would we need any guidelines if we were truly pro-life? Neither the Southern Baptist nor Catholics have any abortion guidelines. They simply do not deal with abortions.

My Personal Aim. You may wonder why am I taking the time to write this, and why I did devote thousand of precious hours in order to get my doctoral study and to prepare my doctoral dissertation about this topic, time I could have employed in my business. The reason is very simple. I neither have nor do I expect any renumeration for my expensive investment which almost bankrupted my personal finances. My concern was and is for the plight of the unborn, and for the church I love. I am a second generation Adventist, and I have no present plans to leave the Adventist Church. My past and future seems to be welded to this unique movement which has blessed my family and the families of my relatives.

My Debt of Gratitude. When my father accepted the Adventist message, one of my uncles decided not to join. He liked drinking and smoking, and he died childless at a young age as a result of his unhealthy lifestyle. My father, on the other hand, left a large progeny, many of them serving the church in positions of significant responsibilities. This means that I have a heavy debt of gratitude towards the church that fed me spiritually throughout the years and whose spiritual milk I drank with my mother's milk. This sense of indebtedness to the church I love has led me to try to do something for the religious movement that has blessed me so much. This is why I invested over a decade to this important topic on a part time basis and am now ready to share with you what I learned. As far as I know, I am the only Seventh-day Adventists who has ever done his doctoral dissertation on the topic which I have entitled: "From Pro-life to Pro-choice: The dramatic Shift of Seventh-day Adventists Towards Abortion." [10]

*********

[1] "Adventists laud Pope for concern on world peace, poverty and family,"  Adventist News Dispatch/Southern Asia-Pacific Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church (11 Mar. 2005). Accessed from http://www.ssd.org/news/mar1105.html on 25 Oct. 2006. [My recent attempt at accessing this Internet page failed; it either expired, or was deleted. This represents a serious problem with valuable information being swallowed into the black hole of cyberspace.]

[2] Theresa Beem, "Why We Left/XII. In Search of the Remnant"  SDA Forum. Accessed from http://www.sdaforum.com/page112.html on 20 Nov. 2007.

[3] “Guidelines on Abortion” Adventist Beliefs/Guidelines (12 Oct. 1992). Accessed from http://www.adventist.org/beliefs/guidelines/main_guide1.html on 25 Oct. 2006.

[4] George B. Gainer, “Abortion: History of Adventist guidelines” Ministry (Aug. 1991): 11-17. Accessed from http://www.adventistarchives.org/docs/MIN/MIN1991-08/index.djvu?djvuopts&page=11 on 25 Oct. 2006. [It seems that this page was also swallowed by the cyberspace black hole!]

[5] James White. Solemn Appeal (Battle Creek, Michigan: Stem Press, 1870), 100.

[6] White. Selected Messages, Vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1958), 429-430.

[7] Nic Samojluk. "The Broken Blueprint, A Book Review" SDA Forum. Accessed from http://www.sdaforum.com/page187.html  on 20 Nov. 2007. 

[8] "No Abortions in European Adventist Medical Institutions" SDA Forum. Accessed from http://www.sdaforum.com/page193.html on 20 Nov. 2007.

[9] "Church Leaders Say 'We're Sorry'" Adventist News. Accessed from  http://www.adventistreview.org/article.php?id=92 on 20 Nov. 2007; see also: "German and Austrian SDA Churches Apologize for Holocaust" SDA Forum. Accessed from  http://sdaforum.com/page47.html on 20 Nov. 2007.

[10] Nic Samojluk. Accessed from http://www.sdaforum.com/page13.html on 20 Nov. 2007.

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