Tim Wildmon

AFA president

January 2012 – “Mississippi voters Tuesday defeated a ballot initiative that would have declared life begins at fertilization, a proposal that supporters sought in the Bible Belt state as a way to prompt a legal challenge to abortion rights nationwide,” is how the Associated Press led with their story about the November 8 vote on Proposition 26. Mississippians rejected the Personhood Amendment 58% to 42%. This surprised many people here and around the country. It surprised me that the amendment lost, and it stunned me that the margin of defeat, 16 percentage points, was so large. 

At face value, it appears that most Mississippians do not believe life begins at conception. However, I still believe that a majority of Mississippians agree that human life does begin at conception, but they voted no anyway, in effect, being intellectually dishonest with themselves. To many who adhere to the Judeo-Christian value system, this kind of thinking has grave moral implications. 

So why did many Christians vote against Proposition 26 despite their personal objection to abortion? I believe the false charge that this amendment would outlaw the birth control pill (which prevents fertilization in the first place) was cited most often by people who said they were pro-life but who voted no. Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, put this lie out there, and many people bought it.

But the vote does not change the facts. We know that, biologically, life begins at conception or fertilization; otherwise there would be no reason to have an abortion in the first place. You do not have to invade the woman’s body with instruments to kill something that does not exist. 

A friend in the medical profession told me that before the vote, he asked colleagues what would have happened in medical school had they been asked the question, “Does life begin at conception?” and they had answered no. All of them agreed that “no” would have been an incorrect answer, and that it would have been counted against them on a test. It’s like asking a scientist if Earth is round or flat. The answer is indisputable.

Life will continue to grow in the mother’s womb after conception unless there is a miscarriage or an abortion. Abortion is a gruesome, savage, unnatural procedure. Even pro-choice advocates do not want to hear it described in detail because it is more than most people can stomach. 

The most common form of abortion is called suction curettage. Here the abortionist must stretch the cervix with rods and insert a plastic tube that is connected to a suction machine. The baby’s body is then suctioned out in pieces. In short, the baby is violently vacuumed out from inside its mother’s womb. 

So how could people who insist they are pro-life vote against an amendment that says life begins at conception? One explanation might be that that they said to themselves, “Yes, life begins at conception but … so what? If people want to have abortions, what do I care?”

In other words, not enough voters believed that life begins at conception and that human life is sacred. Sacredness is a religious concept, I understand. Perhaps this reverence for human life will not be recaptured when it comes to abortion because individualism trumps righteousness in contemporary America. The right to choose, it is called. Even if that choice means death to a baby. 

For those of us who voted yes on Prop 26, it is a matter of conviction that to end a baby’s life by means of abortion is immoral and, in the eyes of God who gives life, an abomination. Abortion is the shedding of innocent blood, and 99% of the time it is done for convenience or birth control purposes. A woman gets pregnant, she doesn’t want a baby, so she goes to the clinic to have it killed. Fifty million babies, so far. That is abortion in America. 

God, help us.