Recently I was struck with two solemn reminders of the scourge of abortion upon South Africa and our world today:

(a) A recent Sunday evening sermon at our church was on Genesis 9 and God instituting the death penalty for all murders so that the sanctity of human life would be upheld as made in His very image.

(b) In our adult Sunday School ethics course, one of the doctors in our church recounted in detail the current stats on abortion. Worldwide, a horrific 73 million infants are murdered annually; in South Africa, it’s abominable that 260,000 babies are slain in their own mother’s womb, one out of every three pregnancies!

Two months ago, it was ruled illegal for any pharmacist in South Africa to refuse the abortion pill to a mother.  May there be a loud outcry and bold stand of Christian pharmacists against this tyranny!  As Psalm 119:53 says, “Burning indignation has seized me because of the wicked, who forsake Your law”.  The awful bloodguilt of this land before a holy God invites His judgment.

Recent headlines spoke of Sierra Leone seeking to follow South Africa’s terrible example in promoting abortion.  Every time the Christian hears of another abortion, we should gasp in shock, weep in grief, bow in prayer, and boil with moral outrage that leads to righteous action.

If I know anything about God—know, beyond a shadow of a doubt—that He hates abortion, and He will judge nations that support it.

‘But wait, I’m a child of God, my sin is forgiven, I’m not condemned.  And outside of the Jewish nation, doesn’t God only judge individuals now and not nations?’  True, the child of God stands justified in Christ and cannot be condemned.  Yet, even though we are aliens and strangers, we are also residents and neighbours who still share a solidarity with our countrymen, and we share in the shame of living in a land that condones a heathen practice like child sacrifice.

This disgrace is all the greater in a land like South Africa where the vast majority claim to be Christians yet are dragging our Lord’s name in the mud by approving (openly or tacitly) abortion. We read in Proverbs that “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people” (Prov. 14:34). It also says, “When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices, and when the wicked perish, there is joyful shouting” (Prov. 11:10).

Those are not statements about individuals but about nations in general.  In fact, God’s Word often speaks this way (Num. 35:33). He also addresses other nations in a similar manner, since they too will answer to Him as their Maker (Amos 1:13). Godly prophet Elisha wept when he foresaw God’s judgment falling upon Syria for her infanticide, who would “kill their young men with the sword and dash in pieces their little ones and rip open their pregnant women” (2 Kings 8:12).  

Lest we think this is only an Old Testament principle, Romans 1 makes explicitly clear what a world under God’s judgment looks like—spiralling down in ever-increasing perversity and shameful idolatry (Rom. 1:18-32).  Not a day passes where we do not see graphic evidence of our world being “given over” and abandoned by God’s righteous anger, a world in desperate need of the only gospel that saves (Rom. 1:16-17).

Mike Riccardi states,

“Any society that enshrines under protection of law the murder of such most defenceless image-bearers will not escape the judgment of God.”

We celebrate and honour the many African countries where abortion is still illegal.  We refuse to accept how the godless West and secular media shame these ‘backward’ countries.  Recently, the country of Hungary took a big step in the pro-life direction, much to the dismay of the scoffing South African media.

Randy Alcorn tells about a Nigerian pastor who visited his church in Oregon and said:

“With all the good things I see in your country and in your churches, there is something here that troubles me deep in my soul… This horrible thing I speak of is that you kill your children before they are born.”

Alcorn added:

“What was particularly troublesome was that Rev. Mari [the Nigerian pastor] made no distinction between what our country was doing and what the church was doing.  He seemed to think that the church was responsible for the moral choices of the country.”

I’ve heard Zambian pastors say the same thing to me about the shocking acceptance and normalising of abortion in South Africa, and recently, I also spoke to a Kenyan Christian leader who again spoke of South Africa as a pariah of the continent because of this infanticide.  May God have mercy on our nation and deliver us from the judgment we deserve.