Presbytery Statement on Abortion Referendum in the Republic of Ireland

Much of Ireland imagines they have joined the ranks of the liberated as a result of the demolition of its constitutional protection for the unborn. It does not seem to care that by the same action it has effectively delivered a death sentence on a significant percentage of its potential population. 

Actions of this nature are the inevitable consequence of secularisation. As belief in God and awareness of His Word declines, so does resistance to abortion laws. It’s a matter of anthropology: when man believes himself to be a random event instead of a purposeful creation, he will inevitably draw the same conclusion about those both within him and around him. This will then enable him to weigh lives on utilitarian scales and so make distinctions about their respective value.

The Bible makes it plain that God considers even the deliberate abandonment of one’s child as an extreme example of heartlessness (Isaiah 49:15); and does not distinguish between the value of the child in the womb and the child who has made it into the world, using exactly the same word to describe both (Luke 1:41&44; Luke 18:15).

We are obliged to show compassion and offer care to the small percentage of women who are caught in extreme circumstances, though while the ‘Yes' campaign centred its focus on those emotive margins to gain its advantage, it is extremely disingenuous and dangerous to ignore the fact that the overwhelming majority of women who have presented themselves for abortion have done so for socio-economic reasons.

The result of this referendum is a terrible outcome for everyone People who have celebrated this event with the kind of enthusiasm that is more typical of a pop concert may not even realise the extent of what they have done; declaring their freedom even as they are delivered into the chains of their own judgment. When men sin with abandonment, God gives them over to sin that they may be consumed by it. They pour the drink into the glass with gladness, but do not yet realise that they will be made to drink it with grief, every last drop.
Which is why the majority in County Donegal, plus the minority across the rest of the Republic of Ireland, who voted to preserve the lives of both mother and child, deserve our humble thanks – and all the efforts of those who are now determined to extend the stretch of the killing fields to Northern Ireland should be implacably resisted.

Rev. Ian Brown
Clerk, Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster

The statement, or parts of it, are carried in:
The Belfast Telegraph - Irish abortion referendum: 'Demolition of protection for unborn a death sentence,' says Northern Ireland minister
The Belfast Newsletter - Ireland’s death sentence for the unborn is the inevitable consequence of secularisation