The president of the USA’s largest abortion provider claims life begins at delivery – but a leading evangelical Christian says that defies “any moral sense” and “modern biology”.
Cecile Richards, who leads Planned Parenthood, made the comments in a US TV interview, after repeated attempts to avoid giving an answer.
She said that for her children “life began when I delivered them”.
Life
During the interview presenter Jorge Ramos, of TV network Fusion, asked Richards: “When does life start? When does a human being become a human being?”
Richards replied that people will disagree on that point, that it is up to individuals to make their own decision, and that her opinion was irrelevant.
Ramos pressed her, however, and she said: “For me, I’m a mother of three children. For me, life began when I delivered them.”
“They’ve been probably the most important thing in my life ever since. But that was my own personal decision”, she added.
Precious
Responding to her comments, Christian leader Albert Mohler said if life begins at delivery, until then there is “no life, no dignity, no sanctity at all”.
He continued: “She identified her three children as ‘probably the most important thing in my life’ since their delivery.
“Were they nothing to her in her womb? Each of those three precious children was precious in the womb — at every point of development.”
“This defies any moral sense, but it also defies modern biology”, he commented.
Promote
Mohler, who is President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said Planned Parenthood is America’s “most visible promoter and provider of abortion”.
“Candid admissions of a worldview like this one are rare, but Cecile Richards’ statement perfectly explains her advocacy of abortion at any time for any reason”, he said.
In 2009 the director of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Texas quit her job after watching ultrasound footage of an abortion.
Abby Johnson spent eight years working at the centre and said her growing disillusionment with the abortion movement reached “breaking point” when she watched an ultrasound of an abortion taking place.
