Lengthy excerpt from Andrew Sandlin’s website. If you have the time, follow the hyperlink and read the full article.

Every January many churches in the United States highlight God’s truth as it relates to preborn children, notably in memory of Roe v. Wade, the January 22, 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

Actually the term abortion includes the definition of “the expulsion of a fetus from the uterus by natural causes before it is able to survive independently,” denoting what is today termed miscarriage. This is not what most people mean when they use the word abortion, however. They mean the intentional termination of human pregnancy, abortion’s primary — but not exclusive — definition.

A more suitable term for that intentional act is aborticide, which is a perfectly legitimate English word and enjoys the rhetorical benefit of similarity to homicide, infanticide, suicide, regicide, and other words that denote the willful deprivation of human life. It’s a word that supporters of the act likely deplore for precisely the same reason that opponents would prefer it. Supporters want attention deflected from the (im)moral implications of the act and redirected to the benefits to the pregnant woman (“a woman’s right to her own body,” etc.).

The Christian verdict on aborticide derives from the Bible, which clearly, if not explicitly, condemns it.  All intentional deprivation of judicially innocent human life is murder (Gen. 9:6). Human life begins at conception (Jud. 16:17; Ps. 139:13–18; Jer. 1:5; Lk. 1:15). Therefore, aborticide is murder.

More specifically, biblical law requires compensation for a miscarriage unintentionally precipitated by violent human action (Ex. 21:22). Even if the child is miscarried as a result of violent actions that did not intend that fatal loss, the violent are guilty of what we term these days manslaughter (not fetus-slaughter).

A human fetus is a human, created in God’s image, entitled to full legal protection.

Legalized aborticide, therefore, is nothing short of legalized murder, not materially different from Nazi leglislation legalizing the extermination of Jews or Marxist laws allowing the liquidation of capitalists.

“By salvation I mean, not barely, according to the vulgar notion, deliverance from hell, or going to heaven; but a present deliverance from sin, a restoration of the soul to its primitive health, its original purity; a recovery of the divine nature; the renewal of our souls after the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness, in justice, mercy and truth” (The Works of John Wesley, Vol. 8, p. 4, as quoted in George G. Hunter III, To Spread the Power: Church Growth in the Wesleyan Spirit, 40-41).

Evangelicalism: against additions, against subtractions, against dilutions.

“I repeatedly urge in varied company that evangelicalism is Christianity without additions, subtractions, or dilutions — Christianity, that is, in its purest and most authentic form” (J. I. Packer in John Piper & Justin Taylor, eds., A God Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, 81-82).

Evangelicalism: for always reforming.

“There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method” (Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 358).

“The [Lord’s Prayer] teaches us, in all that we do, to hallow the name of God and, in so doing, we discover our true being” (William H. Willimon & Stanley Hauerwas, Lord, Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer and the Christian Life, 44).

“Thus the origin of knowledge is trinitarian: The Father knows all and reveals truth to us by the grace of His Son through the work of the Spirit in our hearts. Note how each person of the Trinity is involved in the knowing process (cf. 1 Sam. 2:3; Ps. 73:11; Isa. 11:2; 28:9; 53:11; Matt. 11:25f.; Eph. 1:17; Col. 2:3). Thus it is all of God, all of grace. . . . There is a “circular” relation between knowledge and obedience in Scripture. . . . It is certainly true that if you want to obey God more completely, you must get to know Him; but it is also true if you want to know God better, you must seek to obey Him more perfectly” (John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 42-43).

“Not to know the name of God, not to know how God’s name is hallowed, in other words, not to know how to worship, is to live in fundamental conflict with our true selves. We are created for no better purpose than praise. As Saint Augustine said, ‘because you made us for yourself, our hearts find no peace until they rest in you'” (William H. Willimon & Stanley Hauerwas, Lord, Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer and the Christian Life, 43).

“Men may tell you that there are difficulties in the Bible, things hard to understand. It would not be God’s book if there were not. And what if there are? You don’t despise medicines because you cannot explain all that your doctor does with them. But whatever men may say, the things needed for salvation are as clear as daylight. Be very sure of this — people never reject the Bible because they cannot understand it. They understand it too well; they understand that it condemns their own behavior; they understand that it witnesses against their own sins, and summons them to judgment. They try to believe it is false and useless, because they don’t like to believe it is true. An evil lifestyle must always raise an objection to this book. Men question the truth of Christianity because they hate the practice of it” (J. C. Ryle, Thoughts for Young Men, 37).