Should Adventist Christians Have More to Say About Abortion?

[Nic Samojluk]

Yes our SDA hospitals do perform abortions, and on a very large scale. Some years ago a friend of mine was attending a question and answer session where Neal Wilson (the General Conference President) was answering some questions. He was asked: Why do our hospitals perform abortions? My friend heard him say that all our hospitals did abortions....and if we didn't perform them for the women, we would lose their business....so we may as well make the money off them...

Back in the days of our pioneers we were definitely pro-life, but about 10 years before Roe v Wade it started to change. And this is where we are now.

Richard,

The incident you ascribe to Neal Wilson reminds me of how Dr. Edward C. Allred,  a successful abortionist, rationalized his involvement in the abortion industry a few years ago before selling his Family Planning Associates highly lucrative business to Bud" Feldkamp, a SDA dentist,  four years ago. Allred originally was planning to become a SDA minister, but later switched to medicine.

He graduated from LLU back in 1964 and decided to start an abortion business eventually owning 21 abortion clinics in California. He became a millionaire and left the church. On one occasion he was publicly asked whether he felt any guilt for being in the business of killing innocent unborn children. His answer was:

[Nic Samojluk]

Welcome Nic to the forum and thanks for your comments. I look forward to reading your doctoral dissertation on this topic which was posted above.

What does this say about the church claiming to keep the commandments of God? Is not the 6th commandment at least as important as the 4th? Doing abortions for profit? God will judge these sins, and it is difficult to see how He can bless a church who compromises itself so seriously on an issue as important as this.

Stan

Stan,

I am glad you have decided to read my doctoral dissertation. Give me some feedback as you go along. In the event you decide to skip any of the material, I suggest that you do not skip the Appendices, which is where I summarize my findings. It is highly rewarding for me to learn that someone is interested in reading what I discovered at great cost in time, effort, and loss of personal business. I invested into this project thousands of hours without any hope of ever recouping my investment, and my hope is that the effort might yield some beneficial results for the sake of those who cannot speak for themselves.

Could it be that one of the reasons the Adventist Church did stop growing in the U.S. is because we decided to compromise on this moral issue? Besides, how can an organization grow when it is killing their own children, those who eventually would replace the ones who are dying? Notice how the SDA membership is growing by leaps and bounds in many Catholic countries where Adventists are condemning the practice of abortion! You said it right: worshipping God on the correct day of the week is important, but refraining from engaging in the mass genocide of the innocents is the essence of the Gospel. Look at what the Jewish leaders did two millennia ago: They killed the Author of life and rushed to keep the Sabbath.

[Nic Samojluk]

A good friend of mine, Nic Samojluk wrote his Doctoral Dissertation on this very subject.

   "From Pro-life to Pro-choice:
      The Dramatic Shift in Seventh-day
 Adventists' Attitudes
 Towards Abortion"
        A Doctoral Dissertation

        by Nic Samojluk, Ph.D. 

http://sdaforum.ipower.com/page13.html

Not only is it good reading, it's very enlightening. .......In answer to the original question, I would say yes.

Richard,

I did notice your posting advertising my doctoral dissertation. I did not react immediately to this simply because I am not used to such kind reaction to the work I have been doing on behalf of the unborn. The contrast between your warm reception to my self appointed mission and the apathy and criticism I have been receiving so far from the majority of Adventists who are aware of my work is so great that you left me speechless. In order to understand what I mean, you need to read the following report I filed on my web site following the Feldkamps

[Deborah Risinger]

There is an other diminsion to this issue...what happens later in life to these women, young girls when a reckoning comes..and it does come one way or the other.  Anger, depression confusion, guilt and the like.   They might have been saved from a residual physical, mental or/and spiritual problem later in life.

How many children and young people are saved from bigger problems in life down the road because a parent or concerned person had the courage and eithic to say "no" ...I will not help you in this.

God Help Us, God Help Us,
Deborah 

[Deborah Risinger]

Hello Nic...welcome..and to the others I have not welcomed yet....

God's Blessings'
Deborah   

[Agatha]

Good morning, Brother Samojluk! Last evening I began reading your dissertation not knowing you have become a member here. (I am on chapter 8 - whew! What a revelation!) And what joy it is to know we can discuss with you personally the findings contained in that document. I told some friends, it is one thing for us to expose to each other the horrendous downfall of leadership on this issue or any issue for that matter, I can only imagine the reaction of your professors at a non-SDA university to come to a knowledge of how we have horribly mishandled this all the while claiming remnant status among men. They see our hypocrisy. It is a sour dose of medicine, but it is obviously necessary given the magnitude of the sin in the camp.

Oh how I wondered how we came to have guidelines for this damnable practice. Guidelines are a far cry from moral statements given by the RCC and the Baptists. God used the Philistines and heathens to punish His people from time to time - it seems we are withering under the embarrassment of our failings compared to those we condemn in other areas. God is using them in a very public way to shame His people to repent and reform our practice.

There is so much more I wish to say, but will hold off until I get further along in your dissertation. I am sorry this document has been around for three years and I am just now discovering it. God bless you, dear man. All of heaven rejoices when there is a lone voice here and there that actually calls sin by its right name. For what it's worth, you have my complete support. I look forward to our discussion.   

[Agatha]

I would have a lot of backtracking to do if I were to begin at page one with comments and exhortations   ; however, in Chapter 9 you are discussing the SDA Guidelines and I must respond at this juncture. Within that discussion you say this, Brother Samojluk:

... these pro-life declarations are again tempered and modified by a suggestion that

[Agatha]

Forgot something ... imagine that!

While reading through the first 9 chapters, I am saddened to know that some leading out to correct this damnation within our ranks actually left us. How can they affect change on the inside while they stand on the outside? The ship will go through. A mighty shaking is within sight when considering this issue along with the creation/evolution problems within our universities while leadership is all too quiet on the subject. We can see it will happen sooner rather than later. Where will those who left us be when it happens? Will they return? Will they join us as the Church Triumphant having fought the good fight of faith, standing firm though the heavens fall? I pray they will return. If they are the godly men they purport to be, they will return. Although the remnant church has experienced horrendous embarrassment because of its supposed stand on this issue, our good brethren who are on the right side should not be found languishing in Babylonian churches because they can no longer tolerate the remnant. God tolerates His church and will see her through until she is spotless, without wrinkle. They should come home.

[Agatha]

Brother Samojluk, I completed your dissertation. Well done and thank you!

Chapter 10 was very difficult, as a matter of fact, a huge aversion to its subject was overwhelming at times and I had to leave it for a while. We need intercessory prayer services for such men and their abominations, to say nothing of our medical institutions, universities and the personnel at the head of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.

Tell us, dear brother. How are you using your doctorate? Teaching? Clinical? We believe God raises up voices for a certain time in earth's history. This is most certainly yours. May God continue to accompany you and those like you in righting a very ugly wrong.  

[Doug Yowell]

Hi, I know I'm late to the discussion but this moral failure if my church has been my greatest burden over the past 25 years. Other than perhaps brother Nic I probably have the largest private collection of SDA actions (and inactions) on abortion over that time period. I have been active as a letter writer,and have consistantly presented the sinfulness of this practice in my Sabbath School teaching responsabilities. I was an active member of the now defunct Adventists For Life often writing articles for the Pacific Union Recorder as representative of that organization. The first and only Crisis Pregnancy Center started and operated by Seventh-day Adventists was officially begun in the living room of my mother's condo in Grand Terrace,Ca. with George Lawson (now a Seventh Day Baptist pastor),Dr. Fred Bischoff, and Dr. Edgar Veymeister. I have an extensive collection of articles,position papers,letters to the editor,letters and reports, and other miscellaneous documentation of the struggle for the protection of the unborn within the SDA organization. And although the documented evidence overwhelming suggests that the greater portion of Adventists are pro-life it has been the pro-choice/pro-abortion (There is no pragmatic difference between the two,the defacto result is still the unrestrained killing of the unborn) position that the church has chosen to promote. It has effectively and actively repressed any public agitation of the subject and instead chosen to demonize (literally) those Christians who have been leading the fight to eliminate this "nafarious practice"(not my  original quote). I am a computer pre-schooler so when something hapens to this format I have no idea what to do about it! I can't see what I'm typing becauseit's below the bottom box line so I'll try to add morelater. I'm out for now

[Larry Lyons]

Hi, I know I'm late to the discussion but this moral failure if my church has been my greatest burden over the past 25 years. Other than perhaps brother Nic I probably have the largest private collection of SDA actions (and inactions) on abortion over that time period. I have been active as a letter writer,and have consistantly presented the sinfulness of this practice in my Sabbath School teaching responsabilities. I was an active member of the now defunct Adventists For Life often writing articles for the Pacific Union Recorder as representative of that organization. The first and only Crisis Pregnancy Center started and operated by Seventh-day Adventists was officially begun in the living room of my mother's condo in Grand Terrace,Ca. with George Lawson (now a Seventh Day Baptist pastor),Dr. Fred Bischoff, and Dr. Edgar Veymeister. I have an extensive collection of articles,position papers,letters to the editor,letters and reports, and other miscellaneous documentation of the struggle for the protection of the unborn within the SDA organization. And although the documented evidence overwhelming suggests that the greater portion of Adventists are pro-life it has been the pro-choice/pro-abortion (There is no pragmatic difference between the two,the defacto result is still the unrestrained killing of the unborn) position that the church has chosen to promote. It has effectively and actively repressed any public agitation of the subject and instead chosen to demonize (literally) those Christians who have been leading the fight to eliminate this "nafarious practice"(not my  original quote). I am a computer pre-schooler so when something hapens to this format I have no idea what to do about it! I can't see what I'm typing becauseit's below the bottom box line so I'll try to add morelater. I'm out for now

Agatha, thank you for your input. This subject needs to be brought and kept before the "stockholders in the pews." Just like the evolution crisis, it will take pressure from below if there will ever be changes made.

Doug, welcome to the forum. I thank God for you and Nic, and others like you who have fought to save the church from what amounts to a kind of institutional suicidal behavior by its condoning and promoting this practice. Most people in and out of the church, if they actually know about this, can see clearly that it is blatant hypocrisy for the church to claim to be "those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus" and point to the 4th Commandment as a sign of its obedience while breaking the 6th Commandment by policy and practice.

[Nic Samojluk]

Agatha,

You gave me the greatest pleasant surprise I have experience lately. In order to understand the meaning of what I am saying, you need to comprehend the amount of rejection I have had to face since I started on my self assigned mission on behalf of the unborn.

If you want to have a glimpse of what I mean, you need to read what I wrote following the strongest condemnation of my activities by several members of my own community including that of a great Adventist preacher who happens to be my own pastor. The title is: Is Sharing a News Item a Cardinal Sin? And the link is: http://sdaforum.com/page245.html

Doug Yowell knows this quite well, because he was the first one to surprise me when he contacted me following my greatest disappointment in order to tell me that he was also pro-life. This revelation revived my courage and gave me the will to continue in the path I had chosen.

I know that other Adventists have been reading my dissertation, but you are the first, I believe, who had done so from beginning to end in one day. Did you read the Appendices as well and the notes? My views about abortion are mostly included in the notes for a special reason. Before I typed the final copy of my dissertation, a close friend of mine advised me about the importance of showing that I was not biased; and I concluded that, if I wanted my work to be approved, I would have to give less prominence to my personal bias about this controversial issue.

You indicated that you had trouble understanding how the Remnant church of God could end up adopting such Guidelines on Abortion. Several factors led so such decision. The major mistake was made when the General Conference decided to delegate the responsibility of drafting said guidelines to the Loma Linda University. This was equivalent to asking the tobacco industry to draft the guidelines on the production and distribution of tobacco products.

Other factors played an leading role in the decision as well. All this was taking place when the Cold War was in full sway. China had turned to Communism, and its population was threatening to become a human time bomb, and many experts were insisting that the population explosion was a greatest threat to the survival of the human race than the atomic weapons.

Besides, the Adventist medical institutions adopted the practice of hiring non-Adventists in order to staff their hospitals. When the state of Hawaii decided to legalize the practice of abortion, our hospital there found itself in a dilemma: Half of their physicians, who were non-Adventists, demanded the right to offer abortion services to their patients. The Adventist doctors protested, and this issue was elevated all the way to the North American Division, and under pressure, the NAD president issued a public declaration asserting that the Adventist Church was leaning towards abortion because there was too much hunger and overpopulation in the world.

[Nic Samojluk]

Agatha,

Your enthusiasm on behalf of the unborn is quite contagious and it gives me a special pleasure to read your comments. I do share your views about the need to have faith in God

[Agatha]

Did you read the Appendices as well and the notes?

Yes, I did and appreciate all that you included. Now some may say that my pro-life stand, without any exceptions to health, are extreme, but of course, I do not think so. This is where pure, white faith comes in. Without it, these situations cannot be morally reconciled.

For your benefit, I will give you a little personal background - others on this forum have heard of it. While in one of our academies I was raped and it resulted in pregnancy. This was in 1966. Abortions were not legal, but even if they had been, it would never have crossed my mind to employ the services of an abortionist - but, it was in the mind of both my parents and of the boy's parents. I had just turned 16 and was still a minor, ignorant to the ways of the world and very much under parental control. So I was shipped off to Atlanta to have a backroom abortion. It did not work - I did not abort. So finding myself still pregnant after this incredible second insult upon my body, I was forced to marry the rapist because no one believed my account. The boy was very physical and caused me to fall on my tummy resulting in an early labor. I refused to deliver my child away from "Mother," even though she was a participant in this vile betrayal, I took $$ out of my husband's wallet and caught a flight home delivering the baby one hour after touch down. The baby was too small to survive and lived two days.

Because of the embarrassment all this caused my parents, they decided to forgo a funeral, but that is when I finally put my 16-year-old foot down and demanded one. I had been railroaded several times throughout this fiasco and decided enough was enough, so we had a public funeral and shortly after that I left home and the church. It was beyond my young ability to cope.

I believe my baby died as a result of a botched attempt at abortion by unscrupulous parents trying to hide their own shame  coupled with physical violence against both of us by its father.

As the years ensued, I too got caught up in a mild version of womens lib but turned after 28 years in the world and came back to a life of holy living within the realm of God's remnant church. So, what I see you have exposed within our denomination is everything I am against. Not because of my emotional, physical, first-hand experience but because of God's Word. My experience has greatly faded with time and in heaven will be remembered no longer. This is a case of justifying God. It is no less sacred a task than that of honoring the fourth commandment, or the first, or the seventh, or the tenth. All of God's commandments are vital and we stand against this for only one reason: to justify the Creator of all life.  

[Deborah Risinger]

Agatha...I am sorry for your hurt....I am also a rape victim.  I was kidnaped by a pimp in San Fran. 

I have read your posts..God has certainly blessed you....you have a great deal to give........

God's Blessings'
Deborah