The answers come from individual ministers in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church expressing their own convictions and do not necessarily represent an "official" position of the Church, especially in areas where the Standards of the Church (the Scriptures and the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms) are silent.You can read the entire Westminster Confession of Faith on Free Republic starting here. The WCF does not have a section that addresses abortion specifically.
The OPC does maintain an official position on abortion, however. It was formalized as early as 1971, in their 38th and 39th General Assemblies. That position is summarized as follows:
Abortion. The 1971 Assembly—two years before the infamous Roe v. Wade decision of the U.S. Supreme Court—denounced the practice of voluntary abortion except possibly for the purpose of saving the mother's life.
OPC has always been more conservative (as is UPC and EPC). It’s the PCUSA that is mainline....and fallen away.
I’m confused. I thought Calvinism taught that sin destroyed the image of God in man. Why quote Genesis?
"As early as 1971"?? That would be 3 years after Humanae Vitae and nearly 100 years after the Holy Office of the Catholic Church wrote in 1884 that "it cannot be safely taught in Catholic schools that it is lawful to perform . . . any surgical operation which is directly destructive of the life of the fetus or the mother."
Long before that, The Fathers of the Church unanimously maintained the same doctrine. In the fourth century the Council of Eliberis decreed that Holy Communion "should be refused all the rest of her life, even on her deathbed, to an adulteress who had procured the abortion of her child. "
Abortion didn't begin with Roe v Wade. What took ya so long?