Proverbs 24:11-12

This is a favorite with prolifers, and I'm going to look at the verses separately.

Proverbs 24:11

New American Standard Bible (©1995)
Deliver those who are being taken away to death, And those who are staggering to slaughter, Oh hold them back.

GOD'S WORD® Translation (©1995)
Rescue captives condemned to death, and spare those staggering toward their slaughter.

King James Bible
If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain;

American Standard Version
Deliver them that are carried away unto death, And those that are ready to be slain see that thou hold back.

Bible in Basic English
Be the saviour of those who are given up to death, and do not keep back help from those who are slipping to destruction.

Douay-Rheims Bible
Deliver them that are led to death: and those that are drawn to death forbear not to deliver.

English Revised Version
Deliver them that are carried away unto death, and those that are ready to be slain see that thou hold back.

World English Bible
Rescue those who are being led away to death! Indeed, hold back those who are staggering to the slaughter!

Young's Literal Translation
If from delivering those taken to death, And those slipping to the slaughter -- thou keepest back.

A couple of these translations leap out at me:

Bible in Basic English
Be the saviour of those who are given up to death, and do not keep back help from those who are slipping to destruction.

This is such a vivid description of what the sidewalk counselors and pregnancy center workers are doing. They are literally saving those who were to be given up to death -- the unborn children -- and providing help to those slipping to destruction -- the mothers.

This translation takes on a bit of a different meaning:

Douay-Rheims Bible
Deliver them that are led to death: and those that are drawn to death forbear not to deliver.

Those that are drawn to death. Is there a better way to describe abortion advocates and abortion workers? Death has a draw to them, a hold on their lives.

Look at some of these quotes:

So when I went back to doing abortions and saw the fetus on the ultrasound, I recalled the early days of my pregnancies, when I found out I was pregnant and saw the baby on the ultrasound, and it really felt like this is a baby, a very real and potential being. Now, I do feel that this is a potential person and it does not have a life of its own outside of the mother, but I also am really aware that when you're ready to embrace a pregnancy, you can embrace it from the very moment you conceive or are aware that you are pregnant. Faye Wattleton said recently, "I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don't know that abortion is killing. So any pretense that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a fetus, but it is the women's body, and therefore ultimately her choice. I believe that very firmly. You look at the ultrasounds and there's a fetus with a heartbeat and then after the procedure, there's the fetus, usually in pieces, in a dish. It was alive one moment and it's not the next. I don't believe it's a painful experience for the fetus because its nervous system is not 'wired' so that it can feel pain at that point. I don't believe, as some anti-abortion people would have you believe, that there's a silent scream.' But it's very clear to me that it's killing a potential life. And I found that hard at first. -anonymous, quoted by Camille Peri in Salon Magazine

I was trained by a professional marketing director in how to sell abortions over the telephone. He took every one of our receptionists, nurses, and anyone else who would deal with people over the phone through an extensive training period. The object was, when the girl called, to hook the sale so that she wouldn't get an abortion somewhere else, or adopt out her baby, or change her mind. We were doing it for the money. -- Nina Whitten, chief secretary at a Dallas abortion clinic under Dr. Curtis Boyd

They [the women] are never allowed to look at the ultrasound because we knew that if they so much as heard the heart beat, they wouldn't want to have an abortion."-Dr. Randall, 'Pro-Choice 1990: Skeletons in the Closet" by David Kuperlain and Mark Masters in "New Dimensions" magazine

Every woman has these same two questions: First, "Is it a baby?" "No" the counselor assures her. "It is a product of conception (or a blood clot, or a piece of tissue)" Even though these counselors see six week babies daily, with arms, legs and eyes that are closed like newborn puppies, they lie to the women. How many women would have an abortion, if they told them the truth?"--Carol Everett, former owner of two clinics and director of four, "A Walk Through an Abortion Clinic" by Carol Everett ALL About Issues magazine Aug-Sept 1991, p 117

Sometimes we lied. A girl might ask what her baby was like at a certain point in the pregnancy: Was it a baby yet? Even as early as 12 weeks a baby is totally formed, he has fingerprints, turns his head, fans his toes, feels pain. But we would say 'It's not a baby yet. It's just tissue, like a clot. -- Kathy Sparks told in "The Conversion of Kathy Sparks" by Gloria Williamson, Christian Herald Jan 1986 p 28

It is when I am holding a plastic uterus in one hand, a suction tube in the other, moving them together in imitation of the scrubbing to come, that woman ask the most secret question. I am speaking in a matter-of-fact voice about 'the tissue' and 'the contents' when the woman suddenly catches my eye and says 'How big is the baby now?' These words suggest a quiet need for definition of the boundaries being drawn. It isn't so odd, after all, that she feels relief when I describe the growing buds bulbous shape, its miniature nature. Again, I gauge, and sometimes lie a little, weaseling around its infantile features until its clinging power slackens. -- abortion worker Sallie Tisdale "We Do Abortions Here" Oct 1987 Harpers Magazine p 68

I look inside the bucket in front of me. There is a small naked person in there, floating in a bloody liquid- plainly the tragic victim of a drowning accident. But then perhaps this was no accident, because the body is purple with bruises and the face has the agonized tauntness of one forced to die too soon. I have seen this face before, on a Russian soldier lying on a frozen snow-covered hill, stiff with death, and cold. -- Pro-abortion author Magda Denes, "In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death in an Abortion Hospital"

The first time, I felt like a murderer, but I did it again and again and again, and now, 20 years later, I am facing what happened to me as a doctor and as a human being. Sure, I got hard. Sure, the money was important. And oh, it was an easy thing, once I had taken the step, to see the women as animals and the babies as just tissue. -- abortionist quoted from a radio talk show by John Rice in "Abortion" Litt D. Murfreesboro, TN.

There is no possibility of denial of an act of destruction by the operator...the sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current. -- Abortionist Warren Hern, quoted in "Meeting of American Association of Planned Parenthood Physicians" OB GYN News P 196

The procedure changes significantly at 21 weeks because fetal tissues become much more cohesive and difficult to dismember. (p 154); A long curved Mayo scissors may be necessary to decapitate and dismember the fetus. (p. 154); Television interviews in particular should focus on the public issue involved (right to confidential and professional medical care, freedom of choice and so forth) and not on the specific details of the procedure. (p. 323) -- "Abortion Practice" by Warren Hern, M.D., Boulder Colarado Abortionist published in 1984 by the J.B. Lippenott Company. Hern promotes abortion as the default "treatment"' for the "sexually transmitted disease" of pregnancy.

I have angry feelings at myself for feeling good about grasping the calvaria, for feeling good about doing a technically good procedure that destroys a fetus, kills a baby. -- abortionist quoted in "Abortion Providers Share Inner Conflicts" which appeared in the July 12 1993 issue of American Medical Association News

If the abortion is well done, we don't have to watch the baby die. So we inject a salt solution. The result is like putting salt on a slug, but we don't have to watch it. -- Dr. Russell Sacco M.D. quoted in James Long "Infants Aborted Alive: Officials Wink at Laws"

How much more can one be "drawn to death" than to choose abortion as his profession? For whom this (warning -- graphic) is the fruit of his chosen labors?

And might it be that we are called upon to deliver them, not just the mothers, not just the babies? A minister reached out to Carol Everett while she was still owner and manager of a chain of Dallas abortion mills. A prolifer who protested outside was instrumental in the conversion of Joan Appleton. It was the child of a worker at a pregnancy center that reached out to Norma McCorvey. The Catholic Church has a specific prayer to St. Michael for the conversion of abortion workers. And I have been among others calling for outreach to abortion workers every March 10 on "National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers" (which quickly fizzled among abortion supporters but has rallied the faithful to at least one day a year of prayer for those drawn to death).

Now, with all of this before your minds, let's turn to the next verse. Let's look at Proverbs 24:12:

New American Standard Bible (©1995)
If you say, "See, we did not know this," Does He not consider it who weighs the hearts? And does He not know it who keeps your soul? And will He not render to man according to his work?

GOD'S WORD® Translation (©1995)
When you say, "We didn't know this," won't the one who weighs hearts take note of it? Won't the one who guards your soul know it? Won't he pay back people for what they do?

King James Bible
If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works?

Bible in Basic English
If you say, See, we had no knowledge of this: does not the tester of hearts give thought to it? and he who keeps your soul, has he no knowledge of it? and will he not give to every man the reward of his work?

Young's Literal Translation
When thou sayest, 'Lo, we knew not this.' Is not the Ponderer of hearts He who understandeth? And the Keeper of thy soul He who knoweth? And He hath rendered to man according to his work.

Or this translation:

Douay-Rheims Bible
If thou say: I have not strength enough: he that seeth into the heart, he understandeth, and nothing deceiveth the keeper of thy soul, end he shall render to a man according to his works.

Did you really not know before? Or did you not want to know? And even if you didn't know before, you do know now.

Do you have strength enough to do anything about it?

I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me. -- Philippians 4:13

No two people will have the same calling. Some are called more to action, some more to speech or writing, some to prayer. Some have a local calling, some statewide, some national, some international. Some are called to be absolutists, some incrementalists. Some are called to politics, some to providing material support. Some may never be called upon except in a very personal way with a friend, relative, or other at-risk woman or girl.

But all are in some way called. We can not say we didn't know.