Will Abortion Go Away?

The great news is that abortion, in all likelihood, will no longer be the law of the land in the US. Many Constitutional scholars believe that the US Supreme Court will decide now what the Court in 1973 should have decided: that there is no “right to privacy” granted by the Constitution, and therefore, there is no federal protection for abortion.

What conservatives might not realize—there is also no Constitutional prohibition of abortion laws either. Rather, it’s up to each state to decide what they want for their people.

Some states have already moved to put limitations on abortions, and undoubtedly others will as well if the “landmark” Roe v Wade ruling is overturned. But there are others that may take a stand for abortion that will, in essence, threaten the very lives of new born infants. I learned today that some states are crafting legislation that includes language referring to post-natal infants and the “right” to euthanize them up to a month after birth. This is nothing short of infanticide.

People who see nothing wrong with killing a baby are actually playing out the logical end to their belief that humans are nothing special. We are just animals, which some people kill because they are harmful or inconvenient or good to eat. Babies are the same, though perhaps short of the “good to eat” category. Not short of the, “we need your stem cells category,” however.

Further, in states like California there is already pressure on pregnancy crisis centers that advocate for alternatives to abortion (adoption, support for single moms), so it’s foreseeable that more will be done to disadvantage such a center while promoting a planned parenthood organization that actually is all about selling abortions and transgender procedures. (Yes, I recently learned that Planned Parenthood facilitates gender change as part of their “services.”)

If the Supreme Court strikes down Roe v Wade, as many think will happen, the fight over abortion will not be over. Rather the issue will now be decided, as far as the legality issue is concerned, at the state level. Some states may allow voters to decide. Others will pass laws in their legislatures. The point is, in red or blue or purple states, abortion will become a focal point.

And actually, real human lives hang in the balance.

To be sure, in some states abortions may increase. But in others, the very inconvenience of having to travel to a different state, may deter some young girls from getting abortions.

The key now is to prepare. Believers who understand that God forms every human being, that we are created in His image, that He regards each life as precious, must support those ideas with Scripture. This discussion should not be a he-said/she-said argument. Christians have God’s authoritative word to undergird our ideas.

Then, too, preparation must involve prayer. Every believer can pray. And we must come boldly before the throne of grace to find help for these crucial decisions. Pray that God will be glorified in each decision. Pray that He will work to bring an end to the violence against the unborn, and that He will protect the newly born in those places that might now target them. Pray that He opens the eyes of those who do not believe humans are uniquely made in the image of God. That would change a lot of hearts, I think. Pray that people on the fence will make a decision for life and not for death, since that’s actually what’s at stake.

Christians And Voting For Donald Trump

Here in California there have been protests up and down the state against President-elect Trump. Worse, on Facebook there’s been blame cast by Christians on Christians for electing a man who has exhibited behavior most like a racist, misogynist, and xenophobic. One particular post, which I found offensive on several levels, said that Christians have “some explaining to do.”

OK, I’ll explain.

First, if I haven’t made it clear yet, I did not vote for Mr. Trump and have serious reservations about his taking the office of President. I hope I am wrong, but I fear for our democracy.

Nevertheless, I understand why some Christians decided to vote for him. I DON’T understand why certain ones supported him early in the primary process when there were good options and candidates who would have turned this election into a Republican landslide in the face of all the scandal Secretary Clinton has faced. That aside, here are the reasons some (including Christians) have given for voting for Mr. Trump.

1, His stated pro-life position. For many, myself included, this is the single most important issue in American politics. How can we stand for justice, for freedom, for rights of the most vulnerable in our nation and then turn around and slaughter millions of unborn persons. I liken it to the people of Israel in the Old Testament choosing to worship a false god that required child sacrifice. Here in America, our false god is ourselves. We promote sex at every turn and treat celibacy and abstinence as aberrations. We do not exercise self-control because we believe we deserve to be self-indulgent—it’s Me-ism on steroids. We want what we want when we want it, and we’re willing to sacrifice the lives of our unborn children in the process.

2. The opportunity to nominate at least one and possibly as many as three Supreme Court justices. This point is actually a corollary of the first issue. In order to meaningfully reverse the cultural changes of the last eight years and of decades of the Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide, and which continues to prevent states from passing meaningful curbs on abortion, the makeup of the Supreme Court needs to be more conservative. In other words, it needs conservative justices who will honor the Constitution instead of creating law from the Bench. Mr. Trump has pledged to nominate such justices. It remains to be seen whether or not he will do what he said, but believing that his promise was better than a certainty that Secretary Clinton would nominate activist judges, some opted to vote for Mr. Trump.

3. Illegal immigration is illegal. Many people want our federal government to uphold the rule of law. We don’t. Hence, federally it is illegal to use marijuana, but more and more states are declaring its use, medicinally or recreationally, as legal while the federal government does nothing. In the same way, here in California certain cities have taken the status as “sanctuary cities” where illegal immigrants can safely reside without fear of deportation, and the federal government does nothing. In fact, no comprehensive immigration reform has come from the White House in a very long time. Consequently, thousands of unaccompanied minors have poured over the southern border, and no measures have been taken to stem the tide. From the November 22, 2115 Washington Times:

Nearly 5,000 unaccompanied children were caught in October, and nearly 3,000 more had been caught in the first half of November — a record pace for those months — and it signals just how closely smuggling cartels and would-be illegal immigrants themselves are paying attention to lax enforcement in the U.S.

Two years ago the numbers were even more staggering:

The vast majority of 50,000 unaccompanied youths and children who have illegally crossed the Texas border during the last few months have been successfully delivered by federal agencies to their relatives living in the United States, according to a New York Times article.

A second New York Times article report revealed that officials have caught an additional 240,000 Central American migrants since April, and are transporting many of them to their destinations throughout the United States. (From The Daily Caller, as quoted in the Independent Journal Review)

The issue isn’t racism or a fear of immigrants. It’s a desire to return our nation to one that believes in the rule of law. Congress passes laws and the Executive Branch is to enforce them. What happens, then, when the Executive Branch decides simply to ignore what Congress has passed? That’s what’s happened with the “open boarder” policy of these last few years.

4. Economic concerns. Some people have witnessed the sole industry of their town close down, leaving unemployed workers with no hope. Others have seen their jobs discontinued as businesses outsource work to other countries. Then there are the environmental snags that have stopped production of clean coal and the like. A number of people say they voted for Mr. Trump because they want his economic expertise to work for the country.

5. Media influence and the elite. Another group mention that they voted for Mr. Trump as a protest against insider government. They want a President who is not beholden to big money or the “good ole boys” in Washington. They also want to stop the media from telling the everyday person what they should think and how they should vote.

6. A vote against Secretary Clinton. Some people think that the scandals in which Secretary Clinton has been embroiled are indicative of her corruption, deceit, greed, and abuse of power. They do not believe she is qualified to be President.

7. A vote for a worldview, not for a man. Pastor John McArthur took this stand, basically saying that Mr. Trump’s ideas about our culture are more in line with Scripture than are Secretary Clinton’s.

There well could be other reasons, too, but these are the ones I’ve heard most often.

I’ve not heard, “I’m voting for Donald Trump because I share his racist positions.” Are some Trump supporters racist? I am pretty sure they are since the head of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, endorsed Mr. Trump during the primary elections. Do some of those belonging to white supremacist groups self-identify as Christians? I suppose they might. It doesn’t mean they actually believe the Bible, however. In fact, it’s hard to see how they could align their racial beliefs with Scripture’s clear teaching about God’s love for the world!

Nevertheless, the point remains, Mr. Trump was a flawed candidate who by practice and by word took a stand that isn’t consistent with the Bible. But news flash: Secretary Clinton was a flawed candidate who by practice and by word took a stand that isn’t consistent with the Bible.

How, then, can a Clinton supporter turn to a Trump supporter and accuse him of not heeding the Bible by voting for a flawed candidate?

The Church does not have to apologize for Donald Trump becoming president. Last I checked, we the Church do not vote in lock step. We don’t vote with the same reasons in mind. That a flawed candidate won is no surprise. Had Hillary Clinton won, Christians could have been blamed for not opposing her more vocally or for voting for third party candidates or for not working to get out the vote or . . . there’s a myriad of reasons people could have turned on Christians in that scenario too.

In other words, the election is just one more reason some are using to bash the Church. It’s time we say, enough. Christians are not perfect, but we are not the cause of all ills in society as some atheists (looking at you, disciples of deceased Christopher Hitchens) would have us believe.

In fact Christians want very much to proclaim the cure for society’s ills. And that cure is not Donald Trump. Nor is it Hillary Clinton.

Advocacy For Life

Perhaps the greatest sin in the US today is abortion. I don’t mean the individual sin of a woman deciding to abort her baby. I mean the ongoing legality of it and the complicit nature of government in allowing it.

Because that’s my belief, I sympathize with conservatives who have begrudgingly declared for Donald Trump. They intend to vote for him because he says he will appoint pro-life justices when he is President. The argument is tempting.

But I’ve decided against voting for Mr. Trump. Why, if I believe so strongly about the sin of abortion? The answer to that question is multilayered, but one aspect is this: pro-life views won’t be imposed on people who embrace naturalism.

Four years ago, I wrote a post here at A Christian Worldview Of Fiction entitled “Your Body, Your Own.” It’s a clear statement of what I believe about life. But I’ve come to realize there’s an entirely different view shared by those who think this material world is all there is, that there is no life after death, and that, in fact, there is no supernatural anything.

First, the post in question (yes, I used to write much shorter articles):

“A woman has the right over her own body” has become a rallying cry for abortion advocates. But because a fetus is inside a woman’s body does not make that life a part of her body.

Anyone born without all the usual body parts is normally classified as disabled. Is someone without a fetus disabled? Certainly not, or all women who aren’t pregnant and all men would be in trouble.

In this day of liposuction and plastic surgery, women are exercising their rights to change their bodies. But how many willfully discard body parts? “I don’t like this toe, so I’ll chop it off.” Or, “Who needs that other kidney . . . think I’ll have it removed.” A woman keeps the parts of her body because she needs the parts of her body.

Not so with a fetus. Instead, the fetus needs her. She doesn’t gain nourishment from that growing baby. She gives nourishment. She doesn’t gain protection from that little one; she gives it.

When a woman decides to have an abortion, what she is really deciding is to remove the fetus from the safe environment in which this new life is growing, maturing, developing.

If someone were to remove an infant from the safety of their home because they didn’t want it, and that baby dies, we’d call it child abuse. When a pregnant woman does so, we call it legal.

At the time I wrote those words, I thought the logic was unimpeachable. What I didn’t account for was this view of life that sees humans as no different from a dog or whale or titmouse or mosquito. In this view, the human does not have a soul and has nothing of intrinsic value other than the value ascribed to it by society. So, society says the unborn have no rights and are not valuable unless the mother gives it value.

Consequently, to end the life of an unwanted unborn child is no different than ending the life of an unwanted cockroach.

Appointing a pro-life Supreme Court justice will not change this thinking. In fact, as Mr. Trump accurately pointed out in the last Presidential debate, if the court should overturn Roe v. Wade, the legality of abortion would be determined by the states instead of by the federal government.

I have no doubt that California would quickly pass a law legalizing abortion. I suspect all blue states would, and I have to wonder if the red states would be far behind. In other words, changing the law is not going to change the culture that has fostered this attitude toward the unborn.

We need meaningful change, not band-aides that stem our feelings of guilt. We need to address the wrong thinking that allows women to choose abortion, that promotes the devaluation of human life, that turns the other way when abortionists sell fetal body parts and refuses to do anything to stop it.

First we must understand why people believe as they do—that abortion is not murder. People with this perspective might ask, Is swatting a fly, murder? Killing an unwanted fetus is no different from ridding your house of an unwanted pest.

Such thinking sounds outrageous to us who belief that human life is sacred, that men and women are made in God’s image, that we have eternal souls which set us apart from all other creatures.

This belief about humans is the fundamental difference between abortionists and pro-life advocates.

My guess is that the majority of women who have an abortion never think about the reasoning behind their decision. They believe what the kind abortion clinic personnel tell them: it’s not only legal, but it’s preferred: you don’t want to bring an unwanted child into the world where they might face abuse and neglect.

But what about the unborn child’s inalienable rights? What about their soul? What about their intrinsic value as a person? These are the questions pro-life advocates need to bring front and center if we are to change the way our society thinks about abortion.

The answers are in the Bible, but also in our Constitution, starting with the Preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. (Emphases mine)

Abortionists might not identify the pre-born as persons, but surely there can be no doubt that our “posterity” by definition refers to those yet to be born.

So the facts, both legal and moral, are there. But until we do the hard work to influence the thinking of our culture, we ought not expect that a Presidential Supreme Court nominee will fix the mess we’ve allowed to exist for more than forty years.

Pro-Life Doesn’t End With Birth

When abortion advocates first started down the road to change society’s view on the subject, they framed the issue by identifying themselves as Pro-Choice and “the other side” as Anti-Abortion. Some in the media still use the latter designation, but those in opposition to killing the least, most helpless, voiceless people—the unborn—prefer to be known as Pro-Life.

But yesterday I read an article that poignantly reminded us that Pro-Life ought not end with ensuring a baby’s birth. God’s heart, as He says over and over in the Bible, is for orphans and widows and strangers. In the Mosaic Law, He made provision for those people so that they wouldn’t be tossed aside. The principle was this: in that agrarian society those who worked their field were not to meticulously harvest every last grain or olive or grape. They should reap their field, but not go over it a second time so that whatever they missed, the widows, the orphans, the strangers could harvest for themselves—an undertaking called gleaning.

So before the people of Israel arrived in the Promised Land, God had in place a plan to provide for the people some today call throw-away people.

Unfortunately, God’s people don’t always reflect God’s heart. The article I read detailed an encounter a mom had in the grocery store. Mind you, she’s a foster mom as well as a mom to her own sons. She had her hands full. Her husband, who was with her, saw someone he knew, so got caught up talking. The mom decided to proceed to the check out. Here’s how things went:

The 7 month old I was holding got hungry and started clawing at my shirt trying to nurse. The 1.5 year old tried to grab candy that I wouldn’t let her have and starting wailing. (No, she is not spoiled. Sometimes, 1.5 year olds cry loudly. I promise that sometimes, regardless of how awesome a parent you are, they just do.) The 2.5 year old was trying to help his 6 & 8-year-old brothers put the groceries on the belt, and of course, he dropped the container of blueberries, which spilled all over the floor. To top it all off, I had WIC [The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children] coupons for our foster daughter, and I grabbed the wrong cheese (I swear it was labeled WIC approved!), so the cashier had to call someone to come figure it all out.

OK, pretty much chaos. She apologized to the people in line behind her, but one couple responded in a judgmental way:

The man looked at the woman and said in a voice much too loud, “Some people should stop having kids.”

Yeah, he didn’t know she was a foster mom. Now here’s the kicker. When she got to the parking lot and began loading groceries, she saw the couple get into a car with a Pro-Life bumper sticker on it. Now it’s possible that they bought the car used and the bumper sticker was already in place. Nevertheless, the point is clear: life begins with birth, so those of us advocating for the unborn ought not stop caring when they successfully come into the world.

As I was reading in Deuteronomy this morning about the gleaning laws, it struck me that God included “the aliens” in with the widows and orphans. It seems a little odd at first. But people didn’t buy and sell land back then the way we do today. Especially the Jews. They divvied up the land by drawing lots, and they were to retain those parcels in perpetuity. Should they sell, they actually would be leasing the land because at the Jubilee—every fifty years—the land would revert to the family that had received the parcel when they first arrived.

People from other countries, as I recall, were not part of this process. So they weren’t land owners. The best they could do would be to hire out as a worker for someone else. Or glean someone else’s land.

If God’s people are to have God’s heart, it seems to me we should have as much concern for the orphans—the foster care kids—as we do the unborn. But we should also care for the “aliens.”

This seems especially important at a time when we seem to be flooded with “aliens,” including a host of illegal aliens. And now, potentially, aliens from a strange land that may harbor enemies who wish us harm. I’m referring, of course, to the Syrian refugees our government is making arrangements to bring to America.

Some US citizens, including some Christians, complain. Why don’t they go to Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or United Arab Emirates? I’ve asked the same question. After all, we have our own immigration issues to sort out. Why bring in more people when we haven’t figured out how we’re to handle the influx of immigrants we already have?

But I wonder if these questions reflect the heart of God. I suspect not because here’s what God actually said in Scripture:

He [the LORD God] executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing. So show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. (Deut. 26:18-19)

Later Moses instructed the priests in a rite to remind the people of God’s commands when they arrived in the land. First the priest would tell the people what God had said, then the people would respond. The first on the list were familiar, don’t make any idols, honor your father and your mother, but then tucked in behind Don’t mislead a blind person, is the command involving aliens:

‘Cursed is he who distorts the justice due an alien, orphan, and widow.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ (Deut. 27:19)

If we look into the New Testament, we see Jesus commanding others to love their neighbors. And then the lawyer who had prompted Jesus’s statement asked a question designed to let him wiggle off the hook: who is my neighbor? Jesus responded by telling a story about a stranger. He didn’t cast the stranger as the one in need of help, however. He made him the hero of the story. The guy who acted like a neighbor was the hated stranger who put his prejudices aside to help someone in need.

That’s God’s heart. He cares about people. He makes it clear in Paul’s letters that those who follow Him are equal in His eyes.

So here’s the thing I realized this morning. In some of these places in the Middle East, it’s been next to impossible to preach the gospel. But as Syrian refugees stream into the West, they have the chance of hearing about Jesus, perhaps for the first time. We might not be able to go to the mission field, but God is bringing the mission field to us.

What a great opportunity for all of us who are Pro-Life!

The Planned Parenthood Scandal

I have been thinking over what I wanted to say about Planned Parenthood, abortion, and selling fetal body parts for over a week now, and I still don’t know how to address this issue.

Here are my random thoughts:

* I’m so glad the people at The Center for Medical Progress and David Daleiden who spearheaded this three-year plan to out Planned Parenthood and the companies to which they sell fetal body parts, had the courage of their convictions and acted.

* Because the liberal left so recently used undercover video to discredit Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, they don’t have a legitimate argument against these tactics.

* The mainstream media was initially slow to embrace the story, but some have given it a fair hearing. More recently, however, I don’t hear anything on the news about the new videos. Are they becoming indifferent to the horror? Or do they simply have nothing to say because there is no defense, yet they don’t want to encourage the logical opposition to Planned Parenthood funding by our tax dollars? Interestingly, Fox News is planning an exposé on Planned Parenthood September 5. Should be enlightening.

* I had no idea the extent of this aspect of the abortion industry. It’s far more horrific than I imagined and has been going on far longer than I realized.

* I don’t understand how thinking people can continue to support Planned Parenthood. Set aside the controversy over abortion for a moment, and ask whether or not Planned Parenthood is obeying the law against selling fetal tissue or not. They claim “reasonable compensation,” but they talk in the undercover videos like capitalists working to best monetize the commodity they have to offer.

* The bottom line is still the law that allows abortion. When the Supreme Court ruled in 1973 in the Roe v Wade case, the selling point for abortion was that the woman had the right to choose what she did with her own body. The fact that science has since proven that life begins at conception, that this zygotic/embryonic/fetal state is unique, no longer in fact “the woman’s body” but a separate individual with his or her own DNA simply has not been addressed.

* The issue of what we as a society do about life is a dividing point, with Christians on one side and atheists on the other. A large group of compatriots are “swing voters,” voting with their approval or disapproval, and moved largely by the emotion of the day. When women were fighting for a more equal stand in society, then those in the middle swung toward abortion, but when videos come out revealing the trafficking of infant body parts, making it impossible to ignore that the liver and heart and lungs and brains come from living humans, the swing group moves toward the pro-life position.

* Pro-life and women’s rights ought not to be seen as mutually exclusive. A woman ought to have the right to say no to sex that leads to pregnancy. Why isn’t that right brought front and center?

* The left-leaning proponents of “women”s rights” have confused a woman’s right to be who she is with a woman’s right to do what men do. So Rosanne Barr, in her 90s TV show, claimed the right to spit and chew and scratch the way men do. Oh, yay! But to the point of this article, sexual promiscuity has now become a woman’s right. And just like men who don’t have to bear the consequences of their licentiousness, so too, women wanted to be free of the product of their immorality. Birth control was the first step, abortion the end game when all else failed. So now women can be like men! That, the feminists say, is women’s rights.

* I read a NYTimes article today about women who are refused abortions. Apparently this does happen, most commonly, according to the article, when a woman doesn’t realize until late in the pregnancy that she’d going to have a baby. So if she goes to the wrong clinic—one that doesn’t do late term abortions—she may get turned away. This article says there needs to be more studies about the effect of a woman carrying and delivering a baby she wanted to abort. But what seemed shocking to me was that 95% of these women are glad they gave birth. Most bonded with their baby and, in the words of this slanted article, “adjusted.” The article, reporting about the woman in the anecdote who had been turned away from having an abortion, said, “S. now says that Baby S. is the best thing that ever happened to her. ‘She is more than my best friend, more than the love of my life.’ ” Still, this is held up as only one factor in measuring how well this woman is doing. How well off she is economically seems of equal value.

* None of these studies has anything to do with the spiritual aspect of what’s going on in a woman’s heart, so no matter what the findings of any of these studies appear to be (and there aren’t many studies—not even ones examining the effects of an abortion on the state of a woman’s mental health), they are incomplete.

* All this serious look at the well-being of the woman who wants to or who has aborted her baby, looks past the fact that the life of a child is at stake. Either a baby will have the chance to live or will be denied that chance, based solely on what the mother decides is good for her.

* The best thing churches can do to combat abortion in the long term, in my opinion, is to provide compelling, Biblical reasons to young people to avoid promiscuous sex. The secondary reasons aren’t enough. Young people need to determine if they love God more than they love sex.

* Apart from teaching the next generation, churches can also make a huge impact by caring for teens who are pregnant and have chosen not to abort. If we value life, we should be willing to put our hands to the plow and do the work that would honor life and help young, single moms learn to parent well. For many that may start with learning about their Creator God and how He fashioned their child in their womb.