A dread anniversary

It was 39 years ago today that the Supreme Court of the United States passed the inconceivably bad and immoral decision in the case of Roe V. Wade. Since that day over 50 million babies have been ruthlessly slaughtered in the wombs of their mothers. Abortion is undiluted evil. It is not a pragmatic necessity. President Obama's recent remarks celebrating the passage of Roe put on vivid display the moral blindness one must adopt in order to approve of such wickedness. Last year at least 500,000 African American babies were killed in the womb. Where are the social justice advocates? Where are the prominent evangelical pastors who are so gifted at contextualization and reaching hip urbanites? They preach and write about justice. But is there a graver injustice than the slaughter of our most vulnerable? What about the pastors, like myself, who lead large churches but are often afraid to mention abortion because of the wrath they will face from some of their congregants? Shame on us, truly.

The Supreme Court, Kermit Gosnell, and Roe's "fine print"

Justin Taylor links to an important article by Clarke Forsythe in The Weekly Standard. Forsythe demonstrates the connection between the Supreme Court's actions in Roe v. Wade and the "house of horrors" which was Kermit Gosnell's abortion mill in Philadelphia.

Can we honestly claim any longer that there is no direct connection between the people we elect, the policies they enact (and judges they appoint) and the devestating evil of abortion?

Speaking Truth to Power

Al Mohler weighs in on the President's troubling celebration of the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

As he concluded his brief statement, the President said: “And on this anniversary, I hope that we will recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights, the same freedoms, and the same opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.”

That paragraph is just a recitation of the feminist argument that was enshrined in Roe v. Wade — that women, no more than men, should be encumbered by the professional and personal limitations required by a pregnancy. That logic is enshrined as orthodoxy within the Democratic Party, and President Obama is one of its most ardent defenders.

Ever since Barack Obama emerged on the national political scene, he has been promoted and protected by a corps of preachers and religious leaders who have tried their best to explain that he is not so pro-abortion as he seems. Nevertheless, his record is all too clear — as is this most recent statement. There was not one expression of abortion as a national tragedy, even as a report recently indicated that almost 60 percent of all pregnancies among African American women in New York City end in abortion.

Read the entire post HERE.

Will our leaders stand for life?

I stay away from partisan politics on this blog and in my preaching. However, I have not and will not shy away from addressing abortion. I will also not shy away from the connection between who we elect for public office and abortion policy. The following is from a statement from President Obama on the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade:

Today marks the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, and affirms a fundamental principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters.

I am committed to protecting this constitutional right. I also remain committed to policies, initiatives, and programs that help prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant women and mothers, encourage healthy relationships, and promote adoption.

And on this anniversary, I hope that we will recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights, the same freedoms, and the same opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.

I am left a bit speechless. I know this is not a new view from our President but I am shocked at the lack of moral clarity displayed in that statement. All of us, including (especially?) our leaders must have the moral clarity to oppose, not champion such an unmitigated evil.



HT: Justin Taylor

A Bitter Anniversary: Roe v. Wade at 38

Justin Taylor has some excellent, albeit disturbing posts concerning abortion:

This is Abortion

The abortion industry thrives on remaining in the dark, behind closed and (usually) sanitized doors.

The following video is very graphic, but it depicts the reality that is happening in our neighborhoods, at the rate in the U.S. of:

•1.37 million unborn children killed every year.
•3,700 unborn children killed every day.
•1 unborn child killed every 23 seconds.
When you stop to realize that the US only accounts for 3% of abortions worldwide, you realize that there is a relentless global slaughter underway. May God exercise both his mercy and judgment, and may Christ return quickly.

Pro-Life Aplogetics for the Next Generation

A helpful post from Scott Klusendorf on four ways Christian leaders can help the next generation think clearly about the most pressing moral issue of our day:

1.Clarify the nature of moral reasoning.
2.Clarify the one question that really matters.
3.Clarify the scientific and philosophic case for life.
4.Clarify the path to forgiveness.
Read the whole thing.

"My Embryo Your Eyes Saw"
Bruce Waltke’s translation of Psalm 139:16.

An Interview with Robert George on Roe v. Wade

Understanding Roe v. Wade

When you get a chance, take time to read Francis Beckwith's excellent explanation of Roe v. Wade and America's abortions laws.

The Tragic Legacy of Harry Blackmun

In 1994 noted theologian Roger Nicole wrote a letter to Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun on the occassion of his retirement from the court. Blackmun is best known as the author of Roe V. Wade.

April 13, 1994

Mr. Justice Harry A. Blackmun
United States Supreme Court
Washington, D.C.

Your Honor:

The Orlando Sentinel reports that in the prospect of your impending retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court you are wondering what you will be remembered for...

To my mind nothing else that you ever have done can approximate the impact of your support of the majority opinion of the Court in the case of Roe vs. Wade.

This has opened the door to millions of abortions...

for the sake of expediency or selfish motives. It has encouraged millions of women and thousands of physicians to participate in this murderous course.

In 4 B.C. Herod the Great ordered the killing of perhaps a few dozens of babies, but his name remains famous for this "massacre of the innocents" (Matthew 2:16).

In the Civil War of 1861-65, one of the bloodiest on record in terms of the size of the armies involved, there were perhaps close to 500,000 casualties. But Roe vs. Wade has made already 30 million victims since 1973, and this number grows every day.

In World War II, the USA suffered somewhat more than 400,000 deaths due to the conflict: this is only 1/75th of the number of the abortion hecatomb.

In the Viet Nam hostilities there were some 60,000 fatalities. You would need 500 Viet Nam walls, enough to encircle the whole of D.C., to record those put to death by abortion.

The infamous holocaust engineered by the Nazis brought death to some 6,000,000 Jews and other innocent people. The name of Hitler is inextricably associated with this monstrous atrocity. Yet Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, Treblinka and others together exterminated only one-fifth of those whose life was snuffed out before birth by Roe vs. Wade.

The Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor cased the death of 2,300 Americans, and President Roosevelt, who surely cannot be accused of being politically right wing, stigmatized this occasion by calling it "a day of infamy." Now two "decades of infamy" have cost our nation a loss as great as 13,000 "Pearl Harbors."

Rest assured, therefore, your Honor, that this legacy of yours will ever be remembered and that your name will be associated with it. And unless you repent, when you appear before the Supreme Court of God you may well hear the verdict, "Your brothers; [and sisters'] blood cries out to me from the ground" (Genesis 4:10).

Sincerely,

Roger Nicole, Ph.D. (Harvard)

HT: Justin Taylor

"The debris of the sexual revolution"

Roe V. Wade is bad law. Technology has done nothing put bolster the argument that an undborn child is precisely that - an unborn child. National surveys have shown that a greater percentage of Americans identifty themselves as pro-life than did in 1973. Considering these facts, why is it that America has not made greater strides in seeing laws permitting abortion overturned?

In an article for Christianity Today Dinesh D'Souza reflects on some questions raised at a fundraiser he recently attended. He suggests that the tenacity of abortion has something to do with the lasting success of the sexual revolution.

He writes:

The consensus among those gathered at the fundraiser was that the pro-life movement needs to educate more Americans about the grim reality of abortion. As one guest told me, "Most American women who go in for abortions simply don't realize that the unborn are human persons with rights." I disagree; I believe most women know this instinctively. But even if they don't know this or are unsure, they still have to weigh the risks of the procedure. And in a case of this importance, a case involving life and death, one has to give the unborn the benefit of the doubt. If a hunter sees something move behind a branch and isn't sure whether it's an animal or a human, is it reasonable for him to go ahead and shoot?

Factor in politics, and the mystery deepens. It seems bizarre that many who claim the political virtue of compassion are champions of abortion rights. These people are able to cry tears for just about every vulnerable group in the world. They feel the pain of the seals, they grieve over sex trafficking in Asia, and they are worried about the plight of children in Darfur. They react with genuine indignation and mobilize to take action. Why, then, do the unborn persons in their own communities not usually inspire a similar compassionate response?

The pro-choice slogan offers no explanation, because the legitimacy of "choice" depends on what is being chosen. Abraham Lincoln exposed this argument a century and a half ago. He argued that if Negroes are hogs, then there can be no question that people have the choice to buy and sell them. On the other hand, Lincoln said, if Negroes are human beings, then how can slave owners invoke "choice"—thus denying choice to other humans? In sum, choice cannot be defended without regard to the content of what's being chosen.

Why then, in the face of its bad arguments, does the pro-choice movement continue to prevail legally and politically?

I think it's because abortion is the debris of the sexual revolution. We have seen a great shift in the sexual mores of Americans in the past half-century. Today a widespread social understanding persists that if there is going to be sex outside marriage, there will be a considerable number of unwanted pregnancies. Abortion is viewed as a necessary clean-up solution to this social reality.

In order to have a sexual revolution, women must have the same sexual autonomy as men. But the laws of biology contradict this ideology, so feminists who have championed the sexual revolution—Simone de Beauvoir, Gloria Steinem, Shulamith Firestone, among others—have found it necessary to denounce pregnancy as an invasion of the female body. The fetus becomes, in Firestone's phrase, an "uninvited guest." As long as the fetus occupies the mother's womb, these activists argue, the mother should be able to keep it or get rid of it at her discretion.

If you're going to make an omelet, the Marxist revolutionaries used to say, you have to be ready to break some eggs. And if you're going to have a sexual revolution, you
have to be ready to clean up the debris. After 35 years, the debris has become a mountain, and as a society, we are still adding bodies to the heap. No one in the pro-choice camp, of course, wants to admit any of this. It's not only politically embarrassing, it's also painful to one's self-image to acknowledge a willingness to sustain permissive sexual values by killing the unborn.

Read the entire article HERE.

Knowing Abortion Laws

I assume most of us would agree that any person serving as a justice on the United States Supreme Court ought to know the laws in our country concerning abortion. It appears however that this may not be the case, at least with Judge Sonia Sotomayor who will in all likelihood be overwhelmingly approved. But if she is indeed not fully aware of the laws relating to abortion then she is not much different than the average American.

Writing for Public Discourse Matthew J. Franck considers the Sotomayor hearings and what they tell us about her, and perhaps our knowlege of our nation's abortion laws.

Franck writes:

Does Judge Sonia Sotomayor know the law as well as a future Supreme Court justice ought to know it? If a discussion during her confirmation hearings with
Senator Tom Coburn (who is not a lawyer, but rather an experienced obstetrician) is any indication, it would seem not.

Sen. Coburn: You’ve been asked a lot of questions about abortion. And you’ve said that Roe v. Wade is settled law. Where are we today? What is the settled law in America about abortion?

Judge Sotomayor: I can speak to what the court has said in its precedent. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the court reaffirmed the core holding of Roe v. Wade, that a woman has a constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy in certain circumstances. In Casey, the court announced that in reviewing state regulations that may apply to that right, that the court considers whether that regulation has an undue burden on the woman’s constitutional right. That’s my understanding of what the state of the law is.

Sen. Coburn: So let me give you a couple of cases. Let’s say I’m 38 weeks pregnant and we discover a small spina bifida sac on the lower sacrum, the lower part of the back, on my baby, and I feel like I just can’t handle a child with that. Would it be legal in this country to terminate that child’s life?

Judge Sotomayor: I can’t answer that question in the abstract, because I would have to look at what the state of the state’s law was on that question and what the state said with respect to that issue. I can say that the question of the number of weeks that a woman is pregnant has been—that approach to looking at a woman’s act has—was changed by Casey. The question is, is the state regulation regulating what a woman does an undue burden? And so I can’t answer your hypothetical, because I can’t look at it as an abstract without knowing what state laws exist on this issue or not. . . .

The judge’s answer to the senator’s question was miles wide of the mark, and indicated either that she does not know the truth about the constitutional law of abortion in our country, or that she is willing—for whatever reason—to mischaracterize the matter before a national audience. Senator Coburn had an opening here that cried out for exploitation, but he passed it by for the moment.

The next day, however, he returned to this subject, taking Judge Sotomayor through another brief exchange and pointing out to her that “the truth is, ever since January 22nd, 1973 [the day Roe was decided], you can have an abortion for any reason you want in this country,” and that the stage of one’s pregnancy at the time does not matter at all. The senator was perhaps too kind to the judge, when he might have leaned in and said with quiet intensity, “Why don’t you know this?”

Read the entire article HERE.

The Tragic Legacy of Roe Vs. Wade

Dr. Robert George of Princeton has written an important article for Public Discourse on the moral implications of Roe Vs. Wade.

Dr. George writes:

‘The Roe justices were also wrong to imagine that legal abortion would prove to be enlightened or in the slightest respect humane. On the contrary, the policy imposed by the Court has proven to be an unmitigated disaster. In the thirty-six years since Roe and Doe, abortion has taken the lives of more than fifty million unborn victims—each a distinct, unique, precious human being. It has done immeasurable moral, psychological, and sometimes physical harm to women who are so very often, and in so many respects, truly abortion’s “secondary victims.” It has corrupted physicians and nurses by turning healers into killers. It has undermined the moral authority of the law by its injustice. It has abetted irresponsible—even predatory—male sexual behavior. Far from reducing the rate of out-of-wedlock births, particularly to poor women, illegitimacy has skyrocketed in the age of abortion. Now the abortion license has metastasized into widespread elite support for deadly embryo experimentation and even, in my home state of New Jersey, to the express legalization of the horrific and grisly practice of fetal farming—the creation of human beings by cloning or other processes for the purpose of harvesting their tissues and organs at any point up to birth for experimentation and transplantation...

The Republican Party’s support for the unborn has brought into its ranks many disaffected rank-and-file Democrats, including a large number of Catholics and Evangelicals. I am one. Indeed, it overstates the matter only a bit to say that, as a result of the conflict of worldviews that began with abortion, the Republicans have become the party of the religiously engaged, while the Democrats have become the party of liberal secularists. Barack Obama is trying to win over religiously serious Catholics and Evangelicals, without altering in the slightest his support for abortion, including late-term and partial-birth abortions, the funding of abortion and embryo-destructive research with taxpayer dollars, the elimination of informed consent and parental notification laws, and the revocation of conscience and religious liberty protections for pro-life doctors and other healthcare workers and pharmacists. He will ultimately fail. We must see to it that he fails.

Read the entire article HERE.

Barack Obama Celebrates Abortion

The journal "First Things" ran this disturbing (disgusting) statement from Oprah's candidate (http://www.firstthings.com/blog/2008/01/22/abortion-and-obama/). Read and weep (literally).