In an historic ruling on June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the rulings of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. America has lived for 49 years under the tyrannical bloodshed of Roe but God sent a Jubilee release for us and our children. We must not let that great answer to prayers go unnoticed. Pro-Life wins. This is the month to mark and remember God’s goodness to us.
June is strategic ground to claim
The rainbow mafia has been trying to claim June for a long time. They have many corporations behind them shoving their agenda in everyone’s face. But the Dobbs ruling in June gives a legitimate and prominent way to push back. We should not let this opportunity go to waste to claim June as a celebration of life, God’s goodness to his people, God’s ordinance of marriage, and so much more. Claim June as Pro-Life Month.
Being Pro-Life cuts to the heart of the Godless agenda
Celebrating Pro-Life month is a great way to cut to the center issue of our time. The godless world is trying to claim that the autonomous self is god. They want their lusts and desires to reign supreme. They are trying to reject the way God made the world: sexuality, gender, when life begins, the nature of being male and female, God’s design for marriage. It is all connected and the godless hate it. The Dobbs ruling is a reality check on their bloodlust. God is God and you are not. Celebrate June as Pro-Life month.
At a recent event titled Life After Roe, which was hosted by the Hale Institute of New Saint Andrews College, a panel of four legal specialists discussed the Dobbs ruling which overturned Roe v Wade. Both pro-life and pro-choice positions were present on this panel made up of two legal professors and two litigators. Read this for an overview of the evening.
The striking thing was how this panel captured quite clearly the crossroads before America.
The Dobbs ruling marks a significant transition for the country as we move from Old America into New America. The order of the panel nicely illustrated this transition. On the left, there was a pro-lifer and pro-choicer, both from Old America, who had one kind of conversation. On the right, there was a pro-lifer and a pro-choicer, both from New America, and they had a different kind of conversation. In New America, the end of Roe is an earthshaking fault line that highlights the divide in this country and the reality that there is almost no common ground between the two sides anymore. The striking thing is that this divide runs not only between pro-lifers and pro-choicers, but also between Old America and New America.
Have you noticed a shift in strategy by supporters of abortion? Have you detected the establishment of a new philosophical foundation for killing our own children? I think I have.
In the beginning, it was a matter of privacy. Abortion was a simple surgery, on par with a vasectomy, and no one should be listening in on conversations with a woman and her doctor. Abortion was a simple medical procedure that removed a clump of unfeeling, undifferentiated cells from a woman’s body. Of course, this argument became increasingly difficult to maintain, as ultrasounds of babies in utero became more widespread.
In the not too recent past, abortion was called a difficult decision that should be left to a woman and her doctor. That word “difficult” put some moral weight into the conversation. I mean, it is never a “difficult decision” to have a skin tag, or a pre-cancerous mole removed. It is just tissue, and healthy tissue will replace it. Undoubtedly the difficulty of abortion requires that you acknowledge at least the potentiality of this baby having a life of its own.
The argument moved a bit further down the philosophical track by declaring that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” Why rare? The evidence is piling up that a very young fetus can feel pain, that they are unique human beings and are entirely distinct from their mothers even while they are dependent upon them. Abortion should only occur in extreme situations goes the argument. But what qualifies as extreme should again be left to the mother and her doctor.
Well, people became increasingly uncomfortable with abortion for just any reason and at any point in the development of a child, so restrictions began to increase in state legislatures. Can the baby survive outside the womb? You may not kill the child. Can the baby feel pain in the womb? You may not kill her then either. Are you killing the child for a genetic defect, say being conceived a girl? We won’t allow you to kill her for that reason.
Positive care was required. You have to provide medical care to a baby born alive during an abortion. You have to keep medical records on the woman coming in for an abortion. You have to have admitting privileges at a local hospital so that if you rip a hole in the mother’s uterus as you are cutting up her child, you can transfer the mother with her medical records describing what transpired. These restrictions did not sit well with abortion advocates.
In 2015 we learned that Planned Parenthood had negotiated prices for fetal eye tissue (and brain matter, and spinal cords, and feet, toes and tiny fingers) and the outrage became so great there was an actual movement to take away federal tax dollars from them (damn radicals!).
This was a bridge too far, and proponents of abortion set their argument for abortion on a new moral foundation. Abortion is good, and it is good in and of itself. The killing of your child is a thing to be celebrated. You should SHOUT YOUR ABORTION. Let the world know what a good thing it is to kill your baby. Better for him, better for the mother, better for society. Abortion is no longer a necessary evil – it has become a moral imperative.
Today we write hymns about our abortions. We set up virtual shrines with ultrasound images of our babies so we can speak to them about how grateful we are to have the right to kill them. We demand that fetus joins us in our worship of self.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the fetal lullaby:
Alan Stout is the Associate Pastor of Providence Church in Pensacola, FL and active pro-life advocate in the Pensacola community. He serves on the board of Emerald Coast Coalition for Life.
In this interview, Pastor Uri Brito joins his fellow pastor at Providence Church, Alan Stout, to talk about Pastor Stout’s role in the pro-life work in Pensacola. He offers a brief history of the role Pensacola plays in the abortion debate, offers encouragement to those who wish to engage in defending the helpless and much more. You will want to share this episode.
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, when Christians all over the world will gather to celebrate the nativity of Jesus Christ our Lord. The eternal Word becoming flesh is fundamental to the Christian faith; we would not be able to receive salvation apart from it (Gal. 4:4-5). One important aspect of Christ’s incarnation is his birth from Mary, a virgin. We re-tell this historic event each year, though many of us neglect its significance. Why did Jesus have to be born of a virgin? There is more than one answer to this question, but today we’ll look at one that has profound implications in the debate on abortion and the personhood of the unborn.
Jesus had to be born of a virgin because he is not a human person. Kallistos Ware summarizes the traditional doctrine:
“…Christ’s birth from a virgin underlines that the incarnation did not involve the coming into being of a new person. When a child is born from two human parents in the usual fashion, a new person begins to exist. But the person of the incarnate Christ is none other than the second person of the Holy Trinity. At Christ’s birth, therefore, no new person came into existence, but the pre-existent person of the Son of God now began to live according to a human as well as a divine mode of being. So the virgin birth reflects Christ’s eternal pre-existence.” – The Orthodox Way, pg. 76-77
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’Abraham Kuyper
