Around the Horn – 7/29/16

At first is a political speech worth hearing or at least reading. Governor Rick Perry of Texas delivered this speech to the American Legislative Exchange Council. In it, he speaks of the failure of conservatives to reach out to Black Americans, to show that “it is Republicans—not Democrats—who are truly offering black Americans the hope of a better life for themselves and for their children.” It is filled with stories of Texas. It also notes the reality that in “the cities where the left-wing solutions have been tried over and over again…places like Detroit and Chicago and Baltimore…African-Americans are falling further behind.” What’s the solution? I am guessing “more of the same” is what many people think. I am not sure why. If it hasn’t worked yet, why will it work now? Perry has some good ideas, IMO. I don’t know why he didn’t get more traction in the presidential race.

At second Matt Walsh talks about why the nomination of Hillary Clinton sends a horrific message to the women of this country. Walsh is a strong writer, sometimes caustic, usually very pointed, and like many a preacher, one-third to one-half as long as he needs to be. But his point should be acknowledged. The nomination of Hillary Clinton sends all the wrong messages to the women and particularly the young women of our society. Walsh, like me and many others no doubt, says, “Call me sexist, but I don’t look at my little girl and think, ‘I hope you grow up to be just like Hillary Clinton.’” The question is who, knowing just what is available to be known, would say that? And why? What kind of person do you have to be to honor what Clinton has revealed about herself over forty years of public life?

At third, continuing on the theme of the election, Wayne Grudem lays out a case for Why Voting for Donald Trump is a Morally Good Choice. You might disagree but Grudem makes some reasonable arguments. It’s worth considering. I continue to think the strongest issue in presidential campaigns are judicial nominations. Grudem makes a strong point about that issue.

Last today is an old virtual symposium of commentary on the pro-life movement and the killing of abortion doctors. No doubt most of us would consider it wrong to kill abortion doctors though we might make a philosophical case for it. Here are sixteen people who discuss it from various angles.

Sad, Disturbing, and Confusing

A rather sad, disturbing, and confusing story brings the week to a close. The Detroit Free Press reports that a 25-year old mother was convicted of first degree murder and child abuse for having her baby in a garage and then letting it die.

It’s sad because a mother killed her baby. It’s disturbing because a mother killed her baby.

it’s confusing because I am not sure why it matters. (Don’t leave me yet.)

Isn’t this the natural end of being pro-choice? If, as the Supreme Court ruled forty-three years ago, it is okay for mothers to kill their babies, then why is this mother being charged for it? Is it the location that makes it a crime (i.e., it was in a garage rather than a clinic)? It is timing (i.e., had she done this just minutes before the baby emerged it would have been okay but she wait a few minutes too long)?

In a related story, this week, the Supreme Court is considering an abortion case regarding a Texas law that requires abortion clinics to have some basic medical standards in place such as the doctor having admitting privileges at a hospital within thirty miles and the clinic meeting standards for ambulatory medical centers. It’s difficult to see the problem with this bill. It’s hard to imagine these weren’t already requirements.

We have been routinely told that abortion is a medical procedure, a matter between a woman and her doctor.

In a strange twist, abortion supporters are now arguing that this medical procedure should not be required to be treated like an actual medical procedure.

Let’s tie these two stories together: Abortion supporters are arguing that mothers have a right to kill their children, that those who perform abortions do not need to admitting privileges at a hospital, and that abortion clinics do not need to meet ambulatory surgical center requirements.

This young mother meets all three parts of this argument.

So why is she charged with murder?

The fact that I even raise the question might be considered wrong. I am sure that everyone agrees that her act was heinous. It was. Heinous and heartless.

But why would a pro-choice person support the prosecution and conviction of this young mother? Why was there not a demonstration outside the courtroom protesting this prosecution?

She is what the abortion movement is about—a young woman who is pregnant and unable to care for another child. That’s why abortion exists—because young women should not be required to to be a mother if they don’t want to. And why should the state put undue burdens on her, like leaving her garage or something.

This young lady simply exercised her constitutional rights.

The fact that she chose to do it in a particular way should not really matter, should it? After all, doesn’t she have a right to choose what to do with her body?

There is something about this case that destroys the pro-abortion argument. It is simply this: Everyone knows this mother’s actions were morally wrong and reprehensible.

Why do they know this?

Because they know that that “thing” living inside of her was a baby and it didn’t change into a baby in that Eastpointe garage when it suddenly met the cold December air.

Nope. It was a baby in her body and it was a baby outside of her body.

And everyone knows that.

We are truly a corrupt and calloused people, not because we prosecute this young woman, but because we don’t see the intense irony of prosecuting her for doing exactly what she chose to do, to exercise her constitutional rights as a woman.

Food for Thought

On every university campus I visit, somebody stands up and says that God is an evil God to allow all this evil into our world. This person typically says, ‘A plane crashes: Thirty people die, and twenty people live. What kind of a God would arbitrarily choose some to live and some to die?’

But when we play God and determine whether a child within a mother’s womb should live, we argue for that as a moral right. So when human beings are given the privilege of playing God, it’s called a moral right. When God plays God, we call it an immoral act. Can you justify this for me?”

Zacharias, Ravi. “Reaching the ‘Happy-Thinking Pagan.’” Growing Your Church through Evangelism and Outreach. Ed. Marshall Shelley. 1st ed. Nashville, TN: Moorings, 1996. 18.

Mr. President, Have You Nothing to Say?

The USA Today reports:

"The president does not and cannot take a position on an ongoing trial, so I won't as well," White House press secretary Jay Carney said on Monday.

Obama is "aware" of the case but it would be inappropriate for the president or White House to weigh in on an ongoing legal proceeding, Carney added.

Huh?

Is this the same president who had no trouble taking a position on the ongoing legal proceeding known as gay marriage? Nobody’s dying over that one. Why wasn’t it inappropriate then?

When a gunman shot up a theatre in Colorado, he spoke up, traveled out there, and met with families.

A gunman shot up a school in Sandy Hook and he still hasn’t stopped talking about that. In fact, he is pushing for new laws because of it.

But when it’s dozens (perhaps hundreds) of little babies and their mothers, he develops lockjaw? Or laryngitis?

When it was Trayvon Martin, the president said if he had a son, it would look like Trayvon.

Guess what, Mr. President. Many of those little babies killed by Gosnell look just like you too.

They never had a chance to don a hoodie or to enroll in school at Sandy Hook. They never saw a movie in a theatre, or even on a DVD.

And there were more of them than Sandy Hook, Aurora, and Trayvon Martin combined. Every day. Day after day.

Yet you can’t bring yourself to speak a word about this horrible atrocity?

Where’s your moral outrage?

Perhaps there isn’t any because this is about abortion rather than guns.

Of course, abortion kills far more people.

Guns killed twenty-six people at one school in Connecticut in December.

Abortion has killed that many since you started reading this. And abortion will continue unabated and unchecked, regardless of the gun laws you get passed.

One reason is because you, Mr. President, won’t speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.

Gosnell is only part of the problem.

People like you, Mr. President, also part of the problem, perhaps even a bigger part. Gosnell was one man running one operation in Philadelphia.

You have the power of the bully pulpit, the power of legislation, and the power of the media. You have influence over thousands, even millions.

And you think it is inappropriate to speak up when dozens of little African-American and White babies have been brutally murdered after they were born alive?

What good is a voice if you won’t use it to speak up for the least and most vulnerable among us?

What will it take to get you to condemn this modern holocaust?

Pharaoh and the Babies, Redux

Yesterday I preached from Exodus 1:15-2:10 where, in ancient history, a Pharaoh rose to power who believed it was permissible, not only to kill babies, but to force others to kill babies.

In his pursuit of this end, he enlisted the help of the medical profession, and then of the population at large.

Today, it seems that Pharaoh has risen again, this time in the guise of “health care” that not only finds it permissible to kill babies, but also to force others to participate in this killing.

The mandate for contraception coverage in healthcare plans does exactly that—it forces employers to pay for the killing of babies if the mother so chooses.Companies who refuse face fines of one million dollars a day.

This is an egregious act, a subjugation of basic human rights and human decency that should be immediately rejected by all humanity. It should provoke a national outcry.

But it doesn’t.

Now multiple cases are wending their way through the legal system of the United States, in hopes of overturning this mandate.

Already circuit courts have given conflicting rulings, setting the stage for a Supreme Court showdown which probably wouldn’t take place until at least the 2013-14 court docket.

Whatever the outcome of these court cases, let us make no mistake about what has occurred: Pharaoh has risen again.

Let us be midwives who fear God more than the king.

Imposing Slavery

“I don’t believe in it, but I don’t want to impose that belief on others.”

Imagine saying that about slavery in a vice-presidential debate in 1860. Many people would have agreed.

Yet today, one hundred and fifty years later, those people are looked on with disbelief, even scorn. No one could be elected today saying, “I don’t believe in slavery, but I don’t want to impose that belief on others.”

The truth is that our country imposed a belief about slavery, and people died in support of that belief.

And now, that belief is part of our core national identity, though it is imperfectly lived out at times.

So why is this kind of belief okay today? Why can someone says, as Vice-President Biden did, “I don’t believe in abortion, but I don’t want to impose that belief on others.”

Why is he not run out of national politics with a vengeance? Why is he not an object of scorn and disbelief for such a backwards and intolerant position?

How long will it be until that unborn are accorded the same kind of effort as slaves were? How long will it be until the life of the unborn becomes more than political punchline to assure of one’s moral compass without having to actual live by that compass.

It is well past the time that we as a nation take on the forces of death. While we lament the 2000 deaths in Afghanistan in that least ten years, the 2000 deaths from yesterday in abortion clinics go largely unnoticed.

People will vote for the candidate who promises to get our soldiers out of harm’s way. But they will refuse to vote for a candidate who promises to get our least protected out of harm’s way.

Let us not buy the line that refusing to stand against abortion is some noble effort to impose a moral belief.

Refusing to stand against abortion reflects a moral belief that costs thousands of lives each day.

It’s time to be done, America.

No Voice for the Voiceless: Shame on Fox 2 Detroit

Fox 2 Detroit has a regular segment called “Let It Rip.” It’s pretty interesting sometimes.

It also doubles as an indication of much of what is wrong with civil discourse in our society: It’s not civil; it’s too soundbyte-ish; it doesn’t work well to develop actual thinking skills; and I could go on. But it’s like watching a train wreck. You just can’t help yourself sometimes.

Well, last night, the topic was on abortion. When I first turned it on, Huel Perkins was reading an email from a viewer complaining about the idea that a woman, conceived by rape, was pro-life and was exercising her voice. Perkins said, “We want to give all sides a voice.”

So I watched it.

And what I found is that there was no voice to speak up for the thousands of children killed every day. There was a representative for Planned Parenthood who took the expected line that convenience and choice are more important than life.

There is the co-host, Charley Langton, an attorney who actually thinks that Roe v. Wade was a good decision.

There was another attorney, though I am not sure what she brought to the table aside from declaring that Roe was settled and safe.

There was no one to point out that no other segment of our population is treated as these littlest ones are.

The two women on the panel arguing for women’s right never stood up for the two thousand plus women everyday that are killed by the one who should most protect them.

We need to realize that abortion is not about choice. That is a red herring.

This society has already accepted the long established principle that “choice” is never ultimate, particularly over another person’s life. No one can simply choose to kill others without consequence. People here in Detroit mourn the violence that happens every day on the streets.

But somehow, our collective minds checkout when a human being is in the mother’s womb. Then killing someone is something to be protected and treasured.

Fox 2 Detroit, you should be ashamed.

Huel Perkins, you should do better because you know better. As a journalist, you should know that if you are going to have a conversation and debate, you should have two sides represented.

As a human being, you should recognize that life is not something to be debated. It is to be protected and preserved, particularly when they are defenseless.

Tragedy, Outrage, and Proportion

This past Friday morning, just after midnight, a gunman entered a crowded movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado and shot fifty people, killing twelve.

Americans are rightly stunned and outraged. It is hard to imagine what that middle of the night phone call would be like with a voice on the other end asking you to come and identify the body of a loved one who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It is hard to imagine the depths of evil in the human heart that led to this.

It should grieve us.

And now, at the risk of being accused of bad taste, I want to take this opportunity that remind us that since that midnight tragedy, approximately one hundred times that number of people have been killed and hardly anyone has batted an eye. There’s no stunned outrage. There’s not a torrent of news article and blog posts analyzing the tragedy. Their names will never be known (in fact, they don’t even have names yet). No one will cry out for laws to keep it from happening. In fact, they will cry out for laws to continue to allow it.

Why?

Because very few people, comparatively speaking, care about the thousands every day who are brutally murdered everyday in the “privacy” of a “doctor’s office.” They aren’t surrounded by jokers in masks. They are surrounded by highly educated doctors in masks whose goal is to take a human life.

But the outcome is the same: Dead people.

This shooting is a tragedy. But why do twelve people get the headlines, and the twelve or so that died since I starting writing this won’t even get a grave stone?

No doubt some of you will be offended by this article. You will think I am minimizing this tragedy.

Far from it, my friend. I am not minimizing it at all. I am pointing to a bigger tragedy that doesn’t reach our national (or personal) psyche anymore.

I am pointing that we, as Americans, have no sense of proportion to match our outrage. We ignore the death of thousands while dedicating hours of special programming on TV to the death of twelve.

The media who have shown pictures of bloody theatre goers won’t dare show the picture of a bloody baby brutally sucked from it’s life-giving womb.

It won’t matter to them.

People will accuse me of politicizing the issue. But the politicizing started long ago when politicians distinguished between the value of the life at certain ages. They are the one who have refused to offer the promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to all people. They are the ones who have given into the politicization of those with no regard for life.

Life is precious, whether it’s twelve people in a theater at midnight or twelve people in the wombs of their mothers.

The fact that we get morally outraged at a theater killing is good.

The fact that we do not get morally outraged at abortion is a travesty, a blight on our existence.

May God awaken our sensibilities to the mass murder that goes on everyday all around us.

Finally …

At long last, we have discovered a level of government regulation the Democrats don’t like. We have found where the line is.

Unfortunately, it’s drawn squarely at the graves of the unborn, most of whom never make it to the grave. They are unceremoniously disposed of long before then.

This week, the Michigan Legislature was considering a bill to “increase insurance and regulations on abortion clinics, regulate the disposal of fetal remains, prohibit the use of teleconferences to prescribe abortion medication and make it a crime to coerce a woman into having an abortion.”

It’s hard to imagine what the downside of this is. What exactly is there to object to here?

But thirty-nine Democrats objected to it, anyway. It still passed with sixty-four Republican votes and six Democratic defectors. (So much for “They are all alike.” They are only mostly alike.)

To be clear, I object to this bill because it’s toothless. It will not do one single substantial thing to protect the weakest and most vulnerable among us.

In the name of women’s health, millions of young women (not to mention men) will be murdered, and this bill won’t stop that.

In a bizarre turn of events, a couple of women legislator’s chime in, making some rather absurd comments, both in the original article and in a follow up session. A follow up article says this:

And Byrum [one of the female legislators'] was gaveled out of order after she protested when she wasn’t allowed to speak on her amendment to the bill that would have required proof of a medical emergency or that a man’s life was in danger before a doctor could perform a vasectomy.

It’s hard to believe that this woman actually equated a vasectomy with an abortion.

Have we really stooped so low in our moral judgment that we don’t recognize the fundamental difference between sterilization and taking a human life?

Can we do no better than this?

Sadly, I imagine we probably can’t.

Unfortunately, millions of people are being systematically eradicated in a modern day movement that makes the Nazi Holocaust look small. The Nazi’s exterminated six million (6,000,000) people in about four years.

Modern society reaches that number about every fifty-two days (115,000 abortions per day worldwide; 42 million each year [42,000,000]) (source).

In America, the Holocaust takes place just about every five years (1.2 million abortions each year; five years to reach six million [source]).

The difference is that the Allied Armies, led by American courage and principle, isn’t standing up for these modern Holocaust victims like they did for the previous Holocaust victims. Maybe it’s because there’s no real courage or principle when it comes to defending the weakest Americans. There’s only politics.

These little ones are indeed the victims of politics,not to mention selfishness, lack of moral courage and integrity, and a gross deficiency of responsibility.

If 600,000 women were being brutally dismembered and chopped up and thrown out with the trash every year on the streets of America, there would be outrage, public demonstrations, and probably violence that not even the National Guard could quell.

But because these 600,000 women (and 600,000 men) are being dismembered, chopped up, and thrown out with the trash in doctor’s offices, we call it health care.

Strange health care, it seems to me.

May God help us and have mercy on us.

Time on the Military and Abortion

Al Mohler links to a short article in Time Magazine on the unavailability of abortion for women in the military unless they pay for it themselves outside a military hospital. This applies even in the cases of sexual assault.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) sponsored a bill to allow abortions for servicewomen in the cases of rape. It has passed the committee on a 16-10 vote.

This brings up yet again one of the ugly sides of the pro-abortion movement.

In this act, the worth of a child’s life is judged by his father’s actions. Because his father is a rapist, the child is denied the basic right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that our military is supposed to be defending.

It is inexcusable that in the twenty-first century we live in a land where someone can be killed simply because their father is a criminal.

These are the acts of lawless people from uncivilized cultures. These are the acts of criminals and terrorists. They are not the acts of freedom loving people.

It’s time for America to stop the charade that allows people to be killed for the sins of their father.

Vote for Abortion? or Against?

There’s a certain irony in the story of a couple taking an online poll about whether or not they should abort a 17-week old baby in the womb.

She and her husband, Peter Arnold, began the online vote because she was still healing emotionally from the most recent of three miscarriages, she said. They weren't sure whether she was ready for a baby.

So if I get this right, she lost a recent baby due to a miscarriage, and because she is still suffering she is thinking about aborting the next one.

How does losing two babies help the emotional suffering of losing one?

We have been on the end of losing a baby to miscarriage. I admit to looking around the house sometimes and wondering what a six-year old would be like. I wonder what kind of personality he would have had, and wonder what we might have enjoyed doing together.

But I can’t imagine how taking the life of another baby is going to make that easier.

Yes, I know I am the man in the relationship. I know I didn’t carry the baby, and experience the miscarriage. For me, I didn’t grasp it all at first. The farther we got from the miscarriage, the more it bothered me. Weird, I know.

But I still don’t understand how aborting a second baby makes losing the first easier to deal with.

The very next paragraph of the article is also interesting.

"I wanted to wait longer because I was losing weight and living a healthier lifestyle," she said. "I wasn't sure what to do."

I know reasons can be complex, and losing weight and living a healthier lifestyle is a good thing. But is that the real reason for the abortion? To keep from having a mommy body?

It is a disturbing world we live in.

And sometimes, I just don’t know what to say.

You Already Have a Baby

Justin Taylor has an article today entitled, How Many People Does It Take to Save an Unborn Life? This line caught my attention:

This [the sonogram] enabled Lisa to see that the choice before her was not, “should I have a baby or not?” She could see that she had a baby.  The true choice before her was to nurture or kill the baby she had.

Jenkins on Tebow

This, by a pro-choice female columnist, is worth reading.

Tebow's 30-second ad hasn't even run yet, but it already has provoked "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" to reveal something important about themselves: They aren't actually "pro-choice" so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.

Pam Tebow and her son feel good enough about that choice to want to tell people about it. Only, NOW says they shouldn't be allowed to. Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikini selling beer is the right one. I would like to meet the genius at NOW who made that decision. On second thought, no, I wouldn't.

(Bolding mine.)

A Strange Hypocrisy

The weekend’s news brought the tragic story of the killing of noted abortionist, Dr. George Tiller, noted for performing late term abortions. Apparently he was ushering in his church* (an ELCA congregation) when he was gunned down.

Now, this shooting is absolutely inexcusable. It should not have happened.

But why are pro-choice people upset? To them, whether someone lives or dies is a choice, not a crime. If someone is inconvenient to us, we can kill them. That’s what Tiller believed. That’s what NOW, NARAL, our president, the bulk of the Democratic Party, and some in the Republican Party believe.

So why can someone kill one person but they can’t kill another person?

Perhaps it’s because the right of choice only belongs to women, and this shooter was a man. (I speak as a fool.)

It is utter hypocrisy to support the killing of some (the weakest and most unable to defend themselves) while objecting to the killing of others (who are able to defend themselves).

If you are pro-choice, then be pro-choice.

Don’t throw up some faux charade of hypocritical anger. You are the ones who support the killing of innocent people. You cannot legitimately object when it happens (particularly when the victim is not innocent).

____________________

*Of course, this whole sad episode raises the question of what is going on in our churches when a member is a noted abortionist. Where was the leadership of this church demanding repentance of Dr. Tiller? Where was the church discipline and the denial of communion and fellowship?