John H Armstrong

What Happens When an Abortion Provider Has a Change of Heart?

The story of Abby Johnson (photo at left) moves me very profoundly. Abby, the director of Planned Parenthood in Bryan, Texas, for the last two years, resigned on October 6.  Abby realized that she wanted to leave, after watching an ultrasound of an abortion procedure. She said: "I just thought I can't do this anymore, and it was just like a flash that hit me and I thought that's it.”

Abby Johnson reveals that under difficult economic pressures, brought on by the recent recession, the business model of Planned Parenthood has changed from promoting prevention to encouraging abortion. Johnson says she was being encouraged to bring in more women for abortions because that is where the money is.

Does anyone really want to argue that money doesn't drives the abortion industry as much as any single issue? Sure there are people who really believe in abortion as “choice” but the industry itself is money-based and money-driven. Abby Johnson is now an embarrassment to the pro-choice movement and their response to her has been very swift.

But why did Abby walk away? An Episcopalian, she says her decision was based upon her change of mind about the abortion procedure itself: "I feel so pure in heart (since leaving). I don't have this guilt. I don't have this burden on me anymore that's how I know this conversion was a spiritual conversion."

Johnson now supports the Coalition for Life, the pro-life group with a building down the street from Planned Parenthood in Bryan. Coalition volunteers can regularly be seen praying on the sidewalk in front of Planned Parenthood. Johnson has been meeting with the coalition's executive director, Shawn Carney, and has prayed with volunteers outside Planned Parenthood. Last Friday, October 30, both Johnson and the Coalition for Life were issued temporary restraining orders filed by Planned Parenthood. Rochelle Tafolla, a Planned Parenthood spokesperson issued the following statement: "We regret being forced to turn to the courts to protect the safety and confidentiality of our clients and staff, however, in this instance it is absolutely necessary." The temporary restraining order contends that Planned Parenthood would be irreparably harmed by the disclosure of certain information. The local television news report about Abby Johnson and Planned Parenthood is available here.

I read this story with profound gratitude for the courage and witness of Abby Johnson. I also prayed for her as my sister in Christ. I then wondered, “What would happen if there were a thousand Abby Johnson's who came to the same conclusion and their stories were to hit the media over the next three months?” Don’t tell me it can not happen. With God all things are possible. I believe that we should pray that Abby’s witness remains strong and that a host of similar people take the same stand under the mighty power of the Holy Spirit. I think there are enough Christians inside the abortion industry that if they were to go down the same road as Abby changes would be immediate and amazing. "Is anything too hard for the Lord?"

Are American's Abortion Views Really Changing or Not?

A recent poll, conducted by the ever reliable Pew Research Center, shows that support for abortion has declined. The public is now almost divided 50-50 on the issue. The apparent shift in opinion has occurred in the last twelve months. In 2008 a Pew poll found those in favor of keeping abortion legal outnumbered opponents 54-40%. The new poll is 47-45%. This is, according to researchers, a fairly significant shift in opinion. The problem is that this new survey did not seek to find reasons for this shift but I expect we will have more polling on this question in time.

Pew researchers pointed out that this shift has occurred since the election of President Obama, a strong supporter of pro-choice law who has said he would like to reduce the number of abortions while keeping it perfectly legal. (The reality is he wants to expand the practice as widely as possible from everything he has said and one to this point!)

Gregory Smith, a senior researcher at Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, worked on the poll. Smith says, “The size of the shift is modest, but the consistency with which we see it occurring and the implications it has for the overall dynamics of the debate make it significant.” But why? That is the proverbial $64,000 question.

Abortion was not a major issue in last year’s presidential debate but the health care issue has brought it back to the forefront as I noted several weeks ago. The question of granting government money to perform abortions has become a very contentious issue in the health care quagmire.

But there appears to be more here than the health care debate. With an abortion advocate now in the White House opponents are much more engaged and energized than pro-choice advocates, who are getting more and more of what they want these days. Significant percentages of people believe President Obama will go “too far” in supporting abortion. This seems to reflect the idea that America still has a fairly conservative middle and extremes make people push back. Obama’s views on abortion are radically liberal, not simply liberal. The more this is understand the more, it seems, the pro-life view will become an issue with a majority of America once again.

Among those polled some responded openly about why they had changed their view on abortion. Jackie Cutts, of Jacksonville, Florida, was one who admitted she changed her view from pro-choice to pro-life. She told Pew her reason for changing her view was having children, not politics. “What made me change,” she said, “was realizing that at conception the heartbeat and the life of the person begins.”

Personally, I think this is the reason most people change their mind. The other is conversion. Many hurting and spiritually confused people come to know Christ personally and then rethink their view on abortion. I know them. Maybe you do too. A change of heart changes their political view as well, which reminds us that if you have a person’s heart you very often, though not always, have the person’s response to major ethical issues like abortion.

One number, however, jumps out if you study this polling carefully. In 2006 28% of respondents said abortion was a “critical issue.” In 2009 that number was only 15%. This tells me that the economy is still the big issue for most Americans. When jobs and money are the big issues then others, like abortion, are not nearly as important. This stands to reason but it also underscores the major need for spiritual transformation in the church. Unless the church is awakened there is still little reason to believe the culture will change on this life-and-death issue.

Don't Be Fooled About Health Care and Abortion

I have listened to a great deal of the debate about National Health Care over the last few months. I may write more about this debate in the coming weeks. I have previously expressed my concern that independent studies have revealed that we cannot afford this legislation. If we are serious about health care reform we can make several much needed changes in the system without accumulating massive new debt and adopting budget breaking expenditures. This being said I have tried to remain open to arguments from both sides on this debate. I am convinced that advocates and opponents have both misrepresented the facts, at least in some instances. And I am growing very weary of the way this debate has been conducted.

What I know for certain is that every piece of health care legislation that has been put forward, at least to this point, is extremely favorable to abortion and provides taxpayer support for abortions that presently are not supported by federal dollars. The bills set forward by the Democrats and President Obama are consistent on this point. These advocates are not telling us the truth about the abortion issue in this debate. I am amazed at how many friends of mine who assure me that they are strongly pro-life also assure me that Obama's health care plan has nothing at all to do with abortion. I do not like the way the right has hurled terrible epithets at the President but in this instance he is not telling us the whole truth about abortion. He has to know it. What he is doing is being very consistent with his stance on abortion followed over the course of his entire career in politics. This president is no friend to the cause of saving the lives of the unborn. To argue that he is seems to distort his words and their meaning beyond the breaking point.

A Senate committee voted yesterday, along strict party lines, to not restrict abortions under the Baucus health care proposal. Baucus himself says that his proposal does not support abortion. Senator Baucus is either naive, not telling the truth or not very smart. The vote yesterday, in Senate committee, proves my point. See for yourself. So long as the Democrats promote government funded abortions I simply cannot, in Christian conscience, support the Democrats. This does not mean that I am a Republican, since I have major problems with the leadership of this party as well. It does mean that based on conscience the issue of the life of the unborn, the weakest among us, is such a bedrock moral issue that I will oppose any effort to increase the likelihood of more abortions, especially when my taxes are helping pay for them. I cannot stand before God in the final day and tell Christ that my faith was so private and personal that I would not speak up for the unborn who were being slaughtered on a daily basis in this nation that is supposedly rooted in natural law.

The President's Honorary Degree at Notre Dame: The "Real" Issue

President Obama gave the commencement address at Notre Dame this past weekend, following weeks of protest and disagreement from within the Catholic Church and beyond. Pro-life advocates were unhappy and pro-choice advocates saw this occasion as a step in the right direction.

Now that the occasion has come and gone there are several things worthy of comment concerning what the "real" issues were in this instance.

1. The real issue here was not “academic freedom.” It never was the issue even though the press spun it this way. Notre Dame is totally free to invite the president of the United States to deliver such a commencement address on such an occasion. This was never the real debate.

2. The granting of an doctoral degree, which is given as an honor if it means anything at all, was always the real issue here. The U. S. Catholic Bishops issued a statement in 2004 which said Catholic institutions “should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles.” Notre Dame’s administration acted in “defiance” of the clear and unambiguous moral teaching of the Catholic Church. No one can seriously deny this point. And the same U. S. Bishops statement in 2004 added that persons who defy the teaching of the Catholic Church on this type of moral issue “should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.” Can anyone doubt that this is what happened at Notre Dame?

3. Multitudes in the media acted as if the Catholic Church, and especially those bishops and priests who protested this degree, were the parties who were in the wrong in this instance. Former N.Y. Governor Mario Cuomo, a Catholic who has never supported the moral teaching of his own church on this issue, was even brought into the news cycle to pronounce his views on the matter. I wonder why? Answer: He never allowed Catholic moral teaching to impact his leadership in the 1980s and the media knows where to go to find Catholics who disagree with the moral teaching of the church.

When Cardinal Francis George, the leader of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, spoke out against Notre Dame and said this was “an extreme embarrassment” for a Catholic university to confer such an honor on a strongly pro-choice president Chicago's mayoral brother, Bill Daley, called Cardinal George’s stance “an extreme embarrassment for Chicago Catholics.” This is the same Bill Daley who ran Al Gore’s presidential campaign and who is often directly involved in major political decision making in this city and the Democratic Party. Now he "speaks" for Catholics in Chicago.

During Lent we had to hear Bill Daley lecturing the Cardinal and the Catholic Church about what belongs to Caesar. I have to agree with columnist John Kass, of the Chicago Tribune, who wrote on Saturday: “All that loud political anger was aimed at a priest who stood for his faith, as he prepared for Easter. Though I’m not a Roman Catholic [the columnist is Greek Orthodox], I was hurt and personally sickened by the attacks against Cardinal George" I agree with John Kass. We do not need the state telling the church what is right and wrong anymore than we need the church seeking control of the state.

This is an instance where all Christians should stand as one for the defense of the lives of innocent unborn children. Who will defend these children if the church keeps its views silent? Surely not Catholics like the mayor and his brother, or governors like Mario Cuomo.

4. I wrote last week that the real hero in this debacle was Mary Ann Glendon, who turned down Notre Dame’s highest award to be given to her at the same ceremony. She did it without mocking or ridiculing anyone. She wrote a reasoned and clear letter to the president of the university and simply said, "No."

The university tried to find another Catholic who would accept this award and thankfully there were no takers. Maybe this says a lot more about the Catholic Church, and multitudes of faithful lay leaders who could have received this cherished award, than the press noticed. I feel quite sure that it does.

One thing we do know. Christians who believe their faith teaches them to oppose abortion will continue to be depicted as intolerant extremists by most in the media, at least for the foreseeable future. This should not stop people who believe abortion is morally wrong from saying so and thus from being consistent in how they live their faith at this crucial point. On the Day of Judgment I have a distinct impression that this will matter a whole lot more than the approval of mankind.

President Obama's Controversial Degree from Notre Dame University and a Profile in Courage

Principled people in public leadership are too rare these days. This is what made former Vatican Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon’s (photo at left) simple, and rather non-dramatic, refusal to accept Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal at this year’s commencement a profile in courage. Glendon rejected the honor primarily because the university is also awarding an honorary doctoral degree to their commencement speaker, President Barack Obama.

The Notre Dame/Obama controversy has been discussed and analyzed, right and left and at all points in between, for the past six weeks. Patrick Buchanan asked, in a March 31 article in the very conservative paper Human Events: “Is Notre Dame Still Catholic?” I’ll give you one guess what he concluded.

At the center of this storm is Notre Dame’s president, Father John Jenkins. Why has he chosen to openly celebrate the contributions of the most pro-choice president in history? (I will not endeavor to prove this point about President Obama since it is plainly established by his actions during his first one hundred days, as well as by his lifetime record of votes on this issue. He actual record is pro-abortion 100% of the time!)

George Weigel (photo at right), a Catholic scholar of note who is also a good friend to evangelicals, sees this degree as a strong statement that Notre Dame wants to make at this time. They are saying, in effect: “Here is a man we should admire and emulate.” But how can a Catholic university say that about a man who will soon appoint his first Supreme Court justice and has clearly promised that this choice will be pro-abortion. (Only Obama admitted to the "litmus test" idea in the campaign so no one should be surprised by all his pro-choice actions in his first hundred days.) Buchanan concludes that Father Jenkins has created a contradiction that renders Notre Dame “a morally incoherent institution.” While Notre Dame has a number of great students and a first-rate faculty, which includes evangelical leaders such as my friend Mark Noll, so far as the institution itself goes I fear that Pat Buchanan is right. (I quite often disagree with Pat Buchanan so I weighed this comment very carefully!)

Bishop John A’Arcy, of the Fort Wayne-South Bend diocese, has openly spoken against the university’s decision and intends to miss the ceremony. Bishop D’Arcy, himself a serious ethicist on the subject of embryonic stem cells, says, “While claiming to separate policies from science, (Obama) has in fact separated science from ethics and has brought the American government, for the first time in history, into supporting direct destruction of innocent human life.”

The American bishops, writing about such thorny matters in general, concluded that Catholic institutions should “not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles.” In Obama’s case the conflict seems obvious, even if you agree with him on many other issues. (I am alarmed by how many evangelicals who voted for Obama now seem silent about the moral issues that define life and protect it. So many of these Christians assured me they would be faithful in the moral outcry against him if he went down this path. I do not hear their voices but maybe I am missing something here.) This I do know: Notre Dame is acting in a way that defies logic, common sense and Catholic moral theology.

I am reminded of Obama’s attempted deflection of the real moral basis for the abortion debate when Rick Warren asked him in the Saddleback Forum (September, 2008) about when a baby is really a human and thus receives legal protection as a person. Obama famously answered: “Whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity . . . is above my pay grade.” Obama had a clear chance to explain himself but took a calculated pass. Why? He wants to defend the idea that he is committed to reducing abortions while he keeps all abortions legal. His view, in reality, is more liberal than that of most liberals, both in America and Europe.

But back to Mary Ann Glendon. This woman, called an “abortion foe” by the mainstream media, is nothing more than a consistent, pro-life Roman Catholic Christian. Mary Ann Glendon is not your typical anti-abortion right winger, as the media likes to portray her and her decision to reject this prestigious award. She is actually a Harvard University law professor and an author on bioethics and human rights. Kathleen Parker, in her Washington Post syndicated column, suggested that the real reason Glendon rejected this great honor appears to be rooted in the sense that she was being used to deflect the fierce criticism pointed at the university for awarding an honorary degree to President Obama.

The sad irony, as a Pew Forum Poll clearly showed this week, is that the majority of Catholics side with Notre Dame, not with Mary Ann Glendon. But then the majority of Catholics voted for Barack Obama. The best research shows, as we have now come to routinely expect, that the more active the person is in the serious practice of their faith the more likely they will be to oppose the president, at least on this moral point. There is, in other words, a direct correlation with the practice of one's faith and how one views the ethics of abortion.

Many of those Catholics who voted for Obama believed that he would actually work to decrease the number of abortions. I read these supporters for Obama very seriously. I spoke to some of them personally. On the surface this appears consistent with the rhetorical answers the president provided during the campaign and since. He reasons that his programs will so help poor women that they will be less likely to abort children as a result. There is no hard evidence for this conclusion. I hope he is right and commend the desire. But we need more than desire when it comes to a moral issue like abortion. A child is either protected by the law or she is not. Obama has taken a series of action steps and promised a conclusion that is at variance with what we know to this point in our history. One can hope for the best but meanwhile it is much easier to have an abortion in America, since January 21, 2009, than almost anywhere else in the world.

This is the same president who said that he would not wish to “punish” his daughters with an unwanted pregnancy if one of them was pregnant and did not wish to keep their baby. I do not understand how any prospective grandfather could ever say such a thing, especially with two young girls being shaped in their views of life and death in his home. I have two granddaughters thus the moral revulsion this creates inside of me is profound.

My good friend Gerald McDermott, professor of religion at Roanoke College, has rightly suggested that this is all particularly odd because “our first African-American president . . . promote[s] a practice that is decimating African Americans.” But, says Dr. McDermott, “It is sad that Catholics committed to social justice seem not to realize that this nation’s premier Catholic university may unwittingly subvert the fundamental civil right of this country’s most aggrieved minority” (“Notre Dame, Obama and Black Civil Rights,” an April 30 online article).

The late medical doctor Walker Percy, who became one of our best Catholic novelists, received the Laetare Award (the award Mary Ann Glendon quietly turned down this week) in 1989. He told the graduating class: “It is a disaster when only one kind of truth prevails at the expense of another. If only one kind of truth prevails—the abstract and technical truth of science—then nothing stands in the way of a demeaning of and a destruction of human life for what appear to be reasonable, short-term goals.”

What is happening to a society, and for that matter to its churches, when Christian schools, especially the premier Roman Catholic school in America, no longer hold that there is a clear line between divinely created human life and the fatalistic conclusions of naturalistic materialism?

If I could speak to President Obama I would urge him to show courage and respect and withdraw from this ceremony. Personally I would still oppose his abysmal abortion record but my respect for him would genuinely increase. I pray for him and want to respect him even more in the coming months. He would help me respect him, and I expect millions of others would join me in this, if he acted in such a courageous and morally consistent way. He doesn’t need this degree. He doesn’t need to give this speech. Is it a tad cynical for me to think that he is doing this for political ends? Or am I a moral realist who still thinks politicians will be politicians?

There is only one hero in this tragedy. She teaches the law at Harvard. This gives me hope that some young lawyers will still get a good education in the law and an even better education in human courage and moral sanity. This is the education Christians should promote through their universities. Is this too much to ask? Christians should act like Christians!
 

Benedict XVI Gets It Right

Yesterday I wrote about how the abortion issue has shifted within our culture. I suggested that we needed to take a new approach to creating a culture of life and to the end of saving as many of the unborn as possible.

First some history. Evangelicals came to the pro-life issue several years after Roman Catholics. They initially even showed a willingness to accept it until people like C. Everett Koop, Francis Schaeffer and Harold O. J. Brown began to inform them of their mistakes. Then evangelicals responded the way they often respond. They got emotionally and passionately involved. Some even made this the "single most important issue" of our time. The rhetoric employed made it sound like a Nazi-like holocaust was unfolding in the United States. This approach, in my view, made things worse. Even if you believe that a real human life is taken in an abortion, and I strongly do, serious ethical consideration will force you to approach this issue differently than the way we understand the Holocaust. Language of "equivalency" in this case actually harmed the movement. It amounted to "the little boy who cried fire" much too often. We lost the moral high ground and the real reason was the sexual revolution, not Roe v. Wade. The church lost the abortion issue twenty-five years before Roe v. Wade and still doesn't understand how or why.

We should also ask a question I rarely hear emotionally charged pro-life advocates ask: "Do you want to criminalize the mothers who choose abortion?"

But Catholics always had a solid answer on abortion since they had a more healthy wholistic view of sexual ethics in general. The problem is that Catholics are now about 50-50 on the issue of abortion. The less faithful they are to Mass attendance the more likely they are to embrace abortion. Even the American bishops are sending some confusing signals and do not completely agree with each other about how to respond to this issue. (They agree on pro-life itself but not on a response to their members who disagree!)

Pope Benedict XVI has a lot more wisdom to offer than most realize. In September, speaking in France, the pope approved the separation of church and state openly. (Does anyone realize how much of a shift this is from 100 years ago?) But the pope rightly reminded us that the church has an "irreplacable role" in forming the conscience of people and helping them "create a basic ethical consensus in society."

This is what the church in America, including many non-Catholic churches, have been doing but their approach has had a "scattershot" effect. By 2008 we can see that these uncoordinated and ineffective responses have had diminishing results. The U.S. Bishops sugest that a new program be launched to educate Catholics and help them form a Christian conscience. The approach will be largely free of political partisanship.

I resonnate with this reading of Benedict XVI's words. I pray that many of you will find ways to educate Christians in your churches without making this into another round of partisan political rhetoric at each election time. This is the only way we can make a real difference and we ought to realize it at this point in time. Every pastor and church leader who reads this blog has to know that you are presently leading a number of people who have had abortions and a number who will yet have one unless they are taught clearly the moral reasons to respond to life more positively.

The Same-Sex Marriage Debate Continues

The ballot initiatives on November 4 demonstrated that Americans are still not ready to embrace same-sex marriage as law. They clearly favor legal protection and recognition, but not marriage. The most surprising vote of all was Proposition 8 in California. And perhaps the most surprising fact of the entire California issue was who voted for and against the measure. White, educated voters supported gay marriage heavily. African-Americans and Hispanics overwhelmingly opposed it. The same voters who supported Barack Obama in large numbers voted against same-sex marriage in very large numbers. Now the radical proponents are attacking groups like the Mormon Church and the Catholic Church, which remains a continual target of such groups.

Arizona and Florida also voted to approve an amendment to ban same-sex marriage, as have more than thirty states now. The simple fact is that most Americans still do not want same-sex marriage as law. For those who agree I would caution you to think that this somehow ends the debate. The overwhelming evidence is that younger voters disagree and unless their moral compass is altered they will eventually overwhelm the votes on this issue too. Every means possible will be explored and used until the promoters of this change get their way. I see nothing in the culture that will stop them, long term. I am no prophet but I think in ten years or less this issue will be altered quite a bit regardless of the initiatives approved by these several states.

What is particularly interesting is what happened to other "moral" initiatives that are linked to ethical issues the church is concerned about; e.g. abortion, stem-cell research and euthanasia. There were six abortion initiatives that would have limited them in some fashion and they all lost. South Dakota had a proposal that went the furthest in limiting abortions and it went down to defeat 55% to 45%. And Washington voted 59% to 41% to allow physician assisted suicide. Colorado voted 73% to 27% to reject an amendment that would have defined a human person from the moment of conception. With numbers that high you do have to wonder what people who do go to church have actually been taught and what they really believe about human life?

We need to be honest here friends. There is virtually no scenario on the horizon---and I mean for a long, long time---where the abortion situation will be altered by law. The facts are pretty clear. We will only save lives if we get deeply involved in personal ministry and compassionate action, not legislative action. I am not suggesting that we give up on all legislation but I am suggesting that we need to seriously rework the strategy of the pro-life movement, at least politically. I think it is time we not turn every election into a "pro-life" election and see what we can do to work with the leaders that we do have to reduce the number of abortions and to find ways to help mothers keep children in difficult circumstances. (I have argued for a long time that we not limit pro-life dialogue to Republicans only.) Saving lives is what we want to do and there are many effective ways to advance this goal without having totally sympathetic legislators. The pro-choice movement has won at the level of government and the courts but the real battle was never there in the first place. Anyone who thought so was not paying attention and does not understand how cultures are really changed anyway.

Planned Parenthood and Politics

President John Adams once wrote: "Facts can be stubborn things and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." Never was a statement more true than with regard to the present issue of abortion and politics.

Planned Parenthood is a huge organization. A 2007 Wall Street Journal report said their budget now exceeds $1 billion. Read that again and let it soak in for a moment. Of this budget $336 million comes from the government, thus from our taxpayer monies. Planned Parenthood is responsible for helping one in four mothers have an abortion in the United States. Planned Parenthood also remains deeply involved in the politics of abortion. (If you think this issue is not political then you are fast asleep.)

Planned Parenthood has what they call an "Action Fund" and this fund will give $10 million to political campaigns this year. The goal is to elect pro-abortion leaders. The major effort is to elect Barack Obama president since they know the Supreme Court may have two openings in the next four years. This is why massive support goes to his campaign. These people know that the Illinois Senator has delivered for them 100% of the time.

What disturbs me is how Christians have become persuaded that this issue is no longer quite as important as they once thought it was. And younger Christians are particularly prone to not be passionate about the pro-life issue in recent studies. When I talk to them I see less and less interest in this subject.

As I listen to Christians I sense that the concern to change the culture of death to a culture of life has waned over the past ten years. One strong reason, at least among the young, is the influence of people like Jim Wallis and Sojourners. Wallis has successfully caused many to see abortion as just one issue among many similar moral issues. This has been done by linking abortion to the war in Iraq. If they are both the same (morally), and then poverty is also placed on the same moral level as it has been, then abortion becomes a far less important issue. While I have serious doubts about the Iraq war, and while I believe in a society that is committed to lifting people out of poverty, I do not place abortion on the same level at all. For one thing infants in the womb can not speak for themselves or do anything to save themselves. They need us to care for them or they will die. Second, war is terrible but there are some wars that must be fought. Even a pacifist generally sees distinctions, at least a pacifist who holds to classical Christian ethics. Third, poverty is an important issue but poor people are not being systematically destroyed by their fellow human putting them to death. 

Part of the problem here is that evangelicals who have no ethical and moral authority in their lives can make up their own minds about this as they go along. Lacking in substantive ethical thinking most of them will then go with the flow. They do not have the resource of a deeply thought out ethical system that is rooted in classical Christianity. Thank God for the Roman Catholic Church, which sees this very differently. We could all stand to study their way of arguing for pro-life conclusions.

Barack Obama insists that he does not like all these abortions but he has never done a single thing, from what I can see, to stop one, not as a legislator or as a community activist. He even says that he wants to allow his own children to retain this choice if they are pregnant and have an unwanted child. And his voting record is consistent on this point. He is the most pro-choice candidate who has ever run for president, bar none. Hillary Clinton was far more nuanced and reasonable about abortion than Barack Obama has ever been. This is the man who said the question of when a human life begins was "above my pay grade," so I am not surprised at his anti-life political position.

CareNet, a wonderful pro-life organization that is doing a great deal of good in saving lives and helping mothers, is a striking alternative to Planned Parenthood. Do you know how much CareNet gets from the taxpayers for their work? Not one dime. The sad truth is that we Americans allow this to happen and as Christian people we do very little to protest it.

I am not convinced that the street protests and culture warriors for anti-abortion politics have made a great difference in the larger struggle, but at least they have tried. That is more than I can say for the overwhelming majority of Christians who have done nothing at all. I am not apocalyptic about this struggle, but I do think that for every life that is taken we are one step closer to destroying the moral fabric of our entire society.

Planned Parenthood and Politics

President John Adams was right when he said, "Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

The facts about abortion, and the relationship between easily accessed abortions and politics, are patently plain. There is no debate about these facts. Let no pro-life Christian be deceived about them either. A 2007 Wall Street Journal report noted that Planned Parenthood received over $1 billion in revenues. Read that figure again. This means Planned Parenthood is big, really big. How much of this revenue came from tax-payer monies? Answer: $336 million, or almost 34%.

Planned Parenthood is putting an estimated $10 million into candidates for political office this year. Obviously not a penny will go to an anti-abortion candidate so we know where the money is going. The presidential race draws particular interest since most believe that there will be more appointments to the Supreme Court in the next four years.

The political wing of Planned Parenthood is called the "Action Fund" and this fund has given massive support to Senator Barack Obama. What has Obama given to Planned Parenthood in return? The most consistent voting record in the nation for pro-choice legislation including his highly questionnable record in the Illinois Senate before he entered the U. S. Senate. One thing Barack Obama has never waffled on for one second is abortion. He says he doesn't like it but he supports it totally. And he has even said he wants his own daughters to have the right to not have an unwanted child if they ever make that decision. No one, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, has come even remotely close to such a consistent stance on abortion as Senator Obama. One group that can trust him to stand by them is the pro-abortion folks.

Add to all of this the fact that Planned Parenthood helps women in one of every four abortions and you can see the connection here very clearly. This is not a pro-McCain partisan statement. It is, as Adams would remind us, simply "the facts." It strikes me as very sad that the "life" issue has become less and less important to many Christians. It would appear that we care less about stopping the killing of millions of unborn children than we once did. Maybe the economy has us all focused on our pensions and savings accounts more than on justice and mercy. I don't know this for sure but I am personally persuaded that most of the Christians I know seem "tired" with regard to this issue and thus they are not nearly as committed to it in public as they once were. While I respect some of the nuances of this thorny debate, and thus understand how we can disagree about it among real Christians, I do not understand why so many who say they are really "pro-life" seem to not care that much about changing our culture of death. I am not an apocalyptic thinker about this issue, at least not in an emotionally charged way, but I am convinced that every single abortion helps to poison our culture with more death and thus one less life. The stubborn facts are these---we have killed a generation of workers and leaders and we seem to have not even noticed any more.

One of the primary ways that abortion has become more acceptable to younger Christians is found in the argument made by the left day-in and day-out. This argument, made by evangelicals like Jim Wallis, treats abortion as still "important" but then equates this issue with the war in Iraq and thus makes them the same. Then when this is further linked with several other "moral" issues" then concern for abortion simply gets "lost" in the huge moral shuffle. This kind of "ethical equalizing" is all too common among evangelicals. Thank God the Roman Catholic Church doesn't buy it for one moment. In this instance evangelicals are their own worst enemies and the absence of a strong teaching authority makes them vulnerable to arguments that Rome has sorted out with clarity and deep sophistication not known to the influential evangelical left.

By the way CareNet, an organization that is working to save lives and protect mothers, gets no funds from any agencies or government sponsored groups at all. If Obama, and leaders like him, really did believe that this was a moral issue then they would at least not support funding abortions with your money and mine. One could argue that abortion should remain legal without taking my money to perform them. But it doesn't work that way. Does anyone care anymore? Will it make any difference in 2008? I highly doubt it.

Can the Abortion Struggle Be Presented Fairly?

I was energized about the abortion issue in the year that I received my master's degree, 1973. Students of the issue will recall that it was in January of that year that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of legal abortion in the infamous Roe v. Wade case. The speaker at my commencement was Dr. C. Everett Koop. He told us that we were becoming the first generation to live in the "brave new world" which would likely bring about major ethical and moral challenges that were unknown to our parents. How right he was. And he got my attention and it has remained ever since.

This is why I picked up the film documentary, Unborn in the USA: Inside the War on Abortion (2007), at my library and watched it last week. It was touted as objective and "eye-opening." Salon.com said, "The abortion movie everyone should see. Fascinating!" I have never seen an objective film documentary on this subject. I now believe this is as close as it gets, with a few reservations that are modest. This film should be seen by Christians, all Christians except young children.

My reservation is that no producer can film a controversial subject such as this and not make choices about what they will keep in a film and what they will omit. And no producer can tell a story, with real events and people, and not seek make editorial decisions of some sort. But Stephen Fell and Will Thompson come very close to reaching their goal---an objective documentary.

I have to say that my respect for how Focus on the Family trains and equips young people to engage this issue was quite positive. Several other Christian leaders in this debate came across as compassionate and careful. But, and this was no surprise, a few other Christian groups and sidewalk counselors/speakers were offensive and rude. One such minister, at the end of this film, gets into a shouting match with an irate young Catholic and tells her, "You are a daughter of Satan." She throws a punch and he wrestles with her on the ground.The police intervene. The minister is smug about it all. It is ugly and makes pro-life people look ridiculous. The story of the bombers of clinics and the killer of doctors is also included. (A wonderful interview is included with a former abortion doctor who is now pro-life and tells why killing doctors is not the answer at all!) And Father Frank Pavone, the famous Catholic anti-abortion spokesman, comes across as as clear and decidedly Christian. He is a wonderful champion of truth with mercy.

Perhaps the most important questions that Christian viewers will ask if they see this film are:

1. What methods are really right for us to use in order to save lives?

2. Should graphic images be used in public to show the horrors of dead children who were aborted? They sure create an emotional response.

3. How can we get more expectant mothers who are considering an abortion to see and hear the real facts?

I was stunned by this simple bit of information. Of all those women who enter an abortion clinic nearly 99% will have an abortion. Of all those who get alternative perspectives and understand that the child they carry in them is a human person, through seeing and hearing these facts, the number is almost the opposite. It seems to me that this means we must know people who are our neighbors and help them understand what they are doing before they get to the abortion clinic or it is clearly too late. How do we do this? This film will show you some effective ways, I think, and some very ineffective and highly questionable ways.

Watch it. If you dare, show it to Christians and have a passionate discussion. It will work I assure you. But be prepared before you show it.