Pro-Life or Pro-Birth ? Observations and Answers

Just a quickie.
The usual argument is “pro-lifers are really only pro-birth. they don’t care about children once they get here.”
I’m sure you’ve heard this parroted repeatedly.
It’s a lie.
Repeating a lie over and over again still doesn’t make it true.
There are currently (2018) over 13,000 pregnancy centers (pro-life) across the US. Please note the comparison to the number of Planned Parenthood centers in each region. Yes, they do outnumber them. We’ll discuss what these centers do in a little bit.
There ARE republicans who only pay lip-service to the pro-lifers they court for votes (just as there are democrats who only pay lip-service to black folks they court for votes). Usually, when these guys do something anti-life, conservative pro-life folks call them on it. This article from very liberal news outlet The Slate shows the reaction from pro-lifers when republicans in congress tried to scrap the adoption credit. These quote (among others) from Al Mohler and Russell Moore summarize the issue well:
“There will be, in effect, an economic incentive to abort those babies,” the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Albert Mohler, told listeners of his popular daily podcast on Thursday, before the reversal was announced. The Republican Party “puts its moral character at risk by putting forward of tax reform proposal that would disincentivize the adoption of children.” The Susan B. Anthony list, an anti-abortion PAC, issued a statement critical of the provision; Focus on the Family said it has “reached out to every channel available to us” to save the credit. A blogger for the conservative site Hot Air summed up the social-conservative response to the proposal: “What the hell are they thinking?”
“The GOP claims to be the pro-family, pro-life party, but they are funding Planned Parenthood and killing an adoption tax credit that literally helps families adopt children,” wrote Erick Erickson, urging his readers to “shut down Congress’s phone lines” with calls to keep the credit in place. Russell Moore, the influential policy head of the Southern Baptist Convention, echoed that argument and called the credit’s loss “insane”:
Looks like the House leadership wants to double down on removing adoption tax credit, all while funding Planned Parenthood. This move hurts children, adopting families and actually costs the govt $ in the long term. Insane. – Russell Moore (via Twitter)
Notice the priorities here – not just birth, but adoption, life, decent quality of life, marriages and families.
I appreciate the article on The Slate because it’s one of the few times I’ve seen a liberal news outlet actually tell the truth about what pro-life folks have as priorities and how we decry anti-life policies even when they come from the republican party.
A quick word or three on these pregnancy centers. Are they only concerned with keeping women from having an abortion ? Not hardly. They are concerned with helping the woman who chooses life for her unborn to have a decent life. And for those women who are post-abortive and have problems dealing with their emotions and such….they offer support for them too. A few good examples of this:
http://www.capitolhillpregnancycenter.org/services.html
http://rwcdonors.com/services/
http://www.pregnancy-options.org/services.shtml
Notice that the services offered include job and housing referrals (and placements in some cases), parenting classes, prenatal care, testing and examinations, adoption referrals, etc….. FREE. Again… the pro-life position is and has been concerned with more than just the birth of the child.
But repeating a lie often enough…..
“Well, maybe that’s how it is where YOU are, but I don’t see that happening here.” (I’ve been told this once or twice)
My response is that maybe it’s because you’ve chosen to surround yourself with media and people who only believe what you believe and you get your information from sources that don’t tell you the truth about opposing views. This is the ‘echo chamber’ effect.
That brings up another important point: liberals (especially Planned Parenthood, NARAL and like organizations) often LIE about what happens in pro-life pregnancy centers. Not only do they lie about pro-life centers, but since they donate heavily to democratic mayors and city council officials, they lobby to create laws which either keep out, discourage or limit pro-life clinics from opening up in the same areas as abortion clinics.
No, I’m not making these charges up. Here’s an article from 2013:
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/05/health/pregnancy-centers-gain-influence-in-anti-abortion-fight.html
Cities like Austin, Baltimore and New York have tried regulating centers with ordinances requiring them to post signs stating that they do not provide abortions or contraceptives, and disclosing whether medical professionals are on-site. Except for San Francisco’s, the laws were blocked by courts or softened after centers sued claiming free speech violations. Similar bills in five states floundered. Most legal challenges to “Choose Life” license plates failed, although a North Carolina court said alternate views must be offered.
If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll remember when Planned Parenthood tried to use anti-racketeering laws against pro-life groups who gathered to pray outside of abortion clinics. The Supreme Court struck down this misuse of the RICO laws in 2006.
They also lie about their own services and activities. They say abortion are only a very small percentage of their services, but they come to this conclusion deceptively (a friend called it “lying with numbers”). The procedure itself is a service, the medication is a service, the anesthesia is a service, the examination is a service, the prescription is a service….so out of those 5 things, only 1 is the abortion.
Again, here’s an article on the topic from a liberal news source:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/08/12/for-planned-parenthood-abortion-stats-3-percent-and-94-percent-are-both-misleading/?utm_term=.dfdf3702879b
I assume by now you’ve checked the links above. So with that in mind, read the following:
- In Canada, a pro-life pregnancy center re-opened next to an abortion clinic and the abortion activists lost their minds about it: http://www.lifenews.com/2018/08/01/pro-life-pregnancy-center-opens-next-door-to-abortion-clinic-abortion-activists-come-unhinged/ (this is in Canada)
- In California and Maryland (and other states), abortion advocates got the local legislature to get pro-life centers to post a notice stating that they don’t offer abortions and force them to have a notice that pointed them to the nearest abortion clinic. In March of 2018, an appeals court blocked the Baltimore City law that forced this on pro-life pregnancy centers and in June of 2018, the Supreme Court struck down the law with finality based on the California case.
- This article gives a summary of various attempts by various states and municipalities to silence pro-lifers and their message: https://www.texasrighttolife.com/abortion-mills-continue-attempts-to-silence-peaceful-pro-life-protests/
The objective is pretty simple: liberals have always been interested in silencing opposing views. Liberalism (modern liberalism) is egalitarian on including multiple ethnicities, but totalitarian when it comes to viewpoint agreement. They don’t want to hear from opposing viewpoints (i.e. https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/06/14/california-university-refuses-to-speak-with-pro-life-group-about-free-abortion-drugs/) and will routinely commit the strawman fallacy (choosing an exaggerated or inaccurate version of view of their opponent’s view and ignoring stronger arguments that make their position look weak). The echo chamber effect is in place for a reason – it reinforces the status quo and helps maintain political power.
Again, these are things anyone can figure out simply from general observation. The current democratic left has gradually purged their ranks of pro-life democrats since the 90’s. Any who choose to speak up get censured and marginalized. Read here: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/03/democrats-abortion-pro-choice-life-219154
Last summer, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez publicly proclaimed that “every Democrat” should support abortion rights, prompting an outcry that the party was implementing a “litmus test.” Democrats for Life arranged a meeting with Perez shortly after the dust-up but left still feeling like the skunk at the party. Asked about the DNC’s abortion stance in the 2018 midterms, spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa said the party’s top goal this year is electing Democrats and “stopping Republican attacks on women’s reproductive rights, workers’ rights and the middle class. There is no doubt that Republicans are the biggest threat to women’s health, and we will work with all Democrats to stop them.”
Anti-abortion Democrats say they—and the voters they represent—aren’t just marginalized on this one issue: They say Democratic pollsters, fundraisers and vendors don’t want to work with anti-abortion candidates for fear of losing favor and business with the rest of the party. “If you’re trying to raise money on the national level, it gets very, very difficult,” Stupak said in an interview during the Democrats for Life convention. “There will be no money. There will be no help.” Email service vendors and pollsters frequently turn down Democrats for Life, according to the Democrats for Life president, Janet Robert.
And there are Democrats who insist that anti-abortion candidates shouldn’t get elected at all even if they have a “D” after their name—or at least that the party’s members should be defined by progressive values, as Representative Luis Gutiérrez said when he endorsed a primary challenger to Lipinski earlier this year (Lipinski prevailed). Outside the Radisson hotel, Colorado state Representative Leslie Herod was among those participating in a small protest led by the liberal group ProgressNow Colorado, which set up a truck with a giant sign calling abortion access a “progressive value.” Democrats for Life’s intentions are “quite nefarious. They’re looking for ways to divide us as a party before the next election cycle,” Herod said. “These aren’t core values that you can just pick and choose.”
The DNC is perfectly fine with run down cities, crime and low employment in black neighborhoods, in spite of their normal pandering to black communities in public. Those situations make people feel desperate and when pregnancy happens, they push and encourage people toward abortion FIRST. DNC operatives and candidates swoop in with “White Savior Complex” in tow and tell black folks and other minorities that they need abortion so they can be free to provide for themselves.
That money (from abortion) feeds abortion groups like Planned Parenthood (who donate to NARAL and similar groups). PP and NARAL donate money to candidates who help keep them in business. The federal government subsidizes PP. PP and NARAL donate some of that money back to the DNC to help elect candidates who will keep them in business. Ad infinitum, ad murderum, ad re-electium.
Blood money.
And if you’re actually pro-black (and not pretend pro-black, where you support things which negatively impact the black community), approximately 17-18 million black lives have mattered to the abortion industry as profit, not as people.
Blood money.
And if you’re a feminist (specifically 3rd and 4th wave), roughly 51% of all abortion victims are female.
It’s easy to be for abortion when you’re already born…..
(But it’s the republican’s fault.)
There’s more than could be addressed here, but I’m running into my 1800 1900 2100 2300 2500-word limit.
Reading the scriptures, what other kind of world did you expect ? In the ancient Roman empire, newborn children (mostly boys) were thrown away into the sewers underneath of brothels because boys didn’t make as much money for the establishment. Same motivations: greed, sex and convenience. Human abortion today should be no surprise. We’ve just sanitized the language and sought to kill them before they leave the womb instead of afterward.
Abortionists need the gospel. Women who have had abortions need forgiveness, compassion and the gospel. People who’ve promoted abortion need the gospel. 1 Corinthians 6:11 states “and such were some of you” after listing a host of sins including murder, greed and sexual immorality in 6:9-10. Think of that carefully for a moment. “Some” of the members of the church of Corinth may have been former prostitutes who killed their babies out of convenience to their careers.
Christ changes hearts and offers forgiveness for even the sin of murdering your unborn child, whether you’re the guy who paid and pressured his girlfriend/wife to abort the child, the woman who decided yourself or the doctor who performed the procedure.
Let me push the point home: sin is a violation of God’s laws for human behavior. All sin, whether heterosexual sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, greed, gluttony, murder (and abortion is murder), hatred, etc…. creates a debt between the sinner and God. God is holy and just as a Judge; He does not ‘wink’ at sin and let it slide. God being holy presents a problem for humanity. As a Perfect Judge, He will not let any sin slide. It will be punished. Hitler ? Yep. He will have a day before God and answer for his murders. The kid who lied on you in 3rd grade ? Yes, that kid too. The woman who lied on Emmett Till and got him lynched ? She’s 83 now. Her day before her Creator is coming sooner than later. And all those moments you lied, stole, held hatred in your heart as a grudge against others…. you too will answer. Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 remind us of this:
The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. (ESV)
No one gets away with anything, even if you don’t see them get justice now. There are eternal consequences in play here.
This is why Jesus Christ came; to both live a perfect life that you and I have not lived and to die in our place as a sacrifice and payment for sin that you and I could not pay (because we’re not perfect).
The Bible calls upon the individual (you reading this) to repent (meaning turn from – the same way you’d turn from driving to Maine when you meant to drive to Florida, but you took I-95 north instead of south) and believe (place your whole faith, trust and reliance in/upon) in Jesus Christ and His perfect sacrifice as the payment for your sins. An individual finds forgiveness for these sins by placing their whole faith and trust in Christ as Lord the same way one places their whole faith and trust in a parachute to open and keep them from dying when skydiving. It means coming before Christ right where you sit and read this blogpost, acknowledging to Him that you have indeed violated His laws and believing upon Him as your righteousness before God the Father. When you do this, His perfect life is counted on your behalf so that when you stand before God, you will be counted as though you lived Christ’s perfect life and never sinned.
The cost ? Your life. It will no longer be your own (1 Cor. 6:19-20). You are now responsible for following, believing and obeying what He taught (Matthew 28:19-20).
In the Bible, Christ forgives murderers (the Apostle Paul consented to Christians being murdered before Christ changed His heart), former prostitutes (Mary), the greedy (Matthew), and more. Don’t let self-righteousness or self-loathing and depression (you are not the ‘worst sinner’) keep you from Christ. Repent and believe the gospel today. That’s good news.
If you need help, feel free to contact me via twitter and I’ll point you to the right people to help you out.
(2462 words in case you’re wondering)