Echoes in Eternity

Zach Nielsen has a great post on the reason behind why we don't see many Down's Syndrome people anymore.

Because today 90% of women who are given the news that their baby in the womb has Down's, elect to have that child terminated through abortion murdered. I know that language sounds quite harsh and potentially inflammatory. But shouldn't we call it what it is? If we can agree that it is a human person in the womb, (we don't need a Bible to prove this, just a 10th grade science class) shouldn't we call it what it is? If it is a human person in the womb, should we be shocked when we hear the word "murder"? Shouldn't that shock lead us to stop the practice of it instead of softening language so that people's feelings don't get hurt by the word "murder"?

Ron Paul gives a lengthy reasoning for his position on abortion. It's very good.

It is one of the most revealing — and tragic — statements made by any political figure in our times.

President Obama made a disturbing statement this past Saturday on the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Sometimes it makes me wonder what exactly the difference is between an American leader who supports Roe v. Wade and a Nazi leader who supported the Final Solution. I mean, besides the fact that abortion in this country has killed 5 times as many babies as Jews, minorities, and Christians killed by concentration camps. Or do we not actually believe abortion to be so evil?

This is a good post about the future of the pro-life movement as we enter the 39th year since Roe v. Wade. I would say that the author overstates the case a little though. I think the Church is already doing many of these things. It has largely moved from a protest-first mentality to caring for the mothers and babies while also still protesting where appropriate and needed. It does support crisis pregnancy centers. It has mostly framed the debate away from stopping "evil moms from killing their kids" to a matter of human rights and a scientific definition of the beginning of life. But at the same time, the Church has far to go. We need to adopt more babies, bring more single mothers into our homes, and care for those in our community who need our help.

This is a really interesting discussion between Robert George and Cornell West.

Dalrymple rightly picks on Amnesty International this week on Pajamas Media. AI has long become merely a political tool, choosing to defend tyrants while supporting abortion and terrorism. It's a shell of its former self. Don't ever donate to them or support them in any way.

It is as if Amnesty grew bored with its original purpose and now seems to suffer from what one might call the not-a-sparrow-falls-but-it-is-our-moral-concern syndrome, itself a result of believing that virtue is proportionate to the number of good causes that one espouses. Therefore, one must spread one’s moral wings and fly off into the ethical stratosphere.

This is amazing.

The Wall Street Journal has a good piece on how the current health care bill will affect access to abortion and the funding thereof.

It's now becoming clear that Barack Obama is willing to put everything on the table in order to be the president who passes health-care reform. Everything, that is, except a ban on federal funding for abortion.

The New York Times has a good piece on how light is finally being shed on the eugenic past of the abortion industry.

Doug Wilson has an excellent piece today on the role of the Church in transforming culture.

The bottom line issue is this. If the Church is not transforming the culture around her, then the culture around her is transforming the Church. There is no static equilibrium point. That means that the Church will either be prophetically addressing the problem of homo-marriage, or it will be in the process of adopting homo-marriage herself. Either the church will speak about the carnage of abortion, and God's hatred of it, or the church will be in the process of bringing that hated object into the sanctuary.

God did not send His Son into the world to form and establish the Church, in order that this Church could float through the world like a ghost.

As most people by now know, Tim Tebow, the Heisman trophy-winning quarterback from Florida, is part of a pro-life ad during the Super Bowl. Not surprisingly, the ad, sponsored by Focus on the Family, has taken some flak from the pro-abortion nutjobs on the Left. So it was refreshing to read in this morning's Washington Post a pro-choice sports columnist defend the ad.

Tebow: I'll spit this out quick, before the armies of feminism try to gag me and strap electrodes to my forehead: Tim Tebow is one of the better things to happen to young women in some time. I realize this stance won't endear me to the "Dwindling Organizations of Ladies in Lockstep," otherwise known as DOLL, but I'll try to pick up the shards of my shattered feminist credentials and go on.
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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.
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Here's what we do need a lot more of: Tebows. Collegians who are selfless enough to choose not to spend summers poolside, but travel to impoverished countries to dispense medical care to children, as Tebow has every summer of his career. Athletes who believe in something other than themselves, and are willing to put their backbone where their mouth is. Celebrities who are self-possessed and self-controlled enough to use their wattage to advertise commitment over decadence.

You know what we really need more of? Famous guys who aren't embarrassed to practice sexual restraint, and to say it out loud. If we had more of those, women might have fewer abortions. See, the best way to deal with unwanted pregnancy is to not get the sperm in the egg and the egg implanted to begin with, and that is an issue for men, too -- and they should step up to that.
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Tebow's ad, by the way, never mentions abortion; like the player himself, it's apparently soft-spoken. It simply has the theme "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life." This is what NOW has labeled "extraordinarily offensive and demeaning." But if there is any demeaning here, it's coming from NOW, via the suggestion that these aren't real questions, and that we as a Super Bowl audience are too stupid or too disinterested to handle them on game day.

Here is a heartening reflection - by a supporter of "abortion rights", no less - on this past week's anniversary of Roe v. Wade and what the future holds.

I went to the March for Life rally Friday on the Mall expecting to write about its irrelevance. Isn't it quaint, I thought, that these abortion protesters show up each year on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, even though the decision still stands after 37 years. What's more, with a Democrat in the White House likely to appoint justices who support abortion rights, surely the Supreme Court isn't going to overturn Roe in the foreseeable future.

How wrong I was. The antiabortion movement feels it's gaining strength, even if it's not yet ready to predict ultimate triumph, and Roe supporters (including me) are justifiably nervous.

As always, we in Washington enjoy an up-close view of the health of various causes because of the city's role as the nation's most important setting for political demonstrations. In this case, I was especially struck by the large number of young people** among the tens of thousands at the march. It suggests that the battle over abortion will endure for a long time to come.

** This was very true of my experience at the March for Life last Friday at the Minnesota Capitol. It was amazing to see that the MAJORITY of the 6000+ marchers were younger than 30 years old. This isn't a dying fight, but one that is just getting started. May it not take another 37 years to finish it though!

Thirty-seven years ago today, the SCOTUS case of Roe v. Wade was decided. Since then, nearly 50 million babies have been murdered in utero. That is more than twice the population of Australia, three times the number of residents of the Netherlands, and five times the number of Haitians currently fighting to survive. The abortion rate in this country skyrocketed during the 70's and peaked in the mid 80's. Since then, the rate has steadily decreased to the point that it is now about 70% of where it stood 25 years ago. The reason: evangelicals and ultrasounds.

At first, the only ones who cared about abortion were Catholics... it wasn't on evangelical Christians' radar. But that changed when the great evangelical Christian, Francis Schaeffer, marched with Catholics at the clinic just down the street from my home here in Minneapolis in the late 70's and wrote several books on the Christian necessity of involvement in the public sphere. Today, many evangelicals probably think that the evangelical Church has always been vehemently pro-life... but it was not so until one man stood up for life.

Another reason for the decline in abortions is the technological advances in ultrasounds and other prenatal equipment which now allows the medical staff and parents of babies to see the life inside the woman. The pro-life crisis pregnancy center across the street from the clinic where Schaeffer marched thirty years ago recently received a 4D ultrasound machine which has helped further open the eyes of the women who visit the clinic.

And such close-up views (and sounds) of unborn babies are not just changing the hearts and minds of women; abortion doctors and nurses are also fleeing their jobs. This article in next week's issue of "The Weekly Standard" details several such wonderful stories.

Pro-choice advocates like to point out that abortion has existed in all times and places. Yet that observation tends to obscure the radicalism of the present abortion regime in the United States. Until very recently, no one in the history of the world has had the routine job of killing well-developed fetuses quite so up close and personal. It is an experiment that was bound to stir pro-life sentiments even in the hearts of those staunchly devoted to abortion rights. Ultrasound and D&E bring workers closer to the beings they destroy. Hern and Corrigan concluded their study by noting that D&E leaves “no possibility of denying an act of destruction.” As they wrote, “It is before one’s eyes. The sensations of dismemberment run through the forceps like an electric current.”

For those who can make it, there are Marches for Life at every state capitol building in this nation. We're winning the fight, let's not let up with victory ever-increasingly in sight!

While most people shudder at the idea proposed in my last post, far fewer would likewise recognize the evil implications of a hatred of humanity and loathing of life. One such implication is the now rampant abortive purge of those with "birth defects" like Down's Syndrome and cystic fibrosis. It is estimated that between 70 and 90 percent of all babies with Down's Syndrome are killed in utero... even though such children usually live a very long and enjoyable life. Obviously, such abortions have little to do with concern for the baby and everything to do with the social comfort of the parent(s). I tremble at the holy wrath that God must have at this atrocity.

Similar numbers of cystic fibrosis babies are also being murdered in the womb. And while that disease does tend to lead to an early death and other health complications (though medical science has improved the lives of those with CF; in 1959 CF children lived six months, in 2006 their life expectancy was 36 years), it's still a very treatable, manageable disease in many cases. For example, here is a moving story from the British Daily Mail showing the perspectives of a mother and her CF-inflicted daughter and how happy they both are that the mother decided to let the baby live.

The phrase 'quality of life' is bandied around freely, but who's to say what that actually means? Might not people with disabilities of varying kinds enjoy life in a different way from the able-bodied, and also contribute in various ways to society?

Last week's Law and Order episode was one of the most pro-life programs I've ever seen on network TV. Usually, the main L&O show is pretty even-handed when dealing with political issues (unlike it's retarded SVU cousin), but last week's episode was almost entirely pro-life, giving only lip service to the pro-abortion side. Here are a couple key quotes from the show (delivered by two main characters):

“I grew up thinking Roe v. Wade was gospel. Now… I don’t know where my freedom ends and the dignity of another being begins.”

"I used to think that human rights advocates would extend some to the unborn, but I don't think that anymore."

"In the eight years since 911, about 10.4 million Americans have lost their lives through the atrocity of abortion. This was about 1.3 million a year -- over 3,000 a day. Those who perpetrated 911 killed 3,000 in one day, and they perished at the same time. But the ghouls in charge of our judicial system, and the one we elected to appoint new justices to the top of that system, preside over 3,000 deaths a day, every day, non-stop. Just since 911, we have conducted over three thousand 911s ourselves. And just like the terrorists, we have a cloak of self-justification. The only difference is that we need a much bigger cloak.

But keep the distinction between horizontal and vertical in mind. Agreeing that Yahweh had a judgment to bring against Israel, one that He justly brought by means of the wicked Assyrians, is not the same as saying that the Assyrians had the right to do what they did. We are a stiff-necked people, and it is only through the mercy of God that we are not consumed." - Doug Wilson

The Weekly Standard has an excellent piece on Obama's "Abortion Administration."

Why is Obama pushing ahead with such a radical abortion agenda? Since there's no way to accuse him of doing it out of poll-driven opportunism, sincere conviction becomes the most plausible motive. Sometimes the simplest, most straightforward answer makes the most sense. A president who once said he wouldn't want his daughter punished with a baby if she made a mistake is deeply committed to making free and easy access to abortion an inescapable element of American culture.