Sunday, January 20, 2013
2:00 am
Daniel J. Summers
(Each year, the Sunday closest to January 22, the date of the passing of Roe v. Wade, is observed as “Sanctity of Human Life Sunday” in many churches.)
Ten years have brought us a long way. The 7th post on this blog observed 2004's Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. This year brings us to the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion on demand in the United States.
As America has become more politically polarized, her views on abortion have as well. However, there is a growing trend against abortion, particularly the more barbaric late-term procedures, which are now only approved by those blinded by their insistence on how much of a “right” it is. A recent Time cover read “40 Years Ago, Abortion Rights Activists Won an Epic Battle with Roe v. Wade: They've Been Losing Ever Since,” and Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, thoroughly dissected that article. And, there are some truly heartening statistics for those who value life:
- Four states have only one abortion provider in the entire state
- 24 states have passed 90 laws restricting abortion since 2010
- Some states require parental notification for minors seeking abortion
- Some states impose waiting periods and/or counseling before an abortion can be obtained
- 30 states do not fund abortions via Medicare
- The number of those who self-identify as “pro choice” is down to 41%
However, as Dr. Mohler so adeptly points out, abortion is far from the “rare” its proponents claim they want to see. 50 million abortions have been performed since Roe passed, and we are at the point where 1 in 3 women have had an abortion by the time they make 45.
Science is helping the pro-life cause. I covered a good bit of this about a year and a half ago. Ultrasound has given us a window into prenatal development, and psychology and psychiatry have identified post-abortion depression as much more common than postpartum depression per incident.
Interestingly enough, the most damage to the pro-life cause in the past year came from two pro-life national office candidates. I covered both those guys at the time (the latter also citing Dr. Mohler - what can I say, he agrees with me a lot!), and since that is where our movement faltered this year, I believe this is where our focus should be. Our participation in the debate should keep the following Scripture in mind:
“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world…” - Matthew 5:13-14a (ESV)
“Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ…” - Ephesians 4:15 (ESV)
As Christians advocating for God's way of handling His creation, we must remember who we are. Salt can make a meal pop; however, salt can also overpower, and can be painful when ground into an open wound. Akin and Mourdock were the latter, coming off as callous and uncaring, much like those who still support “partial-birth” abortion come across to us. Light illuminates, but it can also blind. I left the entirety of Ephesians 4:15 there to show it in its context, but the first part of that verse is the key. We know this works; the “crisis pregnancy center” didn't even exist before Roe v. Wade, and now they outnumber abortion providers. Their popularity is due to the care that pregnant and scared women can receive from these organizations. They don't beat the women over the head with their “mistakes” of pregnancy or of seeking an abortion; they offer counseling, ultrasound, and support through pregnancy, childbirth, and the first few months of motherhood. They show a better way, and many women are choosing that path.
While progress against abortion is good, there is an the assault on the sanctity of human life from the other flank. “Assisted suicide” has been making the news already this year. In late 2012, two brothers in Belgium asked to be euthanized and eventually found a doctor who agreed, despite their condition not being consistent with even a liberal interpretation of the “unbearable pain” that law requires. North of our borders, Quebec looks to become the first Canadian province to legalize assisted suicide, not through legal changes, but through medical characterization of the procedure.
Both the Belgium law and the Canadian guideline revisions have advocates claiming that they will be applied narrowly; it sounds like they want it to be “safe, legal, and rare.” Where have we heard that before? Belgium and Canada both have government-run health care systems, so the government has a financial interest to maximize its investments in the system. Right now, it's a long jump to allow someone to be euthanized because they have no hope of recovery, and keeping them alive is expensive. With the Belgian brothers, and this change in health guidelines in Canada, that jump became half as long. I'm certainly not accusing the advocates of these laws of wanting to kill people; I'm sure to them, this is just them trying to help people in pain. I can guarantee, though, that in 30 years, very few of these people will still be around, and the next generation will have been reared in a society where it's perfectly normal to choose when you die. At that point, faced with looming deficits, it's a very small leap to see mandatory euthanasia based on medical evaluation. The slope isn't terribly slippery, but it's a slope nonetheless.
This illustrates the root of the disagreements many of us pro-lifers have with these laws, guidelines, and procedures. The disagreement is one of worldview. We see human life as precious, from the moment of conception through natural death, being conferred that status by God's declaration and unique grace to us within His creation. Human life alone is described as being “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14); its offspring described as a “reward” and having many as a “blessing” (Psalm 127:3-5); prohibited from being killed (Exodus 20:13); offered salvation from our fallen state (John 3:16); and promised reuniting with God (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17) or judgment (Revelation 20:11-15). God has made it pretty clear how He views the part of His creation that was made “in His own image” (Genesis 1:27).
If we lived in a society that agreed with this worldview - well, I probably wouldn't be writing this. However, we do not, and the society in which we do live has an answer to each of those points.
- Creation? No, we just evolved - somehow - big bang, amoeba, something - and there definitely was not intelligent design!
- Lots of children are a good thing? No, that would interfere with our careers; let's delay that, scrape their beginnings off our womb if they're not convenient; there will be time for that later, right?
- Murder? Don't try to force your religion on u… wait, if there aren't any laws against murder, then I could be murdered… OK, you can have that one.
- Salvation? I'm a good person (hey, I don't murder!), why would I need to be saved?
- Judgment? But wait, doesn't your own Bible say “Judge not, that you be not judged?”
- We're made in God's image? Well, now you're on to something - if God is in each one of us, doesn't that make us all God? Then, what I want to do must be God's will, because it's my will!
This brings us back to the Akin/Mourdock problem. Simply asserting our views (then asserting them more loudly) is not going to be a very effective way of convincing others. We should keep in mind that not only does our society hold those conflicting views, they also claim to value tolerance above all else - except for tolerating us, interestingly; they have been raised to believe that we are hateful people who just want to control people's lives and force our religion down everyone's throats. Compounding the issue, some of our forebears actually did go about things this way, particularly over race.
So, is it just futile? Of course not. I believe the answer is three-fold.
- We must advocate with words. We must choose those words wisely, but we must use words. These words should be loving, condemning the practice of abortion while offering love, compassion, and forgiveness to those who have had them, realizing that it is but by the grace of God that we have not made (or are not still making) the same decisions. Use words honestly - where science supports an argument, use it; where it doesn't apply, don't try to shoe-horn it into applying.
- We must back up these words with actions. Crisis pregnancy centers, as mentioned above, have been hugely effective in not only preventing abortions, but for education and support. The film To Save a Life showed another angle of being pro-life, taking an interest in others to prevent suicide; though I didn't mention it above, suicides are also up this past year. Be involved with food banks, shelters, or other organizations that show we care for life when those lives are going through rough times. Be involved with senior's activities. Pick a place and plug-in; put feet to your words.
- We must be vigilant. We must not give up the fight against legislation or policies simply because we haven't had time for the first 2 points above to be effective. We must continue to pray; we have the Creator of human life on our side.
Changing the culture seems like an overwhelming task, and it truly is a monumental one. However, the size of the task does not relieve us of our responsibility to be salt and light, and to work towards making it a place where all life is valued, from the moment of conception through natural death.
Friday, May 9, 2008
7:15 pm
Daniel J. Summers
I know, that really surprises you regulars… But, via Hugh Hewitt, we have a perfect illustration with what I believe is wrong with Barack Obama. It is a mindset that permeates everything he is and does, and is brought to us courtesy of his wife Michelle, speaking on Friday ahead of this past week's North Carolina primary election.
(Throughout these quotes, the emphasis is mine.)
But we've also learned something else this year, something that we've all sort of felt at some point in our life, that we're still living in a nation, and in a time when the bar is set, I talk about this all the time, they set the bar. They say look, if you do these things, you can get to this bar, right? And then you work and you struggle, you do everything that they say, and you think you're getting close to the bar and you're working hard, and you're sacrificing, and then you get to the bar, you're right there, you're reaching out for the bar, you think you have it, and then what happens? They move the bar. They raise it up. They shift it to the left and to the right. It's always just quite out of reach.
This is a diatribe on victimhood. Look how many times the work “they” is used to refer to some external entity. The person she's describing does not believe that they are responsible for their own happiness - this person is too busy being held down by “them” (what previous generations would call “the man”). Ironically, though, this is pretty much real life she's disparaging here. How many people have saved up to buy something, only to find that they forgot the tax, or it's suddenly more expensive. I experience this in my line of work all the time. “Build it to these requirements.” So I build it. “Oh, why did you do it that way?” Because that's what the requirements said. “Oh, yeah - but what I meant was something else.”
And, who was it that said “Aim for the moon”? (No, not the “nuke the moon” folks over at IMAO...) Achievement is great, but it shouldn't be an end in and of itself. Once you achieve your goals, you set new ones and begin pushing again. That's the premise of the whole “SMART” goal-setting process. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely, for those who've never heard of that.) You break your big goal into specific, measurable, realistic goals (ex. “win in North Carolina”). It's not moving the bar, it's moving on to the next small goal.
And that's a little bit of what Barack has been experiencing. The bar is constantly changing for this man. Raise the money? Not enough. Build an organization? Not enough. Win a whole bunch of states? Not the right states. You got to win certain states. So the bar has been shifting and moving in this race…
Well, raising money means nothing for the presidency - if it did, we'd have wrapped up the second term of President Forbes in 2004. So no, that's not enough. If organization was key, Barack wouldn't even get to run because President Dean would be going for his second term. So no, still not enough. Win a bunch of states? Well, if you win 3 states for 100 delegates, and your opponent wins 1 state for 150 delegates, then yes, you won the wrong states. You're whining that running for President is tough? What did you expect, that raising enough money for a coronation would be enough?
...but the irony is, the sad irony is that that's exactly what's happening to most Americans in this country. The bar is shifting and moving on people all the time. And folks are struggling like never before, working harder than ever, believing that their hard work will lead to some reward, some payoff. But what they find is that they get there and the bar has changed, things are different, wasn't enough. So you have to work even harder.
No, they're not. This view of America is completely flawed. Yes, people are working hard. Yes, some are feeling the pinch of bad decisions or bad circumstances. It's not that the bar has changed, it's that real life has hit. The most important thing to realize in all this, though, is that when life happens, it's not the job of the government to step in and “fix” it.
And see what happens when you live in a nation where the vast majority of Americans are struggling every day to reach an ever-shifting and moving bar, then what happens in that nation is that people do become isolated. They do live in a level of division, because see, when you're that busy struggling all the time, which most people that you know and I know are, that you don't have time to get to know your neighbor. You don't have time to reach out and have conversations, to share stories. In fact, you feel very alone in your struggle, because you feel that somehow, it must be your fault that you're struggling so hard. Everybody else must be doing okay. I must be doing something wrong, so you hide. You don't realize that the struggles of that farmer in rural Iowa are the same as the struggles as a city worker in the south side of Chicago, because we don't talk to each other.
In the immortal words of Toby Keith, “A little less talk, and a lot more action.” If you're busting your butt to get ahead, you're struggling, you don't have a lot of time for conversations and story sharing. If you think that they're valuable to helping you with your struggle, you make time for them. If you can attain your goals without touchy-feely stuff, then you probably don't.
And, there's a bit of smug self-centeredness in this description as well. I don't believe that most people feel that they're all that different from other people. Certainly not any of the people I know - in fact, it's been my experience that the easiest common topic to discuss with people is child rearing. Everyone has a funny story from that, and most people's experience is quite similar. You're revealing a part of yourself that I don't think you meant to reveal.
And when you live in a nation with a vast majority of Americans are struggling to reach an ever-shifting and moving bar, then naturally, people become cynical. They don't believe that politics can do anything for them. So they fold their arms in disgust, and they say you know, I can't be bothered voting, because it has never done anything for me before. So let me stay home, let me not bother. Naturally, we as a nation get cynical.
Politics can't do anything for anyone! What people become cynical about is politicians who say one thing to get elected, then do another once in office. Why do you think our current President's approval rating has been in the toilet for some time? He campaigned as a conservative, then moved to middle once elected. His base doesn't like it because he's betrayed them, and his opponents still don't like him because he caused the country to get an education in electoral law in 2000. You don't find much in the middle of the road other than roadkill.
And besides, isn't “politician” the charge that got your husband all riled up? His pastor can say those horrendous things about our country, and he's just an old man from a different generation - but as soon as he accused Barack of being a politician, that's when he got disowned. (That's the irony - Barack's response to that essentially proved what Dr. Wright said!)
And when you live in a nation where people are struggling every day to reach an ever-shifting and moving bar, then what happens in that kind of nation is that people are afraid, because when your world's not right, no matter how hard you work, then you become afraid of everyone and everything, because you don't know who's fault it is, why you can't get a handle on life, why you can't secure a better future for your kids.
I'm not afraid. Is it because I'm one of those folks who's clinging to God and guns? :) I'm not too awfully worried about securing a better future for my kids. What I'm concerned with is teaching my kids how not to become victims; teaching them how to take responsibility for their actions; teaching them that if they want something done, they should do it; teaching them respect for other people; teaching them the difference between respecting the earth (which we learn as Cub Scouts) and worshiping it. Secure a better future for my kids? My ultimate goal is to feel that the future is secure because my kids are in it.
And the problem with fear is that it cuts us off. Fear is the worst enemy. It cuts us off from one another and our own families, and our communities, and it has certainly cut us off from the rest of the world. It's like fear creates this veil of impossibility, and it is hanging over all of our heads, and we spend more time now in this nation talking about what we can't do, what won't work, what can't change.
If people would quit trying to recycle failed socialistic programs and wealth-envy politics, we'd have a lot less to talk about. Many of us would love to talk about change, but it's tough to talk with someone who won't debate like an adult. An example of what won't work is the current Social Security ponzi scheme. But, a few years ago, when an attempt was made to get our government out of the Social Security business, opponents screamed about how they'd be taking food out of grandma's mouth. It's the same with the minimum wage debate - the claim is made that you can't support a family of four on minimum wage. First off, it is possible, if you live within your means (a foreign concept these days, I know - see collapse, mortgage, sub-prime); secondly, that's not what minimum wage is designed for. On the other side, you've got a $7+ minimum wage, and we wonder why there's a demand for $2/hour illegal labor. It's not that there are jobs Americans won't do, it's that they, by law, can't do them!
And one more example of the whole “arguing like adults” thing, blogress Cassy Fiano recently posted two pictures of Barack Obama's celebration in North Carolina - one from the campaign itself, the other from Mary Katherine Ham, who was there covering it. The pictures illustrated that, though some creative photography, it appeared that the venue was full when it was, in fact, not. What was the number one liberal response to this heinous exposure of “politicianing”? You're fat. (Language warning on that link.)
See, and the problem with that kind of thinking is that we passed that on to our children, because see, the thing I know as a mother is our children are watching everything we do and say, every explicit and implicit sign, they are watching us. And our fear is helping us to raise a nation of young doubters, young people who are insular and they're timid. And they don't try, because they already heard us tell them why they can't succeed. See, and I don't want that for my kids.
Then don't live in a fear-induced paralysis! Get out there and take control of your destiny. Go to school, apply for that better job, update your resume, do what it takes. That's the picture you want your kids to see. I'll tell you what, you're into real life here again - that is what's happening to our kids. But don't bemoan it, do something about it! There's nothing that the President of the United States can do to tackle that kind of fear, and putting that responsibility on him is a big part of the problem.
You know, jobs like my father had those blue collar jobs where you got pensions, vacation, all that, they're dwindling. They're drying up. They're disappearing, going overseas. And if you're lucky enough to have a job, nine times out of ten, your salary's not keeping up with the cost of living. Barack and I met with a family of railroad workers, union folks. They said for eight years, they hadn't seen a pay increase. For eight years, zero pay increase. Eight years. No increase. Gas prices going up, food going up, rent, insurance, own a home, what's going with the mortgages? That's going up. It's all going up, and salaries are staying stagnant. So no wonder that bar feels like it's moving.
And why is that? See regulation, government, obscene. People who don't understand free-market economics think that they can levy whatever requirement they want on business (usually some sort of wealth-distribution scheme), and that business owners are just going to eat that out of their profits. That's not the way the real world works. This is part of the minimum wage debate too - if I employ 10 people at $5/hour, and I suddenly have to pay them $7/hour, that a $20/hour of overhead I'm going to incur. To fix that, I will either raise my prices to compensate, or let 3 of the people go. With the former, the buying power of the $7/hour wage is diminished, and with the latter, three of the folks lose all their buying power (moving the bar, no doubt). Why are these jobs going overseas? Because people there will work harder, for less money, and be grateful to have a job in the first place.
And I don't know how single parents do it. There are millions of them all over this country. Let me tell you, single parents love their kids, too. But it is almost impossible to raise a family of any size on a single salary. So now you've got single parents who have to double and triple shift, taking on two, three jobs, working all the time, and feeling like they're failing because that bar is moving, because how on Earth are you going to work as hard as you need to to pay the bills and be at parent/teacher conferences, and sit down and do homework when a kid has trouble? How are you going to manage all that? Well, folks are not, and they're doing it suffering in silence, blaming themselves for the fact that they're not working hard enough. Maybe something's wrong.
Ooh boy - time for some insensitivity. I agree, something's wrong. People in this country have lost their backbone to stand up and say that single parenthood is not the ideal child-rearing environment! This isn't a knock on single parents per se, but most of the single parents I know would agree that it is not the ideal environment. But since no one will say that, and we've elevated our own self-centeredness to such an extent that people just get out of their marriages if they're not happy instead of working on them, we get this. The people I feel sorry for in single-parent households are the kids. Men and women both bring different styles and aspects to the parenting table, and the presence of both has the best opportunity to produce a good result.
This also comes back to the whole “living within your means” thing. It doesn't take three jobs to support a family - I've got three kids and a wife living on one enlisted military salary, and we get by just fine. No, we don't have a new Toyota Sienna (much to my wife's dismay), but we have what we need.
And [Barack] has spent every ounce of his time running over the decisions in his head - do I...when graduating from college, do I work on Wall Street? Make a lot of money, that'd be better for me, or do I go work in a community as an organizer? Well, what did Barack do? He became a community organizer, working in some of the toughest neighborhoods on the south side of Chicago, worked for years in neighborhoods where people had a reason to give up hope, because their jobs had been lost, steel mills shut down, living in brown fields left by those closed steel plants, unsafe streets, schools deteriorating, grandparents raising grandkids. Barack spent years working with churches, busing single mothers down to City Hall to help them find their voice, building the kind of operations on the ground just like he's doing in this race, block by block, person by person. Now you tell me whether there's anybody in this race who can claim to have made the same choice with their lives. You tell me, but I think that Barack Obama is the only person that can claim that kind of choice.
And, were he running for Humanitarian of the Year, this might be a good thing. But he's not - he's running for President of the United States of America. He wants to be the CEO of one of the largest economies on the planet, yet he has no experience in managing anything, even a non-profit. (If you're on the ground, house to house and driving buses, you're not managing.) People don't just “get” to be CEO because they're a nice person. They start in lower management, working out their inevitable neophyte mistakes and gaining experience as to what does and doesn't work. Then they move up and prove their abilities at a higher level. Even then, things don't always go smoothly. Carly Fiorina, the HP exec who “broke the glass ceiling,” was supposed to take HP to heights previously unknown. As it turns out, her ideas didn't match up with what the market wanted, and she left a few years later, much more quietly than she arrived.
The job is President of the United States is a tough one, but it's not the President of the World. Sometimes, what's best for the USA is not what's best for some other countries. I don't want my President making decisions for the betterment of other countries to the detriment of this one. You may think that's why we should all be opposed to the Iraq war, but that's why I'm for it. I believe that instilling a representative form of government in that area of the country will help stabilize that region, which will in turn stabilize our nation. That way, we can have the time to deal with the people here that need attention.
So, there you have it - several reasons I'm not supporting Barack Obama.