For Sale: Baby – Only $100
Paul Marquez is a 23-year-old New Yorker. He is in jail today, charged with attempting to sell the baby of a woman he dated on Craigslist for $100. He has pled not guilty; a friend says, "he probably did it as a joke." He reportedly faces up to a year in jail if convicted.
In Michigan, a woman was captured on video attempting to hire a "hit man" to kill her husband. "It was easier than divorcing him," she explained. The man she tried to hire was an undercover policeman. In a remarkable twist, her husband later testified in court: "I wholeheartedly forgive my wife for all she has done in this act of hatred." She quoted Scripture before the judge and expressed her repentance tearfully. He then sentenced her to at least five years and eight months in prison.
And a California woman will stand trial on felony charges that she plotted to have two ex-boyfriends killed. She allegedly asked her current boyfriend to kill one of her ex-boyfriends. Then a second ex-boyfriend told investigators that the woman had asked him to kill yet another former boyfriend while they were dating.
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Meanwhile, abortions resulting from prenatal genetic testing are on the rise. For instance, as many as 16 out of 17 babies discovered to have cystic fibrosis are aborted. One couple is suing their doctors for "wrongful birth"-their daughter was born with cystic fibrosis and would have been aborted if testing had revealed her condition. Will more social pressure be placed on couples to abort unborn children with expensive medical conditions? Will insurance companies begin exempting such conditions from coverage?
Emerson believed that "one idea lights a thousand candles." But one idea can put a thousand out as well. Marxism was an idea birthed by a lonely scholar in the British Library before it became a political system that enslaved a third of the world. Now consider "eugenics," defined as "the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics." It fell into disfavor after its doctrines were used by the Nazis. Are we seeing its rise again today?
Doctors are reporting a significant rise in gender-based abortions. The states of Washington, Oregon, and Vermont have all legalized forms of physician-assisted suicide. Is life becoming less precious in our society? How should Christians respond to this issue?
Whatever the culture says about you, here's what God says: "The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing" (Zephaniah 3:17). Remember all day that your Father takes joy in you, right now. This is the promise, and the invitation, of God.
