Ask Dr. Land: What does President Biden’s pro-abortion blitz say about America?
What an extraordinary fortnight the first two weeks of the Biden administration has been. “Sleepy Joe,” the invisible, “stealth” candidate, the moderate, sober antidote to the phalanx of progressively more progressive leftist democratic presidential candidates, has morphed into “whirlwind Joe,” firing off Executive Orders at a record-breaking pace including greatly expanding the U.S. taxpayers funding of abortion both here and around the world.
President Biden is the second Roman Catholic to be elected president. However, as JFK so cleverly put it 61 years ago in his appearance before the Protestant ministers gathered in Houston to hear him address the then controversial subject of his Catholicism —controversial because a Catholic had never been elected to the presidency to that point in the nation’s history.
With a hint of irritation which can be both seen and heard on the video recording of the speech, JFK said, “For contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic party’s candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic.” JFK then proceeded to expand by stating, “I do not speak for my church on public matters — and the church does not speak for me.”
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That was true for JFK and by now as it is crystal clear for anyone with eyes to see, Joe Biden has completely broken with his church’s bedrock beliefs in the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death.
And not only has President Biden turned his back on one of the bedrock beliefs of his Roman Catholic faith, he continues to enjoy the accolades of a fawning press core that speaks of his “devotion” and his “deep faith.”
However, it goes far deeper than that. According to a poll conducted this week, significant majorities of Americans of all faiths reject the radical pro-abortion agenda now being implemented with breakneck speed by that “devout Catholic,” President Biden. Speaking to the apparently glaring contradiction between Biden’s dedication to his faith and his politics, the Catholic Association’s senior fellow Ashley McGuire spoke for millions of Roman Catholics and other religious Americans when she said, “If there’s an area where Catholics are most confused, it’s how can you be somebody who’s so ardently promoting your Catholicity while at the same time adopting views that are so extremely divergent from where you Church is on the issue."
And the American people far beyond the Catholic community are not in sync with President Biden’s radical pro-abortion positions. Recent polling shows that approximately 6 out of 10 Americans of all religious and political persuasions oppose using federal tax money to pay for abortions in the U.S. (including 31% of Americans who self-identify as “pro-choice.”)
When it comes to federal funding for abortions overseas, 77% of Americans oppose it. For example, 64% of Americans who identify as “pro-choice” oppose federal funding for abortions overseas. Even on some of the nettlesome issues, there is more consensus among the pubic than we had ever been led to believe had ever existed. For example, even 64% of those opposing federal funding of abortion describe themselves as pro-choice. Only 19% of those polled “strongly support” or “support” U.S. taxpayers paying for abortions outside the United States, a policy just implemented by Joe Biden on a massive, unprecedented scale.
So, why then, 48 years after the Supreme Court attempted to “settle” the troublesome issue of abortion on behalf of the American people in Roe v. Wade, are we now confronted with a pro-abortion Trojan horse like Joe Biden. I, like many Americans, thought America was supposed to be about government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Clearly a bipartisan cultural political elite in this country believes it has the right to ignore the will of the people and to impose on the people the policies they believe should hold sway and to force the American people to subsidize such policies. And, they have successfully implemented such anti-democratic policies for nearly five decades.
In doing research for this paper, I came across some truly disturbing information. And, I hope it troubles you as much as it troubles me. It is estimated that there are approximately 825,000 abortions in the United States every year, which makes America, the thirteenth most abortive nation per capita in the world. I’m sure that’s a list most Americans do not want to be on. Of the 12 nations ahead of America on the list, 11 of the nations are former or current communist or socialist regimes, which tells you something about the life-denying philosophies of these atheistic systems. By the way, the least abortive country in the world per capita is Mexico with an abortion rate of .1 per thousand women aged 15-44.
This level of frustration of the people’s will by ruling managerial elites will lead over time to great disillusionment with the system itself and stifle the body of Christ’s efforts to be the salt and light in society that God has commanded us to be. In time if continually ignored, it will lead to explosive rage and resistance against a calcified political system apparently incapable in its ossified state to respond to the will of the people. Let us all covenant together to make sure that doesn’t happen. The consequences of inaction are too dire to contemplate.
Dr. Richard Land, BA (magna cum laude), Princeton; D.Phil. Oxford; and Th.M., New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, was president of the Southern Baptists’ Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) and has served since 2013 as president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, NC. Dr. Land has been teaching, writing, and speaking on moral and ethical issues for the last half century in addition to pastoring several churches. He is the author of The Divided States of America, Imagine! A God Blessed America, Real Homeland Security, For Faith & Family and Send a Message to Mickey.
