Christians, read your ballot initiatives carefully
The morally bankrupt Arizona legislature passed a bill repealing their abortion ban attempting to disparage it with the label, “Civil War Era.” Apparently, contemporary Americans are so much more morally enlightened than those in 1864 who were then engaged in fighting for the personhood status of all, including black people.
But then if the secular moral snobbery of the left believes Civil War-era morality is bad, where does that leave the Emancipation Proclamation or the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery? We need not wonder too long when we see America’s abortion capital New York aborting 74 black babies for every 100 born compared to their white counterparts — 11 for every 100.
According to one of America’s founding documents, our Declaration of Independence, all people, without qualification, are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. The first of those rights, life, is first in order and importance because it is the cornerstone upon which the house of all rights is built. At the risk of stating the obvious, without the right to life, it is impossible to exercise any other.
But Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs signed the repeal on May 2 which amounts to robbing preborn boys and girls of their “Civil War era” 14th Amendment equal protection rights. It amounts to signing away their Revolutionary War-era Fifth Amendment rights that no person should be denied life without due process of law. In proudly signing this repeal, Hobbs, along with the Arizona legislature, relegated their state back to the barbaric American plantation. In the name of enlightened liberty, as if the simple passage of time makes humanity wiser and nobler, Hobbs signed the death warrant of 13,000 preborn Arizonians. Congratulations.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
And it does not stop there. In November, voters in at least 13 states including Arizona, will be asked to undermine the personhood status of all preborn boys and girls by making it a fundamental right that a mother can abort her child’s life. Abortion advocates tested this as a get-out-the-vote concept in November 2023 in what many view to be a “pro-life” state, Ohio. And it worked!
Why would voters who just one year earlier, in a post-Dobbs 2022 political environment, elect a “pro-life” governor then completely reverse course, enshrining abortion as a right in their constitution? Many have argued that the “pro-abortion” lobby simply outspent the anti-abortion lobby by as much as 6 to 1. True. But shouldn’t it be a little disconcerting that millions of that money streamed in from America’s abortion headquarters, New York? And what was their message to voters? Was it the unpopular truth that abortion will become a right? No. It was the lie that without a constitutional amendment, women would die for lack of emergency miscarriage treatment.
Let’s set the record straight. Abortion is the intentional separation of a healthy preborn baby from his mother for the purpose of killing the baby. There are both surgical and chemical processes for that. On the other hand, miscarriage treatment is the separation of a preborn baby who died naturally for the purpose of preventing complications to the mother such as infection. The procedures for extracting the baby may be similar but confusing the procedure with the purpose is the Democrat propaganda play. After all, what compassionate human would want to harm a woman in her hour of need?
Yet, helping a woman with emergent complications during a miscarriage is not and never has been considered abortion by any self-respecting medical professional not on the payroll of big abortion or Democrat political campaigns.
Voters beware. The super majority believe abortion should be restricted. Be careful not to be lulled into believing Democrats want anything less than abortion-on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy. Read your ballot initiatives.
But the real play here in making abortion a fundamental right in a state constitution is not about the Democrat stated goal of “enshrine[ing] into the law Roe v. Wade” as Nancy Pelosi recently admitted.
When abortion rights are shoe-horned into the civil rights sections of state constitutions, it immediately pits the religious and speech rights of “pro-life” people against the government-fabricated right to abortion. The goal of abortion extremists like Jane’s Revenge, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and his DOJ, and other blue-state bad actors, is to “shut down” all “pro-life” activity.
Crazy? Compare the current disparity: Nearly 500 attacks on pro-life organizations with hardly any arrests with over 40 peaceful anti-abortion protestors suddenly indicted by Biden’s DOJ, many of whom already convicted of FACE Act violations and conspiracy against rights. One mother of five faced 22 days of solitary confinement while awaiting a prison sentence of up to 50 years and $1M in fines. And for what? For exercising their First Amendment right, speaking on behalf of the voiceless orphan about to suffer the injustice of what even Bill Maher admits is murder. He’s just “Okay with that.”
Scripture summarizes America’s political and judicial system succinctly: “Can a throne of destruction be allied with [God], one which devises mischief by decree? They band themselves together against the life of the righteous and condemn the innocent to death” (Ps. 94:20-21).
There are only two things in this world that are sacred: God and people. America has forgotten that core truth and we wonder at the raging lawlessness swamping civilized order. A cancer of wickedness is spreading through the body politic that cannot be stopped by a new president, a better economy, or more police. Christians must repent of our silence and be vigilant to walk out the truth of the inherent dignity of man as made just a little lower than God among our friends, families, co-workers, and the public square.
Rev. Jim Harden, M.Div. is a medical ethicist, author of the newly published Ethical Theory and Pertinent Standards in Women’s Reproductive Health, and CEO of CompassCare Pregnancy Services. He pioneered the first measurable and repeatable medical model in the pregnancy center movement and has written extensively on medical ethics, pro-life policy, and executive leadership. Rev. Harden has developed materials and strategies used by hundreds of pregnancy centers nationwide, helping them become more effective at serving women and saving babies from abortion.
