Good Morning!
The novelist O.R. Melling once aptly observed:
“Where there is no respect for life, there you will find evil.”
- Have You No Shame, Senator Schumer?
Focus on the Family president Jim Daly writes:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has introduced legislation designed to codify nationwide access to abortion. Wednesday’s vote is expected to fall far short of the needed votes.
A zealot for abortion, Senator Schumer knows he doesn’t have the votes – but said, “This is not an abstract exercise, it’s as real and as urgent as it gets.”
What’s urgent, of course, are the thousands of babies being killed each day by abortion.
Last week’s leak of an early draft of the Dobbs’ abortion decision has ignited violence and unhinged protests across the country. Mobs have descended on the homes of several Supreme Court justices. Justice Alito and his family had to be evacuated to an undisclosed location.
Abortion radicals have firebombed the Wisconsin Family Council and vandalized pregnancy resource centers and numerous churches across the country. The Supreme Court has been surrounded by eight-foot-high metal fencing. The High Court now more closely resembles a high-security prison.
Who do you think the government is trying to keep from storming the white marble steps? It’s not the pro-lifers.
But here is the great irony and the great shame:
Abortion advocates are simply following the lead of the Senate Majority Leader.
Back in March of 2020, New York’s Senator Schumer stood in front of that very court and threatened several Supreme Court justices. Before a gaggle of microphones, he shouted:
“I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
Can you imagine if a pro-life politician made similar threats to abortion-friendly justices? Left-wing hypocrisy is alive and well.
Only the Lord knows the date of His return, but as we watch the escalating disregard for life and the scandalous treatment of public officials, I’m reminded of the apostle Paul’s warning to Timothy:
“There will be terrible times in the last days,” he wrote. “People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power.”
If the leaked decision holds up, we’re on the verge of a watershed moment in our nation’s history and in the pro-life movement. Countless people across time and space have prayed and worked fervently for this coming day all with one goal in mind: saving the lives of the pre-born.
At Focus on the Family, we’ve been striving towards this moment for decades. Ministry-sponsored ultrasound machines have helped save nearly a half-million babies. We’ve been providing counseling resources and encouraged birth and adoptive families through the adoption process.
This is our pro-life moment. Will we be faithful and meet the need and answer the call?
A friend recently reminded me that the debate and battle over life has been raging for thousands of years. In the Didache, an early Christian treatise dating back to the second century, we read the following:
“You shall not abort a child or commit infanticide.”
Tragically, abortions and infanticide were rampant in the Roman Empire. It seems everything old is new again.
Incidentally, some liberal Christians have tried to justify abortion by suggesting Jesus was silent on the issue and that there’s a big difference between a pre-born baby and one who has been born. It’s a deadly lie.
In fact, these progressives might be interested to know that in both the Old and New Testaments, the word “brephos” is used to refer to both preborn and born children. That’s because in God’s eyes, a baby is a baby is a baby.
Please join me in praying for all the members of the Supreme Court, including those threatened and under attack. Please also pray for our churches, and pray for the future mothers who we now have an opportunity to love and support.
2. U.S. Senate Refuses to Advance Radical Abortion Bill for the Second Time
From The Daily Citizen:
The United States Senate has rejected an attempt to impose on the nation the most radical abortion regime the country has ever considered – far beyond even the damage that Roe v. Wade has wrought.
With 60 votes necessary to advance the sweeping abortion bill known as the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA) to a final vote, only 49 senators voted in favor of the motion to do so on Wednesday, May 11.
In the equally divided Senate, only Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., crossed party lines to join Republicans, all of whom voted “no” on the motion.
Most considered the effort by Democrats to bring back the WHPA to be a futile one, since the bill, already passed in the House, had failed once before in a Senate vote held on February 28, by a vote of 46 – 48.
Senate Majority Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., brought the bill back for a second attempt in response to a draft majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito in the highly anticipated Mississippi 15-week abortion ban case leaked to Politico, which reported on the draft on May 2.
Schumer said the second vote was for the purpose of showing Americans “where every single U.S. senator stands” on the issue of abortion, perhaps thinking he could pressure some senators to change their vote from their previous one.
The effort failed miserably.
3. Janet Yellen on Abortion and the Economy
From the Wall Street Journal:
The link between abortion access and women’s labor force participation is more tenuous than she suggests. Women’s labor participation was rising for decades before Roe and continued to climb until the early 2000s amid cultural changes. Abortion rates have also fallen by half since 1980, and teen pregnancy rates have plunged by two-thirds since 1990 amid increased access to contraception. Far more than access to abortion influences the life and work choices of women.
More fundamental, Ms. Yellen overlooks the lost productive contribution of children who were never born. People are assets, the source of inventions and new businesses. Human capital is crucial to economic growth and a dynamic society. China has abandoned its one-child policy, which sometimes included coerced abortions, because it foresees a declining population in the years ahead.
4. Meet the Early Church’s Pro-Life Movement
From the Gospel Coalition:
Again and again, early Christian writers declare that abortion is murder:
And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it; and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with child-murder. (Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians)
The woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. (Basil, Letters, 188.2)
[By abortion] life is snatched away from them before it has been given. (Ambrose, Hexameron, 5.18.58)
Some go so far as to take potions that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and . . . (as often happens) they die with their offspring. (Jerome, Select Letters, 22.13)
No woman should take drugs for purposes of abortion, nor should she kill her children that have been conceived or are already born. (Caesarius, Sermons, sermon 44)
Chrysostom (AD 349–407) took it a step further by arguing that abortion is “even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not take off the thing born, but prevents its being born” (Homilies on the Epistle to the Romans, homily 24).
5. Black U.S. Senator Responds to Treasury Secretary’s Testimony that Abortion Helps Blacks
From The Daily Citizen:
In one of those impactful educational moments where pro-abortion arguments run into a brick wall of truth, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen attempted to convince Senator Tim Scott, R-S.C., who happens to be black, that access to abortion helps poor black women succeed in the labor force.
Big mistake.
It was one of those moments where Yellen might wish she had done some better research on her audience at the Senate Banking Committee on May 10, on which Scott serves as a member.
Yellen made her initial statement about abortion helping the labor force in response to a question from Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J.
“I believe that eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades,” Yellen testified.
When Scott’s turn to question Yellen arrived, he challenged her testimony.
“Did you say that ending the life of a child is good for the labor force participation rate?” Scott asked before reading her previous testimony out loud.
“As a guy who was raised by a single mom, who worked long hours to keep us out of poverty, I think people can disagree on the issue of being pro-life or pro-abortion, but in the end, I think framing it in the context of labor force participation, it just feels callous to me,” Scott said.
“It seems harsh,” he added.
6. Education Department Investigates Religious Schools for Upholding Christian Teaching
From The Daily Citizen:
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating six Christian universities for allegedly violating the rights of LGBT-identified students by upholding Christian teaching on sexuality, relationships and marriage.
The department was already investigating Clarks Summit University, in Pennsylvania, Illinois’ Lincoln Christian University, and Colorado Christian University. The three new schools under investigation are La Sierra University and Azusa Pacific University, both in California, and Liberty University, in Virginia.
The attack on religious freedom began when an anti-religious freedom organization, the Religious Exemption Accountability Project (REAP), filed a lawsuit against the DOE on behalf of 33 LGBT-identified students who were either enrolled in or alumni of Evangelical Christian or Mormon colleges.
The complaint, Elizabeth Hunter et al. vs. U.S. Department of Education, alleges that universities that believe and practice God’s design for sexuality, relationships and marriage discriminate against LGBT-identified students.
The lawsuit seeks “to put an end to the U.S. Department of Education’s complicity in the abuses and unsafe conditions thousands of LGBTQ+ students endure at hundreds of taxpayer-funded, religious colleges and universities.”
Private religious colleges and universities can apply for an exemption to Title IX requirements from the DOE and still receive government funds through student loans, “to the extent that application of Title IX would be inconsistent with the religious tenets of the organization.”
7. Drug-Overdose Deaths Reached a Record in 2021, Fueled by Fentanyl
From the Wall Street Journal:
Drug-overdose deaths in 2021 topped 100,000 for the first time in a calendar year, federal data showed, a record high fueled by the spread of illicit forms of fentanyl throughout the country.
More than 107,000 people in the U.S. died from drug overdoses last year, preliminary Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released Wednesday showed, roughly a 15% increase from 2020. The proliferation of the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl has been compounded by the destabilizing effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on users and people in recovery, according to health authorities and treatment providers.
The U.S. has recorded more than one million overdose deaths since 2000, and more than half of those came in the past seven years.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality-statistics branch at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, regarding fentanyl’s impact on the numbers.
8. City in Kansas to Remove ‘In God We Trust’ From Police Cars
From The Daily Signal:
Last week, during a City Council meeting in Haven, Kansas, council members voted on removing the “In God We Trust” decals from police vehicles. Council member Sandra Williams introduced the measure by emphasizing that she did not think the police department was the proper forum to be talking about God.
After a brief discussion, Williams made a motion to remove the “In God We Trust” decals from the police vehicles, as well as delete all Bible verses from the police department’s Facebook page. Another council member seconded the motion, and it passed unanimously. Mayor Adam Wright has since announced that the decals and quotes will be removed by May 16.
- 1 in 3 would choose their pet over their house or spouse
From Study Finds:
A panel of 2,000 dog and cat owners reveals that 33 percent would choose their four-legged friend instead of their house, and another 33 percent would choose their pet over their significant other.
Another 31 percent say that the possibility of their pet’s death keeps them up at night — even more so than the death of a family member (28%), being the victim of a crime (18%), or going through a divorce (14%). So, it’s no surprise that two-thirds (66%) get stressed thinking about how their pet will age.
10. Alito’s Neighbor Plays ‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus’ as Pro-Abortionists Protest at Justice’s House
From CBN:
Through the shouts and vulgarities, one neighbor found comfort in the hymn, “Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus” and wanted others to hear it, too. With open windows, the pianist played the age-old hymn on the family’s grand piano, which was easily heard from the street. The neighbor wished to remain anonymous for safety concerns but provided the Standing for Freedom Center with a quote:
“I wanted to do something beautiful and thoughtful to counter the noise, the chaos, the sadness of those protesting life in front of an empty house. There is nothing more steadfast and measured than the joy of worshipping our Savior through precious hymns.”
Following the protest, Editor-in-Chief for the Freedom Center, John Wesley Reid called his mom to update her on the events of the evening. His mom, who has long encouraged him in his pro-life pursuits, said:
“God hears the cries of the babies over the shouts of the crowd, and God recognizes the efforts of His people in combating this great evil.” –Gail Reid
