Abortion and Liberal Protestant Decline

Comment by David Mu on August 15, 2022 at 8:45 pm

Certainly, the Episcopal Church made the point of hard and fast for the movement this summer. The thing is this abortion movement has become an death cult. I clearly had no interest in being supporter (in anyway) when starlets were joking about where they had their ‘best’ abortion, and using abortion as your first line of birth control takes you into some truly bad places.

Few know that Planned Parenthood was first put into place in American society as an action plan of the eugenic movement. And even fewer remember how the eugenic movement was quite popular within the Progressive Movement. People can find all kinds of material scanned and available at archive.org giving all manner of praise for it. I guess the death camps found at the end of WW II had people seeking to cover-over all this. However, Roe has been an tool that is now available to bring it all back. Clearly under new names, but the result would be the same.

However – yes, these churches are going to go down fighting for this ‘right’. They won’t be able to understand that fewer and fewer people will willing to be ID’d with them. I won’t – even as I not in the camp with the rightist church movement. But, I won’t be seen with these pro-choice churches. I know too much history, and I have meet survivors of the death camps. These people are either fools or monsters to seek to make abortion an un-ending ‘right’, and even an reason to party. It’s too terrible what they seek, and will continue to seek. It’s nature requires no value being seen in life.

Comment by Loren J Golden on August 16, 2022 at 10:33 pm

Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand.  And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him.  And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.”  And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?”  But they were silent.  And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart.

—Mark 3.1-5a
 
Is it right for a leader of the Church of Jesus Christ to stand before the watching world and declare that it is a woman’s inalienable right to have the life of the unborn child growing in her womb violently taken from him or her?  And what was the child’s offense that his or her life should be forfeit?  Did the child commit some unpardonable act of treason, causing the deaths of thousands of Americans?  Did the child premeditatively murder someone?  Did the child kidnap and physically or sexually abuse someone repeatedly?  No!  The child’s only offense was that he or she was conceived in the wrong womb.
 
Granted, there are pregnancies that put the mother’s physical life at risk, and such a life-threatening danger justifies taking the child’s life, so that the mother’s life might be preserved.  But exceedingly few abortions are performed for that reason.  In 2004, the Guttmacher Institute conducted a survey of 1209 women who had had an abortion.
 

The reasons most frequently cited were that having a child would interfere with a woman’s education, work or ability to care for dependents (74%); that she could not afford a baby now (73%); and that she did not want to be a single mother or was having relationship problems (48%).  Nearly four in 10 women said they had completed their childbearing, and almost one-third were not ready to have a child.  Fewer than 1% said their parents’ or partners’ desire for them to have an abortion was the most important reason.  Younger women often reported that they were unprepared for the transition to motherhood, while older women regularly cited their responsibility to dependents.

 
Most women who procure an abortion are unwed and in their twenties.  And they decide—or have become convinced—that in order to avoid the financial hardship that comes with being a young, single parent, her child must die before he or she is born.  Older women come to that same conclusion because they are faced with a late-life surprise and don’t want to spend their golden years in service to another child who will demand twenty years of undivided attention—more, if the child has a genetic disorder (which is more common among children of older adults).
 
But the unborn child is no less a human being made in the image of God than any man, woman, or child who has survived the gestational period long enough to have been born.  “For you formed my inward parts,” declares David, ”you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.  I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Ps. 139.13-14a)  And again, “And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb.  And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!  And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.’” (Lk. 1.41-44)
 
It is bad enough that the unbelieving world declares unequivocally that the unborn child is not a person with rights, that unborn children are not endowed by their Creator with the inalienable right to life, and therefore are subject to being put to death at their mothers’ discretion.  But for leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ, who, by their position of authority in the household of God, should know better, to publicly decry the Supreme Court decision to overturn an execrable ruling made 49 years earlier, which had made abortion a constitutional right, must truly grieve the Lord, for their hardness of heart.
 
Episcopal Presiding Bishop Michael Curry sanctimoniously declares, “We pray for those who may be harmed by this decision, especially for women and other people who need these reproductive services.”  Where are his prayers for the tens of millions whose lives have been prematurely ended by the scourge of legalized abortion on demand?  “We as a church have tried carefully to be responsive…to…the moral value of all life.”  Then why is the “moral value” of the life of unborn children made in the image of God not made a priority in the Episcopal Church’s social witness?
 
United Methodist Bishop Council President Tom Bickerton decried the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization SCOTUS decision as having “denied the sacred worth of women.”  What of the “sacred worth” of unborn children made in the image of God?
 
PC(USA) Stated Clerk J. Herbert Nelson contended that in Dobbs, women “lost a choice around their bodies.”  Does it not bother him that have had, within the past half century, much, much less “choice around their (own) bodies” than that?  Again, “You cannot legislate morality,” he contended.  To the contrary, the decision as to whether or not to kill another human being—especially one who has done nothing wrong—is a moral decision—and society most certainly can—and should—legislate against that.
 
And Disciples of Christ General Minister Teresa Hord Owens “lamented that (Dobbs) removes that freedom (to procure an abortion) in many states for my daughter-in-law and my nieces.”  But does she not lament the loss of well over sixty million unborn lives to the scourge of abortion?
 
Those who would shepherd the Church of Jesus Christ in this world must be about and represent His business, not their own, and certainly not the world’s.  The Lord and Creator of all life, who commanded the death penalty for killing human beings made in His image (Gen. 9.5-6), does not look on the wanton slaughter of innocents with pleasure.  If the Church truly values women, as these Mainline Protestant leaders claim they do, then it behooves her to inculcate her Lord’s instructions for human sexuality—to confine all expression thereof to heterosexual marriage.  The vast majority of abortions are procured by young women who were impregnated—most often by their own consent—out of wedlock.  The world’s laissez-faire attitude toward human sexuality and its abysmal devaluation of the lives of unborn children have created a culture where the destruction of the most vulnerable human lives thrives.  The United States today is a culture that revels in the sins for which the Lord drove the Canaanites and the Amorites from the land He promised to give to Israel (Lev. 18).  Unless we as a nation repent of these grievous sins, how can we hope to escape His righteous wrath in judgment?  And for leaders in His holy Son’s Church to not only fail to preach against these sins and warn against the warn against the wrath to come, but to actually laud them is an egregious betrayal of the solemn duties they undertook when they were ordained and installed.
 
May God have mercy on their souls.

Comment by David on August 17, 2022 at 6:55 am

It is very true that Sanger was a strong supporter of eugenics as were other prominent Americans such as Theodore Roosevelt. One aspect of the movement was a reaction against the massive immigration in the late 19th century that brought persons from southern and eastern Europe. It was felt these people were having too many babies and would eventually displace the northern European majority in the US.

Sanger felt that limiting births among the poor would improve their economic condition. “The rich get richer and the poor get – children.”― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

It is little known that Sanger opposed abortion in most cases.

There was the unscientific view that things like poverty, girls getting in “trouble,” and criminality were of genetic origin. Planned Parenthood makes no secret of this aspect of its history and prominent displays it on its website. Of course, organizations can change over a century. One political party that supported freedom for Blacks now tries to limit their voting.