Abortion: The Debate's Transition to the Private Realm

During last night's 100 day press conference, President Obama declared--almost word for word to previous statements--his position on abortion. Even though he isn't a great speaker, he likely is a wordsmith on paper and has framed this language in such a way that it sounds logical, caring, respectful of religion, and dare I say, even centrist.

You know, my view on abortion I think has been very consistent. I think abortion is a moral issue and an ethical issue. I think that those who are pro-choice make a mistake when they — if they suggest — and I don’t want to create straw men here, but I think there are some who suggest that this is simply an issue about women’s freedom and that there’s no other considerations. I think, look, this is an issue that people have to wrestle with, and families and individual women have to wrestle with.

There is some serious strategy going on here. I believe what Obama is trying to do is de-politicize abortion for the sake of the pro-abortion position. By referring to it as a moral issue that "families and women have to wrestle with" he is eliminating the notion of objective morality and linking abortion instead the realm of private values. But if the debate remains tied most dominately to the extreme feminist, reproductive rights movement, abortion remains open to public debate amongst ideological foes, each with the assumption that there is an objectively correct answer. And if that debate continues to rage, Obama can't appear as if he is taking no side. But there is more.

The reason I’m pro-choice is because I don’t think women take that position casually. I think that they struggle with these decisions each and every day, and I think they are in a better position to make these decision ultimately than members of Congress or a President of the United States — in consultation with their families, with their doctors, with their clergy. So that’s been my consistent position.

There is a ton to address in this portion of his statement, but what I want to focus your attention to the "private" relationships he mentions, between a woman and her family, doctor, clergy. His administration's work to mute the public abortion debates leaves it in the realm of these private relationships...and take note that religion is removed from the public realm (no surprise) into the private life of the woman. This is the only place where religion has a voice in the matter.

This statement he makes is clearly driven toward a removal of religious voices from the public square, and the fact that he consistently makes his position known suggests his words need to be closely examined. If the Obama administration succeeds in muting the debate, even if only on the side of the pro-aborts, religious voices will be even further marginalized and secularism will be the default worldview, even among those who identify themselves as Christian. And we see a lot of that occuring already.

Obama: Clergy in Chief?

When President Obama recently signed the Executive Order that would provide federal funding for embryo-destructive research, the ideological floodgates were opened. Obama said the new order is “about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda—and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.” Science does not make decisions, ethics and the theories that support them are where decisions are made.

There are two significant issues that arise from this whole discussion. The first is the fact that science can only provide us with an “is.” Science can only describe what we can do or what we might be able to do, but science will never, on its own, answer the question, “what should we do?” Simply because the progress of science and research allows us to do something does not necessitate that we ought to. This IS-OUGHT dilemma is so extremely elementary, yet escapes Obama and his left-leaning ideologues. Indeed, he has answered the ethical question that was previously “above [his] paygrade,” but tries to disguise it as a matter of science.

The other significant issue is that Christian conservatives are catapulted again into the discussion of what is an embryo, when does human life begin, what does it mean to be created in the Image of God, and what are the implications of this research on the character of American society? But oddly enough, while Obama is allowed to bring ideology to the teleprompter in his IS-OUGHT charade, the church is a bit more temperamental about bringing so-called political issues in the pulpit. The fact is, most issues of politics are issues of faith and matters for the church to engage, yet there is nothing inherently political about embryo-destructive research that should make it off limits from our pastoral leadership and communicated from the pulpit. Embryo-destructive research is first a matter of ethics and is secondarily political. In fact, it’s only been politicized because of the desire to appeal to the wants of a very vocal and left-leaning segment of our society. And aversion to these discussions from the pulpit is based on the idea that they have great potential to cause division inside the church so we, for our own good, should abide by the so-called Wall of Separation. Is this evidence that the church is really as political as government, and government is really as faith-oriented as the church? An interesting reversal of roles.

FOCA on the Family

Pardon the pun, but churches and families need to be aware of how the Freedom of Choice Act will impact their community, something we should expect to see enacted within Obama's first 100 days in office. For more information on the legal impact, visit Americans United for Life. Women, especially young and underage, will be put at risk because of this repeal of all state-enacted regulation. Now is the time for our churches to get serious about bioethics in the pew. Isn't it amazing? We need to regulate big business, but unfettered access to the unborn is what is being handed to the abortion industry. Here is some of what you can expect to see nullified by FOCA:

• Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003

• Hyde Amendment (restricting taxpayer funding of abortions)

• Restrictions on abortions performed at military hospitals

• Restrictions on insurance coverage for abortion for federal employees

• Informed consent laws

• Waiting periods

• Parental consent and notification laws

• Health and safety regulations for abortion clinics

• Requirements that licensed physicians perform abortions

• “Delayed enforcement” laws (banning abortion when Roe v. Wade is overturned and/or the authority to restrict abortion is returned to the states)

• Bans on partial-birth abortion

• Bans on abortion after viability. FOCA’s apparent attempt to limit post-viability abortions is illusory. Under FOCA, post-viability abortions are expressly permitted to protect the woman’s “health.” Within the context of abortion, “health” has been interpreted so broadly that FOCA would not actually proscribe any abortion before or after viability.

• Limits on public funding for elective abortions (thus, making American taxpayers fund a procedure that many find morally objectionable)

• Limits on the use of public facilities (such has public hospitals and medical schools at state universities) for abortions

• State and federal legal protections for individual healthcare providers who decline to participate in abortions

• Legal protections for Catholic and other religiously-affiliated hospitals who, while providing care to millions of poor and uninsured Americans, refuse to allow abortions within their facilities

Church, Politics, and the New Dogma

Reported this week by the Pew Forum is that that 50 percent of U.S. evangelical Protestants are likely to be Republican or Republican-leaning compared to 34 percent who linked themselves to the Democratic Party. The survey draws primarily on nationwide polling of more than 35,000 U.S. adults. While this may seem like "politics as usual," it's not easy to compare these statistics with previous polls as the demographics are somewhat different. But what some are indicating is that these numbers reflect a change from previous years in that more evangelicals identified with issues regarded as standard to Republican party platform. But Obama's campaign of "change" is wooing younger evangelicals and we're seeing presidential race more dependent on issues of faith than not.

Relevant to these statistics reported by the Pew Forum is

Most evangelicals, whose denominations teach that Jesus is the sole route to salvation, instead say people who have "led good lives" go to heaven. Only one in three Catholics say their church should preserve its traditional beliefs rather than change with the times or adopt modern practices.

So while those identifying themselves as evangelicals has decreased, so too has their emphasis on doctrinal distinctives. A friend recently shared with me that her adult children are supporting Obama because they identify with the values and issues that are a part of his platform. These same children have zero interest in the doctrinal teachings of the church, finding them irrelevant and misplaced because our church and state needs to focus on the more "practical needs" of people.

I hesitate to suggest that the dogma of the evangelical community is shifting, but it is. This new dogma focuses on the outworking of the church's ministry in the community, but has a blatant disregard for the identity and mission of the church. As a Christian community, we are called to care for the widows, the needy, and protect the vulnerable. But that isn't the end of the mission, that's just the beginning.

The long-time fear among secularists that church and state separation is being breached are protesting little these days because they know that the new dogma of evangelicals has little to do with distinctively Christian practice. And as self-professed Christians continue to protest the exclusivisity of the faith and promote a ethics-based pluralism, secularism and enjoy irreligious nature of a nation entering the gates of post-Christianity.

The Faith of 'Americans United'

This week, Americans United put out a press release demanding that the Florida State School Board not consider the inclusion creationism or intelligent design as a part of public school curriculum. Barry Lynn, who manipulatively dons the title "Rev," says that "public schools must teach science, not religion, in science classes." The press release also states that "the Constitution requires a separation of church and state and that the courts have repeatedly forbidden teaching religion in science classes."

We are so past the point of needing to address the role that philosophical/theological presuppositions play in the minds of Darwinists. They aren't even attempting to argue science, rather they are playing a political game intended to further marginalize evangelicals. So let's look closer at the claims of these materialists...and recognize what is a matter of philosophy-not science-on their part.

The latest issue of Salvo magazine sums things up well:

"Scientific naturalism is a philosophical position that assumes an entirely materialistic origin to the universe-a faith claim for which Darwinists have no proof whatsoever..."

Though Intelligent Design doesn't out of logical necessity preclude the possibility of evolution, it does counter well what is the prevailing notion in the public arena-that God is dead and Darwinists are purely objective observers...and that is their fatal flaw.

Beginning with the idea that the material world is all that exists has the Darwinist (philosophical materialist) in the field of philosophy and theology, not science. They simply cannot observe what happened first unless time travel is now also possible.

So while Darwinists are dabbling in philosophy, they need to ask themselves how it is that they can know that only the natural exists. Such an assertion is not only a claim to universal knowledge, but is the epitomy of arrogance and political correctness - not to mention just plain foolish.

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God: A Captive of Religion?

I know how odd that sounds, I'm still working through it myself. Why wouldn't the notion of God rest in the religious realm? According to syndicated writer Robert Koehler, God needs to be released "from the captivity of religion...so that we secularists can dance and celebrate what we have wrought. I speak of the God at the edge of language, the God that blesses all loving human endeavor-the God within, the life force, humanity's collective conscience, the diverse, flawed, manmade Gods of all religions..." You can read the article here.

Koehler describes himself neither as a believer or unbeliever; to introduce a more interesting term, he prefers to call himself a trans-believer. This is someone he describes as more than tolerant of diversity, but rather someone who relishes it. For him, salvation does not rest in the power of a transcendent higher authority, salvation is when everyone in the world has a full appreciation, a genuine embrace of everyone's views of ultimate reality. And for this world to exist, Koehler states that "we need a world where church is separate from state." He actually believes that the "public side of the wall' protects the interests of the private sector.

I grow weary of the constant berating of evangelicalism because of it's commitment to absolutes and its desire to transform culture. Secularists like Koehler have been working hard for a long time to "release God" by embracing every possible view of a higher power that exists, obviously seeking to transform culture as well. He views this ecumenism as the highest value of a free society, I call it his right to believe whatever he wants. But popular editorial writing will not muster the critique of basic logic....developing dogma to undo dogma just doesn't make much sense. Secularism is trying to win what seems to be a turf war on values (and the ability to account for them)....and I'm just not sure that the whining is an ample defense for their worldview.

Barak Obama's Revenge of Conscience

In his recent speech before the UCC convention, Barak Obama instigated a powerful, yet philosophically incoherent, attack on religious people whose concern for human dignity manifests itself in a way different from Obama and others on the left. It was a powerful argument because he focused his listeners on important issues that should matter to each of us – the environment, poverty, disease, etc….helping his listeners to conclude that prolife conservatives care very little about these issues and believe the only issue that matters is abortion and gay marriage. Perhaps “deceptive” best describes Obama’s speech.

From the start, his speech attempted to build a case against prolife conservatives for 2 primary reasons: 1) he would prefer we let him define which human dignity issues are worthy of our time and investment and 2) prolife conservatives tend not to be afraid of expressing their arguments for human dignity and the sanctity of human life within the framework of the Christian worldview. He believes religious language does not belong in the public square despite the fact that every person is driven by a particular worldview. Yet he calls for religious discourse. I don’t get it.

Obama’s bottom line is that we who identify ourselves as conservative are exploitive of what divides or separates us from those who happen to think its fine to destroy human life in the earliest of stages. By not abandoning our views on human dignity and the sanctity of all human life, we have somehow hijacked faith and religious discourse in the public square. It is all too clear that Barak Obama only believes in the dignity of some human beings – only those who have been fortunate enough to be born – and that by virtue of disagreeing with him, we have hijacked religion.

Obama had an opportunity to bring people together and promote a consistent life ethic. Instead, he chose to embrace and promote the caricature of conservatives, that supposedly we believe that the only issues worthy of our concern are those that relate to the unborn and the make-up of the family. Certainly it is true that no one person or organization can sufficiently speak to every issue facing America and the rest of the world, but we can be thankful for the different ministries God has given to each of us. Being a prolife conservative does mean I disagree passionately with pro-choice liberals (and if you must call that divisive, so be it), but that does not logically necessitate that I believe protecting the environment is unimportant – and I’m terribly frustrated that this needs to even be explained. On the flip side, however, do not be deceived. Obama’s embrace of a handful of evangelicals like Rick Warren does not mean he is abandoning his position on the issues he believes we are exploiting. His one-sided expectations illustrate that he is guilty of what he attributes to prolife conservatives. Speaking out against Obama’s politicizing of religion is a moral commitment because his exploitive tactics offend my conscience.