By James Wilson
What ought a person of faith – or simple decency – do in the wake of the latest legislative assault on constitutional rights and God given morality in California?
Both houses of California’s legislature have adopted the Reproductive Fact Act. The act seeks to compel the directors of the hundred-fifty pro life pregnancy centers across the state label themselves medically inadequate and refer clients to Medi Cal and Planned Parenthood centers for abortions. This is despite the dedication of these centers as faith based alternatives to the abortion mills. This is despite exposure of the death houses for harvesting human body parts while tiny human beings are still alive.
This is a freedom of speech and faith issue – and the lawsuits will surely come. The state would compel speech in defiance of workers’ faith. It defies federal and state constitutions; that makes it a legitimate occasion for outrage from all decent human beings. But there is also a pathetic quality in this obvious attempt to drum up business for Planned Parenthood. That entity is losing centers due to lack of business across the nation. PP has funded and lobbied this legislation since day one. One can only pity the Democrat lawmakers who make a strong majority in the legislature but are weak-kneed in the presence of the fading abortion giant.
This pathetic quality carries over into the obviously self-imposed blindness of the State Senate majority to simple facts. The legislation requires even those care centers licensed by the state to declare they are not equipped to ensure the medical safety of their clientele. They do nothing more dangerous than operate ultrasound equipment. This is despite the fact medical complications from fatal infections to subsequent infertility persist in Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers at about the same rate as before Roe v. Wade “saved” women from the dangers of back alley abortions. No one has ever died under the care of a pro life pregnancy care center; the track record for abortion providers is much more grim. Yet backers dare to call it the Reproductive Fact Act – as fine an example or Orwellian Newspeak as I have heard.
This is despite the facts of butchery – amounting to human sacrifice – in Planned Parenthood centers revealed by the Center for Medical Progress videos. Democrats like the bill’s authors – David Chiu of San Francisco and Autumn Burke of Marina Del Rey – dismiss these videos as “graphic hysteria” and “fantasy” and their words fell from the lips of Democrat senators before the senate vote. More Newspeak.
Three pro life Republican senators offered amendments to the bill that would have held the Planned Parenthood centers to the same medical standards imposed on the pregnancy centers. Cynicism hit a new low in Sacramento as these amendments were soundly defeated.
What ought we do if we take seriously Ugandan Evangelist Jackson Senyonga’s famous statement, “The condition of society is the report card of the Church?”
We first resist. If court challenges fail – and there is no reason to expect judges to judge fairly in the wake of recent Supreme Court decisions making Dred Scott seem almost reasonable by comparison – Christians and all fair minded people need to be present in the care centers when arrests are being made. We need to make it nonviolently clear that either all or none go to jail. We need to keep exposing Planned Parenthood and its allies for the butchers they are. Amos 5:24 – Dr. Martin Luther King’s favorite scripture – becomes our battle cry, “But let justice flow like a mighty river, righteousness like a never ending stream.” We let the legislators, the lobbyists for this foul industry, and the judges who cater to them know we will not let up until they make serious repentance or leave office. But there is more.
Proverbs 29:18 says, “Without a vision the people perish.” To be effective we need to become more authentically human than we have been. That means we repent on our own behalf of the innocent blood shed by ourselves and even our ancestors. Our nation was born of a vision to serve God in the wilderness. We are heirs of that vision, and we are just as much heirs of the perversions of that vision that mar so much of our history. It is not enough to condemn the darkness. We are called to carry the light. That calling is played out not in cleverness or wisdom – or even courage – but in faithfully turning our attention back to the God who says, “I came that they might have life and that abundantly.”
The choice is clear – God’s Real Speak or Newspeak.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships and The Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
