By James Wilson
California’s proposed AB 775 is so sinister for Christians who actually seek and serve Jesus Christ – and the bill’s supporters know it – that they keep changing hearing and voting sessions when they discover how many opponents are showing up. The bill is simple in its majestic arrogance. It would require leaders of pregnancy care clinics – read ministries promoting life for unborn children and their parents – to advertise and refer their clients for abortion. Apart from the obvious trashing of the First Amendment inherent in forcing people into politically correct speaking is the colossal unfairness. Nobody is trying to force Planned Parenthood – the bill’s chief supporter – to refer their clients to pregnancy care centers.
The bill would also require pregnancy care centers to upgrade their facilities before operating as medical clinics with volunteer doctors and nurses supplying prenatal care. No one has ever died in a pregnancy care center – whether from sloppy procedures or unsanitary conditions. There have been many deaths due to treatment in abortion clinics, yet no one is trying to force Planned Parenthood to upgrade their standards of care – not in this bill.
Truth is Planned Parenthood rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars each year, much of it taxpayers’ money. I never saw a pregnancy care center operated on anything but a shoestring. Yet Planned Parenthood uses its lobbying power – bullying power – to try to force these little centers to send them business with the sanction of state law.
The contest is an unequal one, with David kicking the tar out of Goliath once again. Since 40 Days for Life began less than a decade ago more than sixty Planned Parenthood or other abortion clinics have closed their doors in response to this campaign alone; more than a hundred workers have quit their jobs. Appointments for abortions taper off by as much as seventy-five per cent when the volunteers are praying and blessing and worshipping outside the clinics – that is all they do except to speak when spoken to – and so many doctors now refuse to do elective abortions in California the legislature changed the law to allow non-physicians to perform them. It is small wonder Planned Parenthood has pulled out all the stops to run David off the road. It is well known they have attempted to invoke anti-racketeering statutes against those keeping vigil; now they seek to force pro-life ministries to drum up business for them.
They have boasted a board of so-called pastors who stand for “reproductive rights” almost since Roe v. Wade came down. This Spring several large newspapers carried stories in which these clergy say pro-life volunteers are acting contrary to the instructions of their spiritual leaders. Who are these people and why would I refer to them as so-called pastors?
They all align themselves with the Coalition for Reproductive Choice; this is Newspeak for favoring the killing of unborn children when the prospect of a birth is anywhere from traumatic to inconvenient. A quick trip to the Planned Parenthood web site reveals some are rabbis of humanist and/or reconstructionist synagogues – Jews who do not believe there is an actual God – of the Jews or of anyone else. Then you have the Episcopalians; their presiding bishop is on record (Time Magazine) as saying Jesus is but one of the ways to the Father. There are the Unitarian/Universalist members who never believed there was a savior – or a need for one. The board is rounded out by representatives of other denominations who left the Christian fold a long time ago, and a Muslim or two. When we consider that the words “clergy” and “pastor” traditionally refer to Christian shepherds, and none of these people believe in that Christ from whom we take the name Christian, I can be excused for dismissing all of them as frauds pretending to be Christians. But Planned Parenthood has never had a problem with lying or fraud.
They still hope the rest of us will not uncover the fact their founder, Margaret Sanger, was a devoted believer in ethnic cleansing through abortion and selective breeding, or that even today about two thirds of their clinics are in black neighborhoods. Blacks comprise about twelve per cent of the population.
I will never forget the man dressed as a priest – as I was – in the hearing room in which testimony was taken by the Senate Health Committee on SB 128 – the assisted suicide bill – last March 25. As he testified for the bill he had the gall to cite the most famous verse of the Book of Esther, “You were born for such a time as this.” When I testified against the bill I pointed out the verse referred to saving lives – not taking them – and mentioned that twisting scripture was not the same as quoting it. I was booed by the two hundred fifty supporters of Goliath in that hearing room. Whether the issue is assisted suicide or muzzling the voices for life that has not yet left the womb, the cast of characters changes neither identity nor tactics.
If we wish to back David’s play we can start with acknowledging that – whatever our own convictions about abortion-on-demand – the Christian Faith as expressed in the Christian Bible is as much on the side of life for the unborn as for God’s other children. One can certainly support abortion, but one cannot claim (truthfully) to be a Christian while doing it. Likewise, legislators can support the assault on freedom of speech and faith that is AB 775 if that seems like a good thing to do. But lawmakers cannot (truthfully) claim to represent a government of laws and not of men while doing it.
There is good news. In 1 Kings Elijah offered a sacrificial bull and invited the prophets of Baal to do the same thing. It was a level playing field because his challenge was that the deity who answered with supernatural fire would be acknowledged as the only authentic God by all present. When the God of the Jews did indeed answer the case was closed. (BTW the drought plaguing Israel ended as well.) The good news is this: If the people of California stand as one and demand of their lawmakers a level playing field – both sides in the abortion debate given unlimited opportunity to make their case to the public instead of Goliath binding David’s hands behind his back – the debate ends sooner or later with all of us standing with truth, with God, and with the voiceless ones whose backs we should always have.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times and Kingdom in Pursuit – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at praynorthstate@charter.net
