Where the death culture leads: Lawsuits over disabled children who 'should' have been aborted

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TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, I want to take you to two stories today. Both deal with pro-life issues. The first is out of Fox News. The Justice Department has launched federal investigation into Planned Parenthood practices and the sale of fetal tissue. In a letter first obtained by Fox News, Justice Department Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Stephen Boyd formally requested unredacted documents from the Senate Judiciary Committee, the same panel that led the congressional probe into the Women’s Health Organization.

The second story’s out of National Review. It’s a story by Kristan Hawkins and, basically, the story deals with an editor of New York Magazine writing that, because her son was born with cystic fibrosis, she is now suing the doctors because she should have aborted her son.

The point that Kristan makes is, one day, this son is going to grow up to read this story.

DR. REEDER: Tom, that was an amazing story, wasn’t it? By the way, let me refer to the writer of this story, Jean Gann, that Kristan Hawkins writes about.

WISHING HER CHILD WERE DEAD

She writes this piece about her lawsuit of wrongful birth in which she is claiming the doctors are responsible and is seeking monetary relief from the treatments that she is now required to give to her son who has cystic fibrosis and is also attempting to put a marker down, which, again, will be quite the dampening effect in the medical field in terms of this claim that she should have had better diagnostic information so that she could have aborted the child and should have been informed of the option to abort the child.

Think if you are her child, Dudley, and you grow up and you find out that your mother is basically saying, “You have been so inconvenient that I wish I had killed you in the womb.” What a message to your son.

Now, cystic fibrosis is a challenging situation. I have the enormous privilege of being a pastor to parents who are dealing with that. I have not met any that would ever have taken such a position such as this, even in their wildest moments of frustration, but I believe that’s because the ones that I have the privilege to pastor call upon the grace of the Lord Jesus and realize that, in life, you are faced with challenges because we’re in a broken world and then to bring the grace of the Lord Jesus to bear in the life of their child.

Obviously, the writer of this article knows of no such motivation at this point in time, although I do pray that God’s saving grace would break into her life.

Let me also mention, the writer of The National Review article, Kristan Hawkins, I follow her regularly. She is, perhaps, one of the most effective and principled warriors for the sanctity of life that is currently present today.

WHY ABORTION EXISTS

What you see here is, again, the unabashed testimony that abortion exists for two reasons:

To wipe out the effects of the sexual revolution when it leads to unwanted pregnancies.
To eradicate any children that are not governed worthy of our parenting. Because of their imperfections, they are no longer worthy of our parenting or, the anticipated cost of parenting them, then we want no part of it and we ought to have the right to destroy their lives.

On the altar of convenience, if we have children that are deemed less than perfect, less than acceptable, our parenting them because of their physical or medical conditions would be beyond the scope of what we would want to be bothered with.

What a society that we have developed with that world and life view.

By the way, Kristan Hawkins, as the news story reveals, this is a woman who is raising two children with cystic fibrosis. There are those who, by the grace of God show the grace of God and the strength of God to deal with these issues.

And that’s why I am so grateful for the other news story that you gave. If you remember, David Daleiden and his staff, they had done all of videos as they would interact with Planned Parenthood officials and what was uncovered was the callousness of destroying the lives of children for profit and using mechanisms so that they could save body parts and make money from that.

All of this was, of course, criminal and, somehow, it got swept away – somehow, even the tables were turned on The Center for Medical Progress but, now, Senator Grassley’s going to go back and pick up their material and he’s going to do the investigation into the, dare I say it, bowels of Planned Parenthood and I am so happy for that.

WHY I HATE ABORTION

Tom, let me just go ahead and state it as clearly as I can: I hate abortion.

I will recognize that there comes a time in treating a woman that the triage principles may cost the life of the unborn baby, but that is less than 2 percent of any statistical analysis of pregnancies that come to the birth process.

Having said that, I utterly hate abortion and all of the world and life view it represents. It exists as the sacrament of the sexual revolution – you must believe it, you must embrace it because that’s the way you can erase the unwanted consequences of the sexual revolution when it issues forth in a child.

Secondly, it exists to get rid of inconvenient children like this young little boy who is now going to grow up and read an article where his mother says, “I not only wish I’d killed you, I am going to make money off of those who didn’t recommend for me to kill you,” and that is where we exist in this death culture.

I utterly hate it and I know there is only one remedy and that is to come back to the sanctity of life through a God-centered world and life view of a sovereign God who is at work in a broken world and provides us both the strength, and the power and the resources to deal with difficult situations, even as He graciously deals with the brokenness of our sin by giving His Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross to save us from our sins.

There is the One who was willing to take our sin upon Himself that we might have life.

We have to get back to a saturation of the Gospel from the church of Jesus Christ into this world and discipleship within the church so that Christians learn to think clearly.

A PERSON IS A PERSON NO MATTER HOW SMALL

That would be a premise in our world and life view of the sanctity of life and there’s nothing more sacred than life in the womb and, also, that we believe that a person is made in the image of God and we agree with our founding fathers that they have the inalienable right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness to whatever degree that they can, no matter what the condition is that they face medically when they’re born into this world and a person is a person from the moment of conception made in the image of God, no matter where they are in the stage of development in human life and no matter what challenges they face in those stages of development of human life.

May God grant us, again, that sacred principle of the sanctity of life and we will continue to deal with that from this program and we ask believers to not only join us to again affirm the sanctity of life through crisis pregnancy centers, adoption agencies, ministry to children who are born with medical difficulties, and mercy ministries caring for women in crisis pregnancies, challenging men to be men in terms of their responsibilities in fatherhood – all of those things, that full-orbed dynamic that we would ask believers to join us in.

And may God allow us to get the root of it in place, which is the glorious Gospel of life that comes through Jesus Christ, life that is meaningful for eternity and that means the church must again not only proclaim the Gospel that people would be invited to Christ, but use the gospel and the entire whole council of God in His word to disciple believers that we might live consistently for the God of glory and grace that has saved us and that includes the sanctity of life.

Dr. Harry L. Reeder III is the Senior Pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham.

This podcast was transcribed by Jessica Havin. Jessica is editorial assistant for Yellowhammer News. Jessica has transcribed some of the top podcasts in the country and her work has been featured in a New York Times Bestseller.