Where the death culture leads: Lawsuits over disabled children who ‘should’ have been aborted
- Dr. Harry Reeder: The sexual revolution an ‘all-out assault’ on our culture
- British government resignations signal problems
- What Alan Dershowitz’ shunning says about snowflake culture and intolerance for debate
- Why the Supreme Court’s labor union decision is a win for freedom and education
- Parents denied access to public school sex education materials is shocking government overreach
- Leadership crucial in the church, life
- Reflecting on Independence Day and its meaning
- Justice Kennedy’s retirement and what it could mean for the direction of the country
- How the church and strong families can help adolescents deal with depression
- Should sex offenders be able to adopt?
- What the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s General Assembly prayer gets wrong
- Is it just? Farm Bill requires able-bodied on food stamps to work part-time or get job-training
- Is Alabama-founded PCA church encouraging gay people to identify by sin?
- Alabama pastor to the suicidal: ‘Banish the thought of destruction. It’s not the answer’, ‘Many’ of us want to help
- How to think about ‘human rights council’ and elitist concept of abortion as ‘human right’
- Alabama pastor’s analysis of immigrant parent-child border separation controversy
- James Comey echo of J. Edgar Hoover — amassing power, declaring himself moral authority in FBI
- Historic North Korea Summit explainer and backstory
- News Fatigue? How to think about abundance of 24-hr ‘news’
- Where do you turn when your church strays from your faith?
- Unreal — Medical how-to book for counseling ‘religious’ women that abortion is okay
- Remembering RFK
- It’s inexcusable Clinton didn’t personally apologize to Lewinsky
- Planned Parenthood ignores crime in singular pursuit of death culture
- Do we really want a society that says ANY sexual behavior is fine?
- Reflections from Israel — and how it has changed in the past 30 years
- How to think about ‘aging pastors’ and ‘scarcity’ of millennials in ministry
- What does Christian liberty mean?
- Oh boy … Americans don’t think they sin very often
- How ‘church growth at all costs’ mentality weakens worship
- Should Facebook be the ‘new church’ and ultimate hate speech judge?
- How to think about Memorial Day
- When did marriage, parenthood become about self-fulfillment?
- Government branches must hold each other accountable, not circumvent each other
- Why Christians should visit holy lands
- Making sense of Trump’s negotiations
- Why Trump was right to move embassy to Jerusalem
- Stay married through ‘hurricane’ years, struggles — it’s worth it
- Insanity: NYC mayor wants to enable drug use
- Why it’s crucial that parents examine college faculties
- Why Marxism is cool again — with people who don’t know of its horrors
- A pastor’s perspective on Alabama Attorney General’s ‘Faith Forum’ at Briarwood
- Does archaeology prove or disprove the Bible?
- Don’t get hung up on church numbers — focus on church health, not size
- In the U.K., you only have value if you are wanted
- Startling number of Christians are persecuted around the world
- What is North Korea’s motivation?
- PARENTS: Who is teaching your child, the iPad, the teacher you disagree with, or you?
- Alfie Evans and the ever-encroaching overreach of the state, diminishment of parental rights
- Randa Jarrar and free speech
- Proposed California law will lead to persecution of Christians, possible outlawing of Bible sales
- How should Christians think about Trump’s North Korea stance?
- Barbara Bush and the unique legacies First Ladies leave
- Paul Ryan is understandably ‘bone-tired’ — but I do wish he could stay
- Why the Syrian strike was justified
- Christian colleges: Will you fold under cultural pressures or actually BE what you say you are?
- Transgender chaos playing out as predicted
- Does Facebook smoosh conservative posts? YES. But regulation is not the answer
- What Toys ‘R Us, colleges, and social security have in common
- College class gets it terribly wrong. Christians aren’t privileged — Christianity produces privileges for everyone
- Gender chaos leads to societal chaos
- Cultural Marxism: Do you know what it is and how to fight it?
- How parents can combat Planned Parenthood’s shocking deviant sex education
- Sorry and all, but yes there is a Heaven and Hell
- When elected officials campaign on promises they don’t keep
- Does archeology prove the Bible is true?
- Are the millions of lives lost to abortion less important than lives lost to gun violence?
- We must not sacrifice consistent morality for political pragmatism
- Why do Christians call Christ’s death ‘Good Friday’?
- Single parenthood may be a heroic struggle, but it’s not ideal and shouldn’t be promoted
- Freedoms of speech, religion go hand in hand and are being threatened — even in Christian college classes
- States are trying to criminalize the free speech of those seeking to protect unborn life
- Christian movie revenue shocks Hollywood, blows past estimates — here’s why you need to see it
- Care about free speech? Keep your eyes on Supreme Court dealing with California abortion law
- Why pornography is far from ‘victimless’ and how to quit using it
- Cultural Marxists are using schools, courts to target Christianity
- No, Joy Behar, it’s not a ‘mental illness’ when the Lord speaks to us through his Word
- Despite what Washington Post writer says, Down Syndrome children are only undesirable to selfish, arrogant people
- Facebook’s ‘fact checker’ says the killing of unborn babies in abortion is a ‘disputed fact’
- Be sure your (Twitter) sins will find you out
- Reasons for pro-lifers to rejoice — and double-down — on abortion issues
- How to debate with decorum … and why profane, vulgar arguments reveal weak arguments & minds
- WAKE UP: Pornography is not victimless — it destroys lives and kills people
- Persecution, violence against Christians significantly increased world-wide in 2017
- 3 things contributing to the U.S. drop in life expectancy
- Gov’t attempted to silence this Christian who’s bringing Martin Luther King’s fight to modern times
- Iranian Christians fleeing persecution should get U.S. care and refuge
- What we can learn from the Alabama & Georgia quarterbacks’ post-game responses
- What does academic intolerance of real debate mean for free speech?
- Do you know the frivolous programs your tax dollars fund?
- Blaring Bannon coverage begs question: What’s happened to journalism?
- Call to Christians: Engage in politics & evangelism out of love for neighbor
- New York City votes to fine Biblical counselors for gender dysphoria therapy
- 10 campaign promises Donald Trump kept — or attempted to keep — in his first year
- Is it pointless to make New Year’s resolutions?
- The top 11 news, faith and culture headlines of 2017
- American attitudes about children contribute to our shrinking birth rate
- Here’s what Trump got right (and wrong) in his national security speech
- Tax reform explained: How it helps our culture, our families, our economics
- Advent and Christmas, ever wondered what’s the difference?
- Reformed Christians have lost one of their great theologians, pastors
- The 2 ungodly reactions to politics, current events that Christians must avoid
- Want our trust? The 7 things an elected official MUST do to gain it
- Christian voters faced 4 options in Senate race … only 1 is inexcusable, says Evangelical pastor
- Where the death culture leads: Lawsuits over disabled children who ‘should’ have been aborted
- What’s at stake in the Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court decision
- How to put Trump’s U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem in historical and biblical perspective
- Pastor Harry Reeder: There is hope and a way forward for the Matt Lauers in our lives
- Pastor Harry Reeder: If Supreme Court gets Colorado cake baker, same-sex marriage case wrong, it will be culture tipping point
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Liberal ‘Christianity’ is antithetical to Christianity
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Abortion industry ‘doulas’ try to normalize killing of unborn, but we know abortion is not normal
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Trump’s judicial nominee list shows his commitment to originalists and constitutionalists
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Some evangelicals disagree, but here’s why it’s good to emphasize church celebrations during Christmas
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Our military is weakening and here’s why we need it strong
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Why would we be surprised when culture lives out sexual sin it has promoted for years?
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Churches must stay on-mission as evangelists, not cultural acceptance-seekers
- Pastor Harry Reeder: The Museum of the Bible is a great idea…provided we don’t worship the Bible
- Harry Reeder on sexual reckoning: Our conscience tells us ‘something’s wrong here’ even while our culture promotes sin
- Reeder: We have to be honest despite history rewrites– Pilgrims gave thanks to God
- Reeder: It is ‘absolutely ludicrous’ to think a mother’s absence in crucial first 3 years has no effect
- Reeder: Australian same-sex marriage survey a ‘profile in cowardice’ not courage
- Reeder: Believers ‘speaking up’ made real difference in adoption tax credit provision
- Reeder: Secular culture wants more than ‘tolerance’, insists upon abortion and sexual anarchy ‘celebration’
- Reeder on Roy Moore chaos: ‘Do the next right thing’
- Reeder: Here’s what Christians should say when traditional marriage views are labeled ‘bigotry’
- Reeder on church leaders not meeting privately with the other sex: ‘I’ll take the criticism….I learned it from Billy Graham’
- Reeder on LGBTQ campus activists: ‘They don’t want to debate what a marriage actually is. They want to silence those they cannot answer.’
- Yes, it’s ridiculous there’s a new religion dedicated to AI….but here’s why it matters
- Feeling any Christmas guilt? Here’s the type you should ignore and the type you should face
- Reeder on Tuesday’s elections: ‘To see this as a referendum on Trump is overstating it’
- Two terminally-ill patients who refused assisted suicide to help others & show life’s sanctity
- Lots of older pastors, not many young ones — what’s going on?
- Commercial Surrogacy: The objectification of child-bearing
- Elitist ‘gender-isn’t-real’ culture has descended into sophisticated imbecility
- Chaplain who refused marriage retreat to same-sex couple is up against elite culture enforcers
- Sen. Booker’s grilling of Pompeo prime example of ‘religious test’ to exclude evangelical Christians from office
- GENDER ABSURDITY: A nation, led by pop culture, descends into chaos
- How culture rot happens: Unthinkable –> Laughable –> Thinkable –> Accepted
- How Christians should submit to the government’s law
- How to avoid going ‘wobbly’ on the truth
Listen to the 10 min audio
Read the transcript:
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.
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