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(Photo: Mallory Benedict/PBS NewsHour)
Listen to the 10 min audio
Read the transcript:
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, I want to take you to a couple of good news/bad news stories. The good news out of National Review: Last week, The Center for Disease Control released U.S. abortion data for the year 2014 indicating that the U.S. abortion rate declined, which began back in the early 1980’s and continues at a steady pace. According to the CDC, both the number of abortions and the abortion rate declined by about 2 percent between 2013 and 2014. The second story out of World Magazine: Oregon officials have misspent about $152 million in taxpayer money, including $1.8 million in federal funds allocated for abortions according to a new report.
DR. REEDER: I’m reminded of, I think it was, Senator Everett Dirksen, years ago when I was growing up, who said, “A million here, and a million there – before long, you’re talking about real money, aren’t you?” Now we’re in trillions and we drown ourselves in the terms.
And so, here’s $147 million that a state – a midwestern state which, by the way, has nowhere near the financial revenues like the State of New York or California involved – but let’s look at all these large numbers. You lose $147 million and, by the way, over here’s just a couple of million that has now been sequestered to promote abortion by the state through Planned Parenthood.
Well, let’s don’t get to that story first. Let me get to the other story, the good news part – and that is the decrease in the number – and it continues to decrease year by year – in the number of abortions.
Now, what is going to be stated by the news outlets – and understandably – is they’re going to simply say, “Well, that’s because we make available birth control devices and chemical abortion pills and, therefore, the number of reported abortions continues to decline.
And I’m not denying – particularly, the matter of at-home pills to engage in chemical abortions – I am not denying that that doesn’t have some effect in the raw numbers, themselves, but there’s another issue.
You can see it, for instance in our own city, the closing down of the abortion clinics that are here, the view of abortionists as the pariahs of the medical field – which they ought to be viewed as such – and then the revelation the No. 1 proponent of abortion, Planned Parenthood, with all of its corruption and its unseemliness as well and the fact that the arguments constantly go in the pro-life direction.
It is not hard to get into a public debate in order to affirm the sanctity of life in any and every situation you find yourself and so, when you do, you continually bring to bear in the court of public opinion, this distaste for abortion even though it has become a right of passage. It’s actually a sacrament of the secular progressive religion and movement because it undergirds the whole Sexual Revolution in rebellion against God.
I’m preaching right now about how Jesus has redeemed us from all lawlessness. Now, why is sin called “lawlessness?” Well, because sin is the transgression of God’s word. And, in our sin, here is where we are: We’re born with a sin nature and, unless God’s grace restrains us in common grace or changes us in redeeming grace, we stand with a clenched fist against God and we will not embrace His Law.
We will not embrace His creation law. We will not embrace His revealed law. We will self-identify not how God made us, but how we say we ought to be. We will declare sex can be practiced anywhere we want to and, by the way, whenever you do that, you have consequences and one of the chief consequences of the Sexual Revolution is unwanted pregnancy.
So, what do we do? We push for the opportunity – the right, the privilege and now we declare it a constitutional right – to end the life of an unwanted child which is there, many times, not because of rape or incest – that’s less than 1 percent – it is there because of the Sexual Revolution so we want to erase the inconvenience of our sin and we want to say it’s normal to do that.
My friend, Al Mohler, did a program on this recently. There was a wonderful institution called the “doula,” which was a woman who was trained to care for the emotional well-being of a woman when delivering her child.
Well, now the abortion industry, because of all of the difficulties around abortion and because of the very thing that I’m talking about that we know it’s not right, they have now developed the abortion industry doula.
It’s interesting – the doula in a birth room is talking the woman through the process. “Oh, you’re having a baby. Oh, look, everything’s going well. How are you feeling? Remember these moments,” and it’s coming alongside them, encouraging them, “What a glorious moment,” celebrating the moment.
Now, what does the doula in the abortion industry do? Here’s their training: “Well, listen, you don’t need to think about this now. By the way, this is normal, the feelings that you’re feeling about the killing of this child. That’s normal.” And, as he said in his analysis, every time you have to keep telling somebody, “This is normal,” when you have to keep repeating it, what you’re really revealing is that, “It’s not normal. We want you to think it’s normal but, actually, it’s not normal.”
And the whole purpose of the doula is to distract the woman from what’s actually taking place and her feelings about what is taking place. We have an industry in which the purveyors of it are seen as medical pariahs, the people who try to support it burn out overnight and, therefore, it is in demise for which I’m grateful.
However, here’s what we need to realize from a Christian world and life view: While the statistics are going down for various reasons, some of them very positive, the fact is our nation keeps tenaciously holding to the right to kill a child to erase the unwanted effects of the Sexual Revolution that says that sex is not designed by God to enjoy within marriage for the blessing of the marriage and procreation within marriage – it is there to be enjoyed for one’s own gratification.
And, of course, need I simply point out the catastrophic consequences of sex being viewed as a matter of personal gratification in terms of the current meltdown of sexual predators within the industries of power such as politics and the media and Hollywood?
TOM LAMPRECHT: It is interesting, as you look at the situation in Oregon, it’s not atypical where you see many different individuals and groups of individuals saying, “We know what the law says, but we can come back and say we’re sorry later. We’re going to spend these funds like we want to spend them.”
DR. REEDER: As one guy said one time, “Follow the money.” If you’ll trace this back, it’s amazing that the bureaucrats – who are put in place by elected officials who are heavily funded in their campaigns by the abortion industry, in general, and Planned Parenthood, in particular, – what I believe is taking place is, through the, “mistakes,” and through the turning of the eye and the accounting mistakes, there is the trough of public money going to Planned Parenthood because those who have been elected, by their support in the community, they have to pay them back and that’s their payback.
We could go into numerous states and the federal government to point out how this is happening continually. This, “Oops, mistake,” $140-something million, oh, and by the way, look how much went to support abortion.
By the way, how much of that makes it into the coffers of Planned Parenthood, who, by the way, made the contributions for the elected officials who were overseeing the public monies that were siphoned off into the abortion industry.
If these are genuine mistakes, then somebody ought to lose their job to make that kind of a mistake. If you were in a corporation and you’re the chief financial officer and you did this, you would be gone if it’s a mistake. That won’t happen because it’s not a mistake.
I believe that this is an orchestrated payback to the abortion industry, in general, and Planned Parenthood in particular. And, unfortunately for them, there are audits so it does come out so now they have to do the mea culpa, “Oops, mistake. We’ll try not to move so many decimal points next time.”
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, we are out of time for today. Tomorrow, let’s go over the Europe. There’s several stories I want to cover, including Sweden’s national Evangelical Lutheran Church. They’re urging their clergy to stop using gender pronouns.
DR. REEDER: As well as an unbelievably incoherent decision that is being propagated in France concerning a statue so let’s talk about that tomorrow.
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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