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ANOTHER SUPREME COURT DECISION — ON ABORTION
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, last Friday, we talked about the Supreme Court decision involving cake baker, Jack Phillips. Today, I want to go over a second opinion that was released the same day. It was a five-page unsigned opinion that did not issue a judgement as to the merits of the dispute but approved the administration’s request to vacate a ruling under a legal rule called “Munsingwear Vacatur.”
The case was Azar vs. Garza. It was occasioned back in October of 2017. Our listeners might remember that was when an undocumented teen in federal custody, known in court papers only as Jane Doe, learned she was pregnant and asked authorities to terminate her pregnancy. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services refused, claiming it had no obligation to facilitate abortions for minors in their care.
DR. REEDER: Basically, what they have said is that the government was within its bounds to apply its precedent that they were not under obligation to provide such services in terms of abortion and, therefore, they supported the administration’s use of the Munsingwear ruling. No opinions are issued from the Supreme Court on this, simply that the government should not have been ignored.
Another thing that they didn’t do was take up the government’s request that the ACLU lawyers be sanctioned. For me, that was troubling.
ROGUE LAWYERS AND PLANNED PARENTHOOD HAVE SINGULAR MISSION AND WILL NOT STOP
TOM LAMPRECHT: Now, when you’re referring to the ACLU lawyers, they’re the ones that advocated for the abortion?
DR. REEDER: Well, they not only advocated for the abortion; it became abundantly clear — and they kind of did a wink and a nod — that they not only ignored administrative oversight from the government in terms of its applications and decisions, but they found a way to circumvent it and they did so by procuring the abortion — and then, once it’s procured, you can’t unabort a child — and they did so under false premises.
There’s two reasons that I think they need to be sanctioned. First, what they did was unethical. Secondly, what they did was anarchy. It is abundantly clear that there are a number of organizations that are absolutely focused and bent unerringly to make our culture a culture of death, particularly, for the children in the womb who are unwanted consequences of our activity.
I am not taking up the issue of rape and incest, which is less than 1 percent of the rationale for abortions. This other 99-plus percent is the objective of the ACLU. They will violate legal ethics willingly, knowingly, intentionally at the whim of their desires because of the intentionality of their desires to promote the culture of death and the assault upon the unborn in the womb. And, by the way, they’re not the only ones: Planned Parenthood has manifested its singular focus of a search and destroy of such children in the womb.
CRIME COVERED UP BY PLANNED PARENTHOOD
TOM LAMPRECHT: And to that end, let me bring up two stories — one out of The Daily Wire and the other out of Live Action News. They’re reporting that former Planned Parenthood employees were told not to report suspected sexual abuse of pregnant minors and adults who went to clinics to get abortions.
And this isn’t the first time Planned Parenthood has been accused of covering up assault and rape. The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona claimed in 2014 that an abortion mill counselor intentionally withheld information about alleged rape from law enforcement personnel months before others came forward to stop a Poston Butte High School student from attacking more teenagers.
They also reported that a man who impregnated his daughter took her to Planned Parenthood more than once to kill the babies and the abortion mill failed to report the repeated rape. “They should have been suspicious; they should have asked questions,” says Live Action News, “but killing the growing child is the organization’s bottom line.
DR. REEDER: That’s its bottom line. Here was a case of a girl that came and got an abortion because of the incestuous activity of her father and they would not report it, lest it hinder the search and destroy of the child. And, therefore, the child then is sent back into a home with a father with that behavior and guess what? It was repeated and so now she’s back again with another child but, more than that, she is back with all of the scars, emotionally and spiritually, that come from being in a home like that.
To report it may have involved Planned Parenthood in activity that may have either hindered or would have given pause to their desire to perform the abortion. These counselors that don’t report it don’t report it because they have been given orders not to report it. This is a policy matter from the top down.
COUNSELING IS CRUCIAL
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, the age in which we live, everything wants to be secularized and it’s just the physical. When you have a lady like this, whose father is forcing himself upon her and she’s the victim of an incestuous relationship, how does the spiritual dovetail with this physical aberration?
DR. REEDER: Well, that’s another whole issue that you have surfaced and that is why our government should not be in the position of promoting any one religion but protecting the free exercise of religion. They ought not to ignore the benefits of spiritual counseling and the religious enterprise in the lives of someone. This strikes not at just your body; this strikes at your very soul.
“Legally, we’re going to step in and deal with your father, but can we encourage you to seek counseling? You may want to go to secular counseling or you may want to go to spiritual counseling, but you need to go to some kind of counseling and may we strongly encourage you to do that?”
PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL EFFECTS
I think the government ought to engage in that recommendation without selecting who they are to go to. Instead of a teenager having to cope with the reality of what her father has done — that’s going to affect the way she views men, that’s going to affect the way she views fatherhood, that’s going to affect the way she would view marriage — that is soul-shaking and that comes back to our world and life view.
We don’t have this platonic view of life that there’s the physical and the spiritual and they’re separated as the lower story of life, the physical, and the upper story, the spiritual. No, we have historically a Biblical world and life view in our culture that says the spiritual and the physical are interdependent — two threads woven into one cloth — and when things happen to you physically, they have a spiritual consequence and, when things are happening to you spiritually, they have a physical consequence.
In my whole life, what I did physically was drastically changed when I was born again, and I came to Christ as Lord and Savior. That affected all kinds of the ways that I governed my appetites, I governed relationships, friendships, activities, hobbies, everything else that engaged the physical. That’s why the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It shows up in the physical.
We ought to at least continue to acknowledge what, historically, we have always acknowledged: that you don’t have the physical over here and the spiritual over here. We do not believe there’s a sacred-secular dichotomy. What we believe is that all of life is sacred and all of life is affected. When you are criminally assaulted, certainly in the area of a sexual assault, there is a spiritual impact.
TO THE SURVIVORS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT, SEEK GOD IN HIS CHURCH
May I just finish our program, Tom, by speaking to those who have been victims of such sexual assaults? And I think this #metoo movement is a recognition that you cannot develop a culture in the public square in which there is degradation of language, of the sacredness of sex, of unwanted physical and aggressive relationships against people. We have got to understand that language matters, words matter, ideas matter. We need to see people with the dignity of being made in the image of God and, therefore, treat people with respect and that means you don’t see people as sexual objects.
And if you have been the victim of that kind of assault, I encourage you now to search out a Bible-believing church where there is a pastor who is known for his commitment to the Word of God, who is known for being above reproach in his life, and that the church, while not perfect, is intentionally reaching out to people so that they can know Christ and make Him known and have lives that are affected by the forgiveness and life-changing power of the Gospel.
And, if there’s any way I can help you find such a church, please don’t hesitate to let us know. We are available with that glorious truth that there’s a savior Who loves you, Who is there to uphold you, Who will never leave you nor forsake you, and Who not only grants to us the joy of forgiveness, but the power to forgive others and the power to be more than conquerors, no matter what a fallen world brings against us.
Dr. Harry L. Reeder III is the Senior Pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham.
This podcast was transcribed by Jessica Havin, editorial assistant for Yellowhammer News, who has transcribed some of the top podcasts in the country and whose work has been featured in a New York Times Bestseller.
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