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MEDICAL SCHOOL NOW TEACHING HOW TO COUNSEL CHRISTIAN WOMEN THAT ABORTION IS OKAY
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, I want to take you to an article out of The College Fix. The University of California-San Francisco has come out with a training book for medical students which teaches them counseling techniques on how to talk to religious women about abortion, especially if they believe that life begins at conception and that abortion is an act of murder.
DR. REEDER: We are being told that all we do in the medical school is teach our students how to do good medicine and, by the way, good medicine includes abortion. Well, the jagged edges of that statement are overwhelming.
What do they do when you’ve got people who look at that and say, “You know, it’s not good medicine to kill a baby in the womb. We’re calling that murder”? Do they listen and enter into the debate in terms of is abortion good medicine or not?
They are fully embracing a world and life view that promotes the death spiral of removing any living being in the womb that is unwanted or inconvenient and they do so under the guise that there are therapeutic abortions because of health reasons. As that exists, at most, is less than 1 percent of the abortions so how do you promote the other 99 percent, which is, “This child is inconvenient and unwanted so I’m going to kill it”?
THIS IS A NEW TACTIC, BUT SAME RESULT
Well, instead of debating whether you should do that or not and entering into that debate, they are now not simply going to teach medical students their trade of medicine — even the horrific trade of how to do abortions — but they’re now going to teach them how to counsel the sensitivities of those who see the abortion as the wrongful taking of an innocent life.
Now they’ve moved to the tactics of the philosophy of medicine rooted in a secular world and life view which says that anything that’s in the way of my personal definition is happiness, you can remove that, as defenseless as it might be. Now the techniques of how to either assuage women who have these convictions or change their convictions is being taught to the medical students as they become evangelists of the abortion industry.
TRAINED TO POINT TO “CHRISTIAN SITES”
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, it is interesting to note that this handbook recommends certain internet sites to refer women to. One of those sites is called “Faith Allowed.” It is rather stark, as they use Christian language to convince women to have abortions and that it’s alright.
They say they want every woman to feel confident and at peace with her decision to have an abortion. “We want every woman to feel supported. We believe that women are good, created in the image of God and able to make difficult decisions. We believe this power to make personal decisions is given to us by God.”
DR. REEDER: What is left out of that is that God gives us the information through divine revelation. “Not only have I made you in my image with the ability to make moral decisions, but here are the parameters of a moral decision.”
And one of the parameters is this: you shall not murder. And now the question is: is abortion murder or not? Well, let’s enter into the debate. Don’t try to give pablum language that assuages people — let’s enter into the debate.
THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF A NEW “MEDICAL” SECULAR EVANGELISM
Tom, it is very notable that, in this movement of teaching these students, it was acknowledged that we need to teach you to do that because there are some women who are “religious” who need to have their minds changed and need to be set at peace with the destruction of their child.
What is clearly being said is this: “We won the day in the public arena, but there’s this segment of our society that is ‘religious.’ Being religious, they have ethical dimensions — they believe that there’s some things right and some things wrong — and they actually believe that life begins at conception, which is scientifically verifiable, and they actually believe that life is sacred, which is a statement of divine revelation, and they actually believe that you shouldn’t take that life just because the life is inconvenient. Okay, what we’re going to do is not enter into the debate of their convictions, but we’re going to find a way to falsely assuage their convictions so that they will be talked into doing this.”
FALSE EVANGELISM YIELDS EMPTY PROMISES AND BROKEN WOMEN
Well, let me tell you what you’ve done. You may be successful with persuasive tactics to tell them, “It’s okay for you to kill this baby,” but I will promise you, deep down, because of what this website says — these images are made in the image of God — religious women obviously are aware of that, but the non-religious women, they are also aware of that.
Now, they may not be as sophisticated in their awareness of it as those who have been discipled, so every time you talk the person with convictions into doing it and even those that you’re doing it to, there is going to come a later date where they are going to have conviction, and shame, and guilt and fear and they’re going to have regret and remorse and you are the one that talked them into it.
CHRISTIANITY WILL BE THERE TO HEAL BUT THOSE “COUNSELORS” WILL NOT
Now let me tell you what we’re going to do when that happens. We’re going to reach into those women’s lives and we’re going to love them dearly — not that the decision was a right decision but tell them that there is a God Who loves you and that God will bring the forgiving power of Jesus Christ into your life, Who has paid for all of our sins and even those sins you can be aware of.
If you don’t believe that He can forgive you, we want to point you to three of the most prolific writers of the Bible: Moses, David and the apostle Paul. Paul was a religious terrorist who participated in the destruction of the lives of Christians, David was a conspirator to murder and Moses was guilty of manslaughter.
Our God’s grace and mercy cannot be stopped if you come to Him and we will be at work in your life to show you, first of all, God’s redeeming grace in the life of your child and that there is every evidence in the Word of God that such children have been numbered with the elect and under the atoning work of Christ and, secondly, that God can give you not only forgiveness but renewal and, the area that you feel the most conviction of right now, He can turn into a great virtue in your life as you become one who affirms the sanctity of life and the power of God’s redeeming grace in every life.
That’s what we will do. What will the abortionists do? They don’t do anything for them. Later on, when the consequences of the act of abortion that you talked them into are there, I can assure you they will not be there to pick up the pieces in your life — but let me assure you that we are. We are there because Jesus is there.
However, what we want to do is to get into your life before you make that decision and tell you there are other decisions. You’re being told the decision is alright and, by the way, it’s really the only valid decision.
No, there are better decisions in the situation of an unwanted pregnancy or an unplanned pregnancy. There are families that are ready to adopt and there are people that are ready to help you.
There’s a couple of things that are evident, Tom. If you think that secular humanism is not a religious act, just look at its evangelism. They’re teaching tactics to evangelize you into the destruction of life. Secondly, if you think that, as a Christian, your convictions are not going to be challenged by the secular humanists of our age, now you’re warned.
KNOW REAL EVANGELISM SO THAT YOU CAN SPOT THE FAKE
Recently, Billy Graham went to be with the Lord and previous to that was Ruth Graham — what a godly lady. In one of the crusades in England, they had the opportunity to sit down at a banquet table with the political powerful. And Ruth is just a very upfront person and she’s talking to this guy that we would know as a “Minister of Finance”.
And they got to talking about the problem of counterfeiting because of the technology that was making it easier and she said, “Well, how in he world do you train your agents to spot something that’s counterfeit? There just seems to be so many variations — how can you possibly do that?” And he looked at her and he said, “Well, Madam, I don’t try to teach them all of the possible counterfeits; I just try to teach them what the real thing is and, when you know the real thing, then you can spot the counterfeit.”
That’s what we need to do in evangelism and discipleship: teach the real thing. Coming to Christ is our life so that the spirit of God empowers us, the Word of God frames us and the glory of God propels us because of the love of God that has laid hold of us in Christ our Lord.
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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