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Let me say that I am more comfortable writing than speaking, but that the puppet show we just saw gives me an idea.. I can hide behind something and speak… solving the stagefright issue; I think they have it right!

Before I get into my little ‘talk’ here, I’d like to introduce my wife, Justina. There are two ways you can get to know Justina; just ‘be there’ after any event she’s in to chat with her, or read Proverbs 31. Either one will give the same picture and result.

So, how did a big, anti-social, biker-looking guy get involved with bioethics and the Sanctity of Human Life? My parents did not have children the old-fashioned way, and decided instead to adopt. I don’t know much about my birth mother, except that she gave me the gift of life, and that she also prepared me for eternal life by requesting that I be given to a Christian family. She gave me up at birth, and – after I had a two-week bout with jaundice – my parents picked me up from Children’s Hospital in San Francisco, CA in <mumble mumble>. They had the next baby boy put into the adoption system; two others were added the day I was born. We were one redhead, one blond, and one brunette. My parents, being blessed with the gift of discernment and having deep wisdom, picked the cutest; the redhead, yours truly. The joke was on them, when I was 8 months old, all my red hair fell out and I was bald. It grew back in blond, and as you can see, history does – indeed – repeat itself. I don’t expect it will come back this time; red, blond, brown or otherwise. Being adopted was the first step on my way to being an advocate for the unborn. Fast-forward a few decades and I attended a banquet for Hope here in town, and God’s time was ripe.. I signed on with Hope as a Board Member. I know that you’ve just heard an overview of Hope and its services, but suffice it to say that I believe that the staff and volunteers at Hope are devoted and faithful servants on a difficult battlefield. My hat is off to each of them.

[prayer], Father, help my words to be true and if in my human weakness I stumble and they are not, help them to fall on wise ears. Send each of the people in this room who submit to your will out into the world to hold up a banner that says, “every life matters, because each life is yours Lord”. In the name of Your Son, amen.[/prayer]

I’d like to talk about a hundred different things today, but because I respect you all more than that, I’d like to – instead – give an overview of the term “pro-life”, a construct for us to use as we think about this ideal we support and how to interact with others about our belief.

What does it mean to be “pro-life”? Do you have to be a Christian to be pro-life? There are some secular humanists that claim to be pro-life, so our ranks are broader than “Christians”. Sadly, there are also Christians that are not pro-life, so being a Christian is not a litmus test for a pro-life ideal. If we look at the pro-life movement through human eyes, we see a landscape that is confusing and complex. The issues don’t seem to have clear edges and much confusion exists around the fuzzy lines between ‘good’ and ‘bad’. We hear questions like:

·      Isn’t it better not to come into the world at all than come into it as an unwanted child? There are children that are born into drug addiction in the womb, and they go through terrible pain through withdrawal. Other children are born into terrible circumstances with parents that are unprepared. It is clear however that humans desire to live on, even if their circumstances are poor or lowly. We fight to survive. It is clear that living is preferable to almost all people than dying.

·      When does “life” begin? Can you prove that? Many theories abound about when ‘life’ begins. Some assert that it begins even before conception. Others say conception, more every day assert that implantation is the time ‘life’ begins. Some say that the date of viability or the time of birth is ‘obviously’ the time ‘life’ begins. Most with an answer agree that this is the place a slippery slope exists, but they still have an opinion.

·      On the topic of viability: What does ‘viable’ mean? Able to take in nourishment and process oxygen into carbon dioxide? Able to survive on their own? If this is the measure, there are 29 year-old men in Momma’s basement, playing an Xbox, that are not yet ‘alive’.

·      We admit that human life is more valuable than other forms of life, but human life cannot be there until the neocortex is fully formed (at 13 weeks). It is true that the neocortex is not fully formed until this date, that this structure only exists in mammals, and that the human neocortex is the most complex of all animals… this is a difficult argument to counter.. even if the timing seems a bit arbitrary. We’ll come back to that.

·      Even if we say that ‘life’ begins early on, it only matters when ‘personhood’ happens. Even if a thing is ‘alive’, it isn’t ‘important’ until it is a person. This cannot be early in the process. Again, this is an incredibly difficult timing to figure out, isn’t it? When does a fetus become a ‘person’? Is that timing the same with babies that all develop at slightly different rates?

·      We agree that both the baby and the mother are humans, but the mother’s right over her body is the overruling right. Her right ‘wins’. This idea is – frighteningly – widely held, even though a Founding Document of our country states that we are “created equal”, implying that our rights are equal.

·      When should life end? This is another – currently popular – topic in bioethics. There is a group – called Extropians – that believe that death should be conquered and that we should live a very long time, perhaps forever. They seek to do this through advances in science and medical technology.

In these short few questions, can you see how difficult the waters are through which we chart our course? If only there were a map, a beacon that would cut through the night and show us our way. A book perhaps, that holds the answer to how we are to view our world and how we should act. Folks, I suggest that this is that book [raise the Bible].

Folks, our society today is in trouble. Economic decay is beginning to hit home for us, even here in Wausau, WI with layoffs and company shutdowns. More important to solve than our economic blight, however, is our moral decay. More and more stories hit our front page every day that indicate we have lost our moral compass. Ex-husbands knifing ex-wives to death, a man gunning down an ex-girlfriend in a parking lot at work. How did we slide from the overt and purposeful protection of women through apathy into an active attack on women in so short a time?

The answer of course is sin and turning our face from God. God created us ‘tselem ‘elohiym, in the image of God. Satan hates God and wants to kill him. Since he cannot, he kills those made in His image, His children, and when he can, he targets the innocent, the helpless, the unborn.

If we replace our complex and rationalized worldviews with the word of the Lord, the points above become incredibly clear.

·      The first issue we covered… Isn’t it better not to come into the world at all than come into it as an unwanted child? Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. (Matt 10:29) Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you (Jer 1:5)  God wants each of His children and nothing happens here on this earth that He does not see. 

·      When does “life” begin? Ephraim’s glory • shall fly away like a bird— no birth, • no pregnancy, • no conception! (Hos 9:11) Behold, • you are barren and have not borne children, but you shall conceive and bear a son. (Judges 13:3) By faith Sarah • herself received power to conceive, (Hebrews 11:11). In these verses we see conception, pregnancy, and conception all tied together, equal in the eyes of the Lord, as the creation of ‘life’.

 ·      On the topic of viability: Back to Jeremiah 1:5. It seems that God knew us – and therefore valued us – well before conception. In His eyes, we already exist (did exist). We are ‘viable’ from the perspective of the One that does not change.

·      We admit that human life is more valuable than other forms of life, but .. In Scripture we see – clearly called out – that human life is set apart from other life. Adam was created differently and he was given dominion over the rest of life.  As far as the neocortical argument goes, the neocortex of any given baby already exists in God’s mind, and therefore that life is sacred to us.

·      Even if we say that ‘life’ begins early on, it only matters when ‘personhood’ happens. Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you (Jer 1:5). For someone else to ‘know’ you, you must be knowable, you must be a person.

·      We agree that both the baby and the mother are humans, but the mother’s right over her body is the overruling right. Her right ‘wins’. 

In Romans 9:21 Paul explains that we are the clay and that God is the potter. Does not the potter have rights over the clay? The Creator over the created? With a Christian worldview our ‘rights’ mean nothing. We act to bring glory to God and to Him forever. God’s will overrides whatever ‘right’ we think we have.

·      When should life end? Well, I stand with the Extropians on this one, and you may be shocked to know that God does too. We all believe that life should be eternal; we just believe that this comes through a confession of faith in the God become Man who died for us.

So, to truly understand the depth of value that life has, we must understand life from God’s perspective. He knew us before we were conceived, He has a plan for each of us, and He desires that we be with Him forever.

 So, do we then ignore our short and difficult time on this earth and focus only on the eternal? Retreat into the mountains as an ascetic? In John 10:10 we hear Christ’s words as He says, “I have come so that they may have life, and have it abundantly”.  Christ intends for us to have an abundant life as a believer. This doesn’t mean worldly riches; in fact, John goes on to describe the life of a shepherd, giving up his life for his sheep and explaining that His sacrifice would mean eternal life for His disciples. An abundant life is an eternal life.

I consider it a victory to be involved in the process of helping a mother decide to keep a baby’s heart beating for nine months of pregnancy until it is born, but I consider it an honor of the highest regard to share the gospel with the mother and father of that baby in the hopes that they will share with me in the ‘abundant life’, the life that is eternal.

Finally, as I close, I want to talk about what it means to be a Christian; a winsome Christian with a heart of service. People with other perspectives on this issue accuse us of having hatred for the mother, of wishing to ‘punish’ her. They say that we are very interested in a baby until it is born, and then could care less about its circumstances. Are they right? How then do we prove them wrong? Public prayer is one way, the chain for life is a wonderful visible reminder to people, apologetics and debate are another way, but Christ told us that others would know who we were – and by corollary what we stood for – “by our love”. St. Francis of Assisi said, “Wherever you go, preach Christ; and if necessary, use words”. By our gentle, deep, and accepting love for those involved in a situation where the sanctity of human life is concerned, we will affect people for eternal life.

Thank you for giving me your attention this afternoon, and may God go with each of you as you carry His message of life to others.

First, when someone comes to me with a problem in their life, I always ask them to stop looking out the window for the problem, and first look into the mirror for the problem. We can only change ourselves, and there are plenty of issues right there to deal with. I looked into the mirror and saw a man that was willing to pick the speck out of another’s eye, while ignoring the 2×4 in his own. I saw a man who – like the rest of society – was dazzled by bright and shiny things put forth by the media that are – almost assuredly – designed to make us stop looking in the mirror at our own issues. Why is reality TV and “bad news” so interesting? Because it fools us into thinking, “I am not like that person, so I am ok”. This is the very attitude that Christ condemned when speaking about the Pharisees. It was time to examine myself and why I had strong opinions on someone else’s sin.

Second, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It is just fate that has us toiling away in relative obscurity – with all the sins of Jamie Lynn and more – quietly and behind the scenes, with no cameras to capture our every fault. I guarantee you, if I had a camera watching me during every moment from the age of 8 or 9 on, I couldn’t show my face in public now! Isn’t it wonderful that we can hide our sin while we snipe at another’s? Makes you feel great that you don’t have “that” sin, doesn’t it? Or maybe you do/did, but you pick at Lynn Spears (their mother) for poor parenting, without knowing how – ultimately – your own children will turn out? We have all the sins others have, and frankly, if you really really hate Jamie Lynn, you must not be too far from her, because it takes similarity to breed proper hate. You cannot hate something you don’t personally understand.

Finally, I ask all of us, “Where is the man”!? Where is the 19 year-old male who has been having sex with a 16 year-old and committing (at least) a misdemeanor while doing so? Where is the father who was to teach Jamie what a good man looks like and how to demand more out of a man than a house and sexual activity? Am I raising my daughters in such a way that they will select a good man – from the precious few that there are – and will have an “order” to courting, marriage, child-creating, and child-raising? Am I raising my son to be a man that will cast aside his need for quick sexual release – as strong as that need can be – for his beloved as they court and marry? Am I raising my son to resist the sin of apathy and inaction; Adam’s sin in the garden? Am I fostering in him the desire and instinct to protect, rather than take advantage of; and to love unselfishly, rather than take what he can get?

To all of you who took up stones to cast at J.L.S., please drop them and go home. There’s nothing to see here; nothing that is, that you cannot already see in your ordinary home mirror. That is all..

On January 22 in 1973, again by a margin of 7 to 2, the highest court in our land decided that unborn babies had the same rights as slaves one hundred and fifty years ago. The rhetoric is the same today as it was then, “If you oppose abortion, don’t have one”… folks, I can’t let it go that easily. There is an innocent child suffering, someone is being affected, it isn’t just “personal” choice.

I know that there will soon come a day when the American people will speak as  one against abortion and Roe vs. Wade will be overturned. Soon after that decision is made, the same question will be asked of you that was asked of people in the 1960′s; and your child or your grandchild will turn to you and ask, “Where were you in this great war (on the unborn)”? I pray that I can answer, “I did everything I could do to stop it”.

“Because of the violence done to the oppressed,
because of the painful cries of the needy,
I will spring into action,” says the Lord.
“I will provide the safety they so desperately desire”.
-Psalms 12:5, The NET Bible 

First, we get right back to parenting. For young women, they get their identity as a woman from their father. What I mean is, they learn how to expect love and how to love men from their father. If he is absent, they often become promiscuous as they search for love and acceptance from men. If he is coarse, mean, and surly, they often become very passive in their relationships with men, turning into “doormats” and living in very subservient relationships. A present, gentle but firm, and loving father does not guarantee a well-adjusted, chaste daughter, but it is incredibly rare to find the latter without the former.

How a father interacts with women and how he treats his wife shows his son how to treat women when he strikes out on his own. If a father treats the wife as a second-class citizen, not listening to her opinions, mocking her, or making generally derogatory comments about women, the son can be expected to view women as less than men and will subsequently treat them as such. If a father womanizes, the son further learns to “use” women, that they are expendable, and that you need to protect yourself – not your wife – at all times. If a father is present, treats his wife like a queen, and avoids illicit contact with other women it does not guarantee a son that will champion for women and treat them well, but again, you’ll almost never find the latter without the former.

Second, methods like abortion (“emergency contraception” contained therein) actually cause men to be more promiscuous. It is a well known fact that men deal with things when they become emergencies, and generally not before that time. Retroactive methods like abortion are “custom built” for men because it allows them to be completely irresponsible and then deal with an “issue” when it “becomes an issue”. Men need to act in such a way that they measure the impact of their actions well in advance of the action, rather than taking a radical “fix it” approach when the action invariably results in an “issue”.

Third,  men are personally putting direct pressure on their women to abort. A common statement is, “If you carry this child in defiance of my desire for you to abort, I will break up with you, I will never pay a penny for the child, and no man will ever want you again”. What the man is really saying is, “I don’t want a child because they scare me and I am too immature to deal with one, I am fearful of the situation and will therefore control you to control it, I have no respect for your wishes and am willing to break your soul in half to protect myself, and I am the only man that is willing to keep you because I will know your dirty little secret”.

Girls, listen to me carefully; while I am fully sold out for committed, two-parent families,  that guy is not what you need or want, regardless your decision to abort or keep the child. What you desire and deserve to have – regardless your prior decisions in life – is a man who will hold you up, who will protect your heart and soul, and who has enough faith in you to say, “I am here for you, whatever you do”, and then follows through on that promise.

Men, if you are that guy, please change. You may be overcoming a huge past, you might be the first male in your family to become a man, but please change. A better world is not built by men who protect themselves before others and who tear down their women to do it. A real man does not act that way, and I am begging you to be more than that. You can be a good father, and a good husband – as frightening a world as that seems – and building that life
results in lasting value. It’s a challenge, and you are up to it.

Finally, guys, if you are married, engaged, or related to a woman who has had an abortion; you need to know that this has lasting effects on her. Sexual intimacy can be tainted with bloodguilt, relationship intimacy can be destroyed by a lack of trust in men, and moral guidance can be lacking because of unresolved guilt without forgiveness. She needs your strength and she needs your accepting love. Healing from this experience takes a long time, but it is possible, and it is made easier with a man who is understanding and gentle.

And to those women who have been told that a man will not marry a single woman with a child, I’m here to tell you that is a lie. I married a single woman with a two-year old child, and that precious little girl is my eldest daughter (of three children) and she’ll be sixteen in a couple of weeks.

There are many positions held – by Christians – on birth control. Some take a “natural family planning” approach, some a “barrier method only” approach, yet more take a surgical approach, others take the Pill, and so on. Which of these is compatible with my personal belief at the beginning of this post?

Certainly natural family planning is compatible, since we are using only timing and conditions to decide whether or not to engage in sexual activity. Withdrawing is also compatible with this view (regardless the argument that Onan’s sin was withdrawing, his sin was rather a decision not to take on the responsibility for his brother’s wife Genesis 38:8-10). Both of these methods – when practiced with frequency – result in rather large families.

Surgical and barrier methods (condoms) also seem compatible with the premise that life begins at conception. These methods prevent a sperm and an egg from joining together in the first place, thus there is no conception to protect as a life.

Let me pause for a moment and discuss why I believe in birth control at all. There are many Christians of strong conviction that state that any form of birth control is wrong. “God should decide if and when we become pregnant”, is the general statement. Let me explain why this view is not one I personally hold. First, it is biblically unnecessary for me to hold this view. That is, the Bible does not authoritatively state that this is the case. Second, God has given me wisdom to use, to discern, and to think. It is the height of ignorance for me to throw a ball in the air and subsequently state, “If it is God’s will the ball fall back down, it will fall”. God has already put a physical construct in place that will result in that ball returning to earth in a consistent manner. Likewise, if a man and woman that are of age engage in sexual intercourse, there is – with incredible consistency – a child conceived. This is not magical, it is a result of the system that God has created. Third, reason dictates that if this were to be a “God’s specific will moment”, that there would be some rough equity in sperm and egg count. It is clear that one egg, held in a fairly confined area, flooded with hundreds of millions of sperm, is designed to result in pregnancy and not specifically designed only or necessarily* to result in a specific sperm fertilizing an egg. This tells me that God’s plan for impregnation was created to be foolproof rather than an intricate joining of two very specific things (like marriage), which is a good thing since we are fools!

Lastly, before continuing with birth control, let me discuss why I disbelieve in the concept of “sex only for the purpose of procreation”. I disbelieve this for the same reason that I think we should either tell our children to marry later in life or to save themselves until marriage; it flies in the face of reason to do it otherwise. It is abundantly clear to me in the Scriptures that God created us to be sexual beings and that this sexual union finds its fulfillment between a married man and woman as an expression of love. While sex often results in pregnancy, Paul calls out the idea that if we abstain (another form of birth control) in marriage that we should do it only for a short time and then only for the purpose of dedicated prayer (1 Cor 7:5). It is clear that Paul is saying that temptation can take hold if we abstain from proper and regular sexual activity in marriage. Also, the Bible makes it clear in Genesis 2 that woman was created to fill a relationship void in man, not just to bear children. This love and closeness bears witness to the idea that a sexual union is a relationship-builder, and not just a baby-maker.

Back to birth control and we’ve one big one left to discuss, and that’s “the Pill”. While I won’t go into all of the versions of the Pill and the specific actions of each, suffice it to say that I always viewed the Pill to be a “chemical barrier method”, and as such, thought it was perfectly fine to use. Since a barrier method fits with my first premise, my wife and I thought nothing of using this method early in our marriage to prevent pregnancy. Since then, I have changed my mind; let me explain why. Simply, the makers of the Pill are disingenuous (at a minimum) about the action of the Pill, and at the most are purposefully dishonest about its action. The Pill not only attempts to prevent the sperm coming in contact with the egg, but as a backup measure also creates an inhospitable environment for a fertilized egg in the womb. This means that when conception does occur, that the Pill creates an environment where a successfully fertilized egg is flushed from the body. Many people I’ve explained this to ask, “Come on! How often does that really happen”? Does it matter? If I take a pistol, hand it to you, and ask you to blindly fire it into a space where a hundred people could fit, would you do it? Would you do it even though it is “incredibly unlikely” that you would shoot and kill the seven people scattered in that space? The bare facts are that the Pill is designed with this “backup method” in mind and that 7% of the time it is this backup method**that protects the mother from pregnancy by flushing a fertilized egg out of the womb. This action is wholly incompatible with my first premise which is that life begins at conception. For this reason, I would now encourage my wife and daughters not to use the Pill as a method of birth control and have changed my own position on the subject.

Before I end up with a rush of email stating that my assertions about the Pill are incorrect, please just email me and I will send you my references so that you can study them for yourself.

http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=4a4dabc3bdccdb3c60bd 

*this is not to say that God does not control which of the hundreds of million sperm penetrates and fertilizes the egg, just that the design does not promote the idea

** My 7% figure is taken from a drug company’s internal literature .