One
of my beloved Christian leaders, Chuck Colson passed away on this date, 21
April 2012. In loving memory of him, I will post the Christian article on
Pro-Life of the month from him.
NOTICE: The following
article is written by the author itself and not by me, I am not trying to
violate their copyright. I will give some information on them.
PAGE TITLE: http://www.breakpoint.org/bp-home
ARTICLE TITLE: Horror of Abortion –
What We Can’t Not Know
DATE: Friday 28 January
2011
AUTHOR: Chuck Colson
AUTHOR
INFORMATION: Charles "Chuck" Wendell Colson (October 16,
1931 – April 21, 2012) was a Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon
from 1969 to 1973, and later a noted Evangelical Christian leader and cultural
commentator.
Once known as President Nixon's "hatchet
man," Colson gained notoriety at the height of the Watergate scandal, for
being named as one of the Watergate Seven, and pleaded guilty to obstruction of
justice for attempting to defame Pentagon Papers defendant Daniel Ellsberg. In
1974, he served seven months in the federal Maxwell Prison in Alabama as the
first member of the Nixon administration to be incarcerated for
Watergate-related charges.
Colson became a Christian in 1973. His mid-life
conversion to Christianity sparked a radical life change that led to the
founding of his non-profit ministry Prison Fellowship and to a focus on
Christian worldview teaching and training. Colson was also a public speaker and
the author of more than 30 books. He was the founder and chairman of The Chuck
Colson Center for Christian Worldview, which is "a research, study, and
networking center for growing in a Christian worldview", and while he was
alive included Colson's daily radio commentary, BreakPoint, which was heard in
its original format on more than 1,400 outlets across the United States.
Colson received 15 honorary doctorates, and
in 1993 was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, the world's
largest annual award (over US$1 million) in the field of religion, given
to a person who "has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's
spiritual dimension". He donated this prize to further the work of Prison
Fellowship, as he did all his speaking fees and royalties. In 2008, he was
awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President George W. Bush.
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Chuck
Colson
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Two recent news stories shocked pro-lifers
and pro-choicers alike. In a sad way, that’s good news.
The statistic has everyone reeling: According
to a recent survey, forty-one percent of pregnancies in New York City end in
abortion. Forty-one percent.
Nearly half.
As you might expect, pro-lifers are deeply
concerned, and already trying to find ways to bring that number down.
Archbishop Timothy Dolan to name one, called a news conference to say that the
church would be stepping up its efforts to encourage and help women in crisis
pregnancies.
But pro-choicers weren’t too excited about
this news either. The New
York Times—hardly a pro-life bastion—reported, “No one is exactly
celebrating. . . . Even abortion rights advocates expressed some concern about
the numbers, trying to change the conversation to a broader one on reproductive
health.”
The Times
noted that the easy access to abortion makes the city a “magnet . . . for
doctors who wish to practice without restrictions [and] for women who want to
live in an atmosphere of sexual self-determination.”
Those are, of course, noble and laudable
desires according to the pro-choice folks. And yet the tone of the article is
distinctly uneasy. It quotes late-term abortionist Dr. Robert Berg, who says
his patients tend to be “hostile” to him, treating him like “a punching bag”
even though he’s providing a service that they’ve asked for.
If abortion is a morally neutral medical
procedure, as the pro-choicers would have us believe, why all the angst coming
from people who are getting abortions? I think it all comes back to what J.
Budziszewski calls “what we can’t not know.”
Why would a woman be angry at an abortionist?
Because he is about to kill her child, and any woman knows that is wrong. She
can’t help but know it. None of us can. It’s one of the deepest truths written
on our hearts—that human life is sacred, and destroying an innocent life in the
womb is one of the most violent acts imaginable.
The recent arrest of Dr. Kermit Gosnell in
Philadelphia dragged that ugly truth into the spotlight. Gosnell ran a “house
of horrors” where babies were slaughtered with scissors, where some of their
mothers died as well, and where some of the babies’ body parts were kept in
jars.
The nation was horrified—but why? Late-term
abortions often involve killing babies with scissors—the only difference is
that it’s usually done as the baby is still emerging from the birth canal, not
after it’s all the way out. Some difference.
But when Gosnell made the news, we were all
reminded of what we can’t not know—that it’s wrong to kill babies in this way,
or in any other way.
Eric Metaxas, author of Bonhoeffer, has written
that the grand jury report on Gosnell may become the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of the
pro-life movement. I hope he’s right. It’s tragic that it takes something as
drastic as a baby’s foot in a jar, or a 41 percent abortion rate in a major
city, to remind everybody that abortion is an unjustifiable travesty.
But when we see even pro-choicers getting
upset about these things, then we know that the truth is written on their hearts
just as it is on ours.
May the day quickly come when they can no
longer ignore it.
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