WILBERFORCE DID NOT GIVE UP, AND NEITHER SHOULD WE [PRO-LIFE ARTICLE]

            In loving memory of William Wilberforce, who died on this date, July 29, 1833. I will post this Pro-Life article to remember him. 

 

William Wilberforce’s famous quote

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://izquotes.com/quote/278082]

INTERNET SOURCE: http://liveactionnews.org/wilberforce-didnt-give-up-neither-should-we/

Wilberforce didn’t give up, and neither should we

7:26 pm, Jul 18, 2016 John Wesley Reid

Abortion is a reality that must not remain in a stagnant state of concern. We must remain in forward motion. To live in comfort while acknowledging yet neglecting the genocide around us is the utmost in selfishness.

1. “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.”

Concern, void of action, will eventually lead to apathy, and where apathy becomes comfortable, the issues are inevitably forgotten. And that is a tragically hopeless state to be in.

I had a friend challenge me once to consider every way I treated people that day. Then he said to imagine everyone I saw the next day wearing a shirt labeled “image-bearer of God.” God did not see a baby being formed and then decide to assume responsibility for it. He loved that child long before a cell held any form of their identity. When we look away, we look away from an image-bearer of their Creator – OUR Creator. 

This isn’t a guilt trip– it’s a reality check.

2. “We are too young to realize that certain things are impossible…so we will do them anyway.”

Wilberforce spent 28 years combatting the slave trade. He knew the mirage of the impossible. He saw it, heard it, and feared it. But his persistence proved the impossible to be nothing but a lure towards his victory.

Wilberforce faced two forms of opposition from his fellow legislators: political and personal. Members of parliament supported the slave trade because their constituents demanded it. But members of parliament also had slaves of their own. Giving up slavery would mean sacrificing the desires of their constituents and thus likely their career, but it also meant surrendering their own personal conveniences.

Politicians support abortion because their constituents demand it…but politicians aren’t regularly having abortions. It’s political, not as much personal. That’s a barrier we do not have to cross that Wilberforce did. Also, not all of us are carrying a terminal ailment that Wilberforce carried with him throughout his journey.

3. “God Almighty has set before me two Great Objects: the suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners.”

Wilberforce ran on a platform of justice. But his ferocity was not his own, nor did he take the credit. Instead, he credited God with this assignment and it was his reverence towards God that prompted his obedience to follow. He elaborates on reformation of manners to mean the moral compass of society. He admitted that a victory of abolition wouldn’t be possible by votes alone but that his pursuit must be supplemented by changing the hearts of his fellow men. This is important. Many pro-choice, and even some quasi pro-life advocates, will condemn pro-life legislation and instead push for creating a culture where abortion, though legal, wouldn’t be an issue because people would be responsible.

While this is part of Wilberforce’s conviction, he didn’t push for moral reform at the sacrifice of legislative efforts. His strategy consisted of a hybrid approach of change and law.

The idea of no women wanting an abortion is rather dystopian and ultimately unrealistic. To be fair, I don’t think anyone is suggesting otherwise. However, even if we get to a point in society where we reduce abortions by 90% due to a change of heart, that 10% of babies still matter and there must be legislative security for their right to life. It will take a long time to change the hearts of such a stubborn culture that we live in. No baby should have to die at the expense of society’s inability to learn quickly the value of life and the horror in killing the innocent.

This generation can see the demise of abortion. WE can do this. 

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JOHN CALVIN IS PRO-LIFE [PRO-LIFE QUOTE]

  

[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.azquotes.com/quote/702686]

For the fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being, and it is a monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man's house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.

AUTHOR: John Calvin (French: Jean Calvin, born Jehan Cauvin: 10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564) was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530. After religious tensions provoked a violent uprising against Protestants in France, Calvin fled to Basel, Switzerland, where he published the first edition of his seminal work The Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536. In that year, Calvin was recruited by William Farel to help reform the church in Geneva. The city council resisted the implementation of Calvin and Farel's ideas, and both men were expelled. At the invitation of Martin Bucer, Calvin proceeded to Strasbourg, where he became the minister of a church of French refugees. He continued to support the reform movement in Geneva, and was eventually invited back to lead its church. Following his return, Calvin introduced new forms of church government and liturgy, despite the opposition of several powerful families in the city who tried to curb his authority. During this time, the trial of Michael Servetus was extended by libertines in an attempt to harass Calvin. However, since Servetus was also condemned and wanted by the Inquisition, outside pressure from all over Europe forced the trial to continue. Following an influx of supportive refugees and new elections to the city council, Calvin's opponents were forced out. Calvin spent his final years promoting the Reformation both in Geneva and throughout Europe. Calvin was a tireless polemic and apologetic writer who generated much controversy. He also exchanged cordial and supportive letters with many reformers, including Philipp Melanchthon and Heinrich Bullinger. In addition to the Institutes, he wrote commentaries on most books of the Bible, as well as theological treatises and confessional documents. He regularly preached sermons throughout the week in Geneva. Calvin was influenced by the Augustinian tradition, which led him to expound the doctrine of predestination and the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation of the human soul from death and eternal damnation. Calvin's writing and preachings provided the seeds for the branch of theology that bears his name. The Reformed and Presbyterian churches, which look to Calvin as a chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world.

CLARENCE THOMAS SLAMS SCOTUS ON ABORTION LAW

  

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.lifenews.com/2016/06/27/clarence-thomas-slams-supreme-court-bending-the-rules-to-create-putative-right-to-abortion/

Clarence Thomas Slams Supreme Court “Bending the Rules” to Create “Putative Right to Abortion”

National   Steven Ertelt   Jun 27, 2016   |   11:43AM    Washington, DC

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spared no criticism in his dissent today in the Texas case where the high court invalidated health and safety measures that have protected women from dangerous abortions and saved the lives of thousands of unborn babies.

Thomas said the Supreme Court was doing the bidding of the abortion industry and deciding to “bend the rules” to create a “putative right to abortion.”

Justice Clarence Thomas, who authored the dissenting opinion, wrote, “Today the Court strikes down two state statutory provisions in all of their applications, at the behest of abortion clinics and doctors. That decision exemplifies the Court’s troubling tendency ‘to bend the rules when any effort to limit abortion, or even to speak in opposition to abortion, is at issue.’”

He continued, “… today’s decision creates an abortion exception to ordinary rules of res judicata, ignores compelling evidence that Texas’ law imposes no unconstitutional burden, and disregards basic principles of the severability doctrine. I write separately to emphasize how today’s decision perpetuates the Court’s habit of applying different rules to different constitutional rights— especially the putative right to abortion.”

As to the bending of the rules, here’s what Thomas wrote:

Thomas added: “Eighty years on, the Court has come full circle. The Court has simultaneously transformed judicially created rights like the right to abortion into preferred constitutional rights, while disfavoring many of the rights actually enumerated in the Constitution. But our Constitution renounces the notion that some constitutional rights are more equal than others. A plaintiff either possesses the constitutional right he is asserting, or not—and if not, the judiciary has no business creating ad hoc exceptions so that others can assert rights that seem especially important to vindicate. A law either infringes a constitutional right, or not; there is no room for the judiciary to invent tolerable degrees of encroachment. Unless the Court abides by one set of rules to adjudicate constitutional rights, it will continue reducing constitutional law to policy-driven value judgements until the last threads of its legitimacy disappear.”

“I remain fundamentally opposed to the Court’s abortion jurisprudence,” he concluded.

Julie Schmit-Albin, Executive Director of Nebraska Right to Life, told LifeNews applauded the high court justice.

“Justice Clarence Thomas’ dissent in this case is very poignant and speaks to a Court which is bending over backwards to protect the abortion industry which preys on women and kills over a million unborn babies a year,” she said.

INTERNET SOURCE: http://thefederalist.com/2016/06/27/8-best-quotes-from-clarence-thomass-texas-abortion-dissent/

8 Best Quotes From Clarence Thomas’s Texas Abortion Dissent

June 27, 2016 By Bre Payton

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of abortion proponents today, striking down a Texas state law that required abortion clinics to adhere to the same health codes as outpatient facilities and that all abortionists must have hospital admitting privileges.

In the majority opinion, the justices who ruled in favor of abortion advocates in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt argued Texas’s laws were in contention with a 1992 Supreme Court ruling (Casey) in which the court had determined that laws restricting abortions must not place an “undue burden” on a woman seeking to terminate her pregnancy.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion ripping apart the court’s tendency to bend over backwards to accommodate abortion. Here are eight of the sickest burns in that opinion.

1. The court’s interpretation of “undue burden” is confusing as hell.

Today’s opinion does resemble Casey in one respect: After disregarding significant aspects of the Court’s prior jurisprudence, the majority applies the undue-burden standard in a way that will surely mystify lower courts for years to come.

2. Judges aren’t medical experts — even if they try to appoint themselves as such.

Moreover, by second-guessing medical evidence and making its own assessments of ‘quality of care’ issues. . . the majority reappoints this Court as ‘the country’s ex officio medical board with powers to disapprove medical and operative practices and standards throughout the United States.’ . . . And the majority seriously burdens States, which must guess at how much more compelling their interests must be to pass muster and what ‘commonsense inferences’ of an undue burden this Court will identify next.

3. Arbitrary standards mess up constitutional law.

As the Court applies whatever standard it likes to any given case, nothing but empty words separates our constitutional decisions from judicial fiat.

4. The court just makes stuff up to get what it wants.

The illegitimacy of using ‘made-up tests’ to ‘displace longstanding national traditions as the primary determinant of what the Constitution means’ has long been apparent. . . The Constitution does not prescribe tiers of scrutiny. The three basic tiers— ‘rational basis,’ intermediate, and strict scrutiny—’are no more scientific than their names suggest, and a further element of randomness is added by the fact that it is largely up to us which test will be applied in each case.’. . .  But the problem now goes beyond that. If our recent cases illustrate anything, it is how easily the Court tinkers with levels of scrutiny to achieve its desired result.

5. Muzzling free speech? No problem. Defining marriage? Good luck.

Likewise, it is now easier for the government to restrict judicial candidates’ campaign speech than for the Government to define marriage—even though the former is subject to strict scrutiny and the latter was supposedly subject to some form of rational-basis review.

6. Made-up rights don’t trump those enumerated in the Constitution.

The Court has simultaneously transformed judicially created rights like the right to abortion into preferred constitutional rights, while disfavoring many of the rights actually enumerated in the Constitution. But our Constitution renounces the notion that some constitutional rights are more equal than others. A plaintiff either possesses the constitutional right he is asserting, or not—and if not, the judiciary has no business creating ad hoc exceptions so that others can assert rights that seem especially important to vindicate. A law either infringes a constitutional right, or not; there is no room for the judiciary to invent tolerable degrees of encroachment.

7. There are too many legal exceptions for made-up rights.

Our law is now so riddled with special exceptions for special rights that our decisions deliver neither predictability nor the promise of a judiciary bound by the rule of law.

8. Some may call the decision a victory, but it’s a loss for America.

Today’s decision will prompt some to claim victory, just as it will stiffen opponents’ will to object. But the entire Nation has lost something essential. The majority’s embrace of a jurisprudence of rights-specific exceptions and balancing tests is ‘a regrettable concession of defeat—an acknowledgement that we have passed the point where ‘law,’ properly speaking, has any further application.’

The decision is the most significant abortion ruling since the Carhart ruling in 2007, which upheld a federal ban on partial-birth abortions.

Photo Mark Wilson/Getty

Bre Payton is a staff writer at The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter.