Thursday, July 7, 2022
Good afternoon.
Welcome back to O’Bservations, your calm and cheerful oasis amid the Slough of Despond (one of my favorite phrases from The Pilgrim’s Progress) that is progressive secularism in the United States of America.
Not being of such liberal persuasion, I greeted this year’s Fourth of July with a hearty “Huzzah,” and renewed trust in one of our most esteemed institutions.
We still have a supreme governing document in the United States, apparently – it’s called the Constitution. Given events of the last few years with Covid lockdowns and first graders being taught to change their gender without parental consent, I wasn’t entirely sure we still lived in a country where the rule of law exists.
Even more remarkable is not just that the Constitution exists but there are still sober-minded justices at the U.S. Supreme Court who defend its existence, at great personal cost. They read that document very carefully and interpret it, without fear or favor, despite the extraordinary threats and intimidation hurled at them in recent months (more on that in a moment).
Among progressives, however, celebrating the Fourth this year was … how shall I put this … conflicted.
National Public Radio (which I once listened to regularly) suspended a 33-year tradition this Fourth of reading the Declaration of Independence on air. In its place were two Harvard academics discussing Thomas Jefferson’s racism.
In Orlando, Florida, the town fathers sent out this shocking statement: “A lot of people probably don’t want to celebrate our nation right now, and we can’t blame them. When there is so much division, hate and unrest, why on earth would you want to have a party celebrating any of it?” The city issued an immediate apology when citizens expressed outrage.
And here in Pittsburgh, Gisele Barreto Fetterman – wife of Pennsylvania’s ultra-progressive (and goofy) Lt. Governor John Fetterman, amazingly the Democratic Party candidate for U.S. Senator in this fall’s election (let that sink in for a minute) – tweeted her support for a group of furries while they paraded downtown last weekend with signs that said, “Cancel the Fourth,” and “Feed Scotus to the Wolves.”
(For those unaware, furries are people who dress up in animal costumes. They were in town for their annual “Anthrocon” convention, which returned to Pittsburgh after a Covid break. I am NOT making up any of the above, though I surely wish I were.)
Orlando and the furries (sounds like a woebegone rock band) were protesting the U.S. Supreme Court’s monumental ruling, revealed two weeks ago, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
If you believe the news reports emanating from formerly august news organizations (one word of advice: don’t), the Supreme Court has finally unleashed Armageddon, from which the nation will never recover. The enemy in this war are the five men and one woman in Washington, D.C., who wear black robes, and have the unimaginable audacity to assert that constitutional rights should be limited to what the document actually says.
(I will pause while you consider this dark but very funny item from the Babylon Bee, the satiric Christian site. Playing off the recent intimidation directed at Justice Brett Kavanaugh, to alter his vote, which included a failed murder attempt, the Bee suggested he should burn “down his home just to get it over with.”)
Here’s a quick sampling of the warfare-laden headlines which were not satire but actually appeared in (once) reputable news outlets, online or in print.
The reliably partisan Washington Post breathlessly proclaimed: “The Supreme Court declares war on modern America.” Vanity Fair said: “Supreme Court has declared war on governing,” when the justices ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency had grossly overextended its authority when it issued regulations related to climate change. And the Guardian in the U.K. topped them all with this truly remarkable headline: “The U.S. Supreme Court has declared war on the Earth’s future.”
I guess all that’s left is for the justices to declare war on another planet? Perhaps they can take that up in their next term.
Hyperbole aside, abortion is a deadly serious matter. Depending upon your perspective, the decision to overturn Roe was either cause for joyous celebration or violent protest. Some national media outlets have started referring to it as the decision to “ban” abortion. If only that were true. Sadly, it’s not.
With Roe now invalidated as a constitutional right, abortion law reverts to each individual state. In half of the states, as this Wall Street Journal editorial explains, that means abortion could soon become illegal.
In the other half of the states (including Pennsylvania), laws exist which continue to permit abortions far longer into a pregnancy than in most European countries (where laws generally bar the procedure after 12 weeks; see graphic below). In New York, our neighbor to the north which is now advertising itself as an abortion destination, a woman may terminate a pregnancy at any time up until birth.
Personally, I jumped for joy when I heard Roe v. Wade had been struck down. What Christian wouldn’t? I thought of the description in Luke (1:41) where we are told that John the Baptist, in the womb of Elizabeth, “leaped” for joy when Mary, carrying Jesus, came near.
I thought of the many evangelicals, Catholics and Protestants, who worked tirelessly, for 50 years, to form organizations that help pregnant women and promote the alternative of adoption by establishing crisis pregnancy centers. In our own midst, there have been people like Rick Wolling, Sue Burditt and Bob Thomson, who championed the cause of life, decade after decade.
“We, the Session of Beverly Heights, hereby affirm the sanctity of human life and the right of all human beings to the protection of that life,” reads the resolution that our Session adopted in 1983. “We believe that the biblical principle of the sacredness of human life … compels us to work for the protection of life.”
I thought of the people who have gathered each January since 1974 on the National Mall in Washington for the March for Life. I have participated in the last two. Being among so many young people (like the little girl below), who kept the abominable practice of killing babies before the public year after year, but did so peacefully and with solemn dignity, was wonderfully life- and faith-affirming (and warming despite the cold weather).
I thought of the conservatives who, for 50 years, worked tirelessly to reverse Roe in the courts. “The overturning of Roe v. Wade was 50 years in the making,” explains this story in the Wall Street Journal.
I thought of the many people who unsuccessfully try to have children, and the many women who mourn miscarriages and struggle with the pain of childlessness (some in my own family).
And I thought of the God who was faithful even while our nation was not. Indeed, it’s surely not hyperbole to say that the more than 63 million babies aborted during the Roe era were a genocidal atrocity. For perspective, that’s more lives lost than the present-day population of Italy.
The count of babies killed during Roe staggers the mind. According to estimates from the Guttmacher Institute (which supports abortion rights), abortion has claimed 63,459,781 lives (as of early May). That averages about 1.3 million lives lost in each of the 49 years since Roe legalized the practice. To put that number in perspective, total death from Covid in the United States (which generated national hysteria, lockdowns and extraordinary constitutional abuses) is slightly more than 1 million in the past two and a half years.
But it would be equally atrocious if Christians failed to care for those who may be now born but unloved and unwanted. It’s time for every believer to step up and fully embrace LIFE in its totality. Not just in the womb, in other words, but once a baby is born.
For that reason, I loved what Tate Reeves, a Christian and the governor of Mississippi, told the Daily Wire immediately after the Court’s decision was revealed.
“It’s never been about just simply winning a court case,” Gov. Reeves said (comments passed on to me by Deacon Nancy Marshall). “It’s always [been] about the next phase – which is creating a culture of life [my italics added] in our state and across the country.”
Mississippi has “invested millions and millions and millions of dollars over the last couple of years in our child protection services and agency,” Gov. Reeves explained, wisely preparing for the day Roe might become history. “We are making it easier to adopt a child in our state. … [We are] making it easier for adoptions because we want to help every child find a forever home.”
I found Gov. Reeves’ comments persuasive and poignant for several reasons. It was his state’s defense of the legislation Mississippi enacted in 2018 which triggered the Supreme Court to rule in the so-called Dobbs case (the name of the top officer of the Mississippi Department of Health, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, who was sued by the state’s only abortion clinic, which challenged the law).
Gov. Reeves, a man of resolute faith, did not thump his chest in victory but demonstrated Christian humility, charity and love. And he is the top official of Mississippi, the second state to secede from the Union on the eve of the Civil War (South Carolina was the first). Mississippi then desperately fought to maintain slavery, the Great Sin of the Old South. Now the Magnolia State had played a pivotal role in tearing down the Great Sin of Modern Times, abortion.
God sure does move in remarkable ways.
Gov. Reeves’ principled demeanor stands in stark contrast to that of President Biden, who has said he will do “everything in my power” to reclaim national abortion rights. That could mean using federal lands (including possibly National Parks such as Mount Rushmore) to set up abortion centers; abolishing the filibuster in the U.S. Senate (which requires 60 votes to pass most legislation); and even perhaps adding additional justices to the Supreme Court.
While Mr. Biden falsely calls the six justices who voted to repeal Roe an “extremist court,” it was in fact the original Roe court that was extremist.
Justice Samuel Alito makes that crystal clear in the majority opinion he wrote on Dobbs, in which the justices finally confirmed what most legal scholars knew ever since the Roe decision. Even the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, no conservative, was sharply critical of the legal contortions and fabrications that were employed to produce Roe.
“The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion,” Justice Alito writes. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.” It surely has.
Issued on Jan. 22, 1973, the original Roe opinion was authored by Justice Harry Blackmun. In this column in the American Spectator, Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College, explains the background that led Justice Blackmun to “invent a ‘constitutional right’ to abortion out of nothing actually in the U.S. Constitution.”
This interpretation is supported by many, many constitutional scholars, both liberal and conservative. Among them is Akhil Reed Amar, a widely published and respected professor of constitutional law at Yale Law School and self-described pro-choice Democrat. Nevertheless, as he explains in this article in the Wall Street Journal published after the May 2 draft opinion was leaked, he opposed Roe.
“The Court’s ruling in [Roe] was simply not grounded in what the Constitution says or in the long-standing, widely embraced mores and practices,” he writes. “There is nothing radical, illegitimate or improperly political in what Justice Alito has written.”
The political Left would like you to believe otherwise. John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate in this November’s election to represent Pennsylvania in the United States Senate, tweeted this May: “Let’s be clear: The right to an abortion is sacred” [my italics added].
It was an extraordinary tweet, as it exemplifies the wicked exploitation of language that progressives employ today in support of their objectives, at any cost. Regardless of your position on abortion, most people surely would agree that using the word “sacred” to justify a right to kill unborn babies is the very definition of something that’s NOT sacred.
Profane is an apt descriptor of abortion. Think of how the practice of killing babies – as an offering to Molech – is described in the book of Second Kings. It is “abomination” in God’s eyes.
This is the very reason Roe never won support in the court of public opinion, as Grove City College Professor Carl Trueman brilliantly explains in First Things, the respected journal of religion and public life.
“Abortion is desecration. That is why it raises such passionate emotions on both sides of the debate. Sex and conception create new life and that means they possess – or should possess – a mysterious aura of the sacred” [my italics added; this is the correct usage of the word, Mr. Fetterman].
He continues: “Attitudes about them therefore go to the heart of what, if anything, society thinks it means to be human. But the case for abortion teaches that new life is simply a biological process that adds a new part of a woman’s body, and that this can be removed when convenient. Terminating a pregnancy is therefore of no more significance than clipping a fingernail or cauterizing an unsightly wart. Our society intuitively knows that this is nonsense.”
What’s also nonsense is the Left’s response since the Roe decision was announced. It stands in stark contrast to how Americans reacted in 2015 when the court, in a 5-4 decision, legalized gay marriage. While many Americans disagreed with the outcome of Obergefell v. Hodges, it was accepted. No fence went up around the Supreme Court. There were no death threats aimed at the justices who had voted in favor of it or reprisals against anyone.
Contrast that with the hysteria and violence now. When the draft opinion overturning Roe was leaked on May 2, it led to immediate intimidation directed at the justices.
It is a felony to threaten a federal judge. One would-be assassin was arrested outside the Maryland home of Justice Kavanaugh. The reprisals against the justices have only intensified since the decision was announced. Yet one local official in Montgomery County, Maryland, where two of the justices live, refuses to enforce local laws which prohibit picketing against private homes, as this editorial in the Wall Street Journal explains.
The official compares his county’s law – which prohibits a crowd from amassing to scream expletives at someone’s private home – to “Putin’s Russia,” the editorial says. But it’s the law – and you are the county executive! No matter. The law is what I say it is. Interesting country we now live in. An elected official deciding for himself what laws he will or will not enforce sounds more like Putin’s Russia to me.
Besides intimidation directed at the justices, there have also been nearly 50 documented acts of vandalism and violence aimed at pro-life pregnancy centers, churches and individuals since the draft opinion was leaked. Many (such as the one shown in the photograph below from North Carolina and described in this news report) have been orchestrated by a group calling itself Jane’s Revenge, a sort of pro-choice Ku Klux Klan.
“While the Biden administration snapped into action when the National School Boards Association asked Biden for help with ‘domestic terrorists’ at school board meetings,” TGIF recently reported, “there hasn’t been a peep from the White House about actual domestic terrorism happening across the country. Christian pro-life pregnancy centers continue to be firebombed.”
Today being three days past the 246th anniversary of our first Independence Day, I’d like to end with a story about the United States Constitution, the document which has been at the center of this past month’s momentous decision on abortion. It is a story from Christian author Eric Metaxas’ marvelous and majestic book, If You Can Keep It.
When ratified in 1787, the Constitution conferred upon the people of our emerging country a radical promise and solemn responsibility.
The promise was that the people, not an emperor or king but “we the people,” would govern themselves, but only if they were equal to the solemn responsibility conferred upon them.
The freedoms given to them under that supreme governing document would have to be vigilantly maintained and respected by future generations. Hence, the existence of a “Supreme” Court, founded in 1790, to adjudicate all future constitutional questions.
Mr. Metaxas relates the famous story which surrounds the creation of our supreme governing document. It was a question asked by one Mrs. Powell of Philadelphia, after the delegates were breaking up at the end of the last day of their arduous deliberations (which had lasted 100 days).
As one of the authors of that document – none other than the distinguished scientist, inventor and Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin – emerged, Mrs. Powell called out her question to Mr. Franklin, with whom she was apparently well acquainted.
“Well, doctor,” she asked him, “what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?”
“Franklin, who was rarely short of words or wit, shot back: ‘A republic, madam – if you can keep it.’”
If you can keep it.
In this Summer of Rage, circa 2022, in our collective response to the rule of law, we’ll find out … if we can keep it.
That’s my report for July. May the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, confirm, restore, strengthen and establish you. To Him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.
P.S.: One man who kept it is shown in the photograph below.
