October 2008

A new campaign, “Just One Judge,” is calling on pro-lifers to vote that way next week. View the website here, which argues:

“The next President and U.S. Senate will appoint and confirm the one Justice who will be the deciding vote on whether to overturn Roe v. Wade… Today’s U.S. Supreme Court is just ONE appointment away from determining critical matters of life. Your vote is your choice in who the next Supreme Court Justice will be.”

Looks like you can sign a pledge and join others, including Norma McCorvey (i.e. “Jane Roe” herself).

Randy Alcorn, founder of Eternal Perspective Ministries, has an insightful blog post on Barack Obama’s pro-choice stance. He admits up front, “My blog on Barack Obama’s pro-abortion stance, and the fact that various evangelical Christians are supporting and campaigning for him, has been getting lots of comments, some of them heated.” You can read the rest here, and scroll to the end which has video clips of Obama speaking at a Planned Parenthood event.

If you are weary of abortion being a political litmus test, then I would encourage you to wrestle with this new piece from Touchstone magazine. Here is an excerpt:

“There has been a steady campaign by some Christians who regard themselves as orthodox and conservative to persuade the rank and file of their Christian brothers and sisters to rethink their predictable support for political candidates who are pro-life. They bring other issues to the fore—war, torture, taxes, education, health care, and poverty—in an attempt to undermine the claim that conscientious Christians must always support pro-life candidates. They imply that such ’single-issue’ pro-life voting is unsophisticated, often in lockstep with the mostly uneducated ‘religious right,’ and perhaps not even very moral in the long view.”

Two years after a failed attempt to protect the lives of pre-born babies in South Dakota, pro-life advocates in the state are trying again, this time fixing some of the wording that caused the bill to fail the first time.  As can be expected, pro-abortion advocates are vowing a fight.  Those on both sides of the issue are watching this measure closely, as its passage will likely send the question to the Supreme Court.  If Obama wins, though, the chances that it would be upheld are slim as Obama believes that “Roe was decided correctly.”  Get the full story here, and pray.

Thursday morning, I will participate in a round-table event to discuss pro-life issues in Oklahoma. The featured guest will be Americans United for Life’s Vice President Daniel McConchie. As you may recall, AUL is the oldest, and in my opinion, perhaps most effective, pro-life law and policy organization in the country.

One of the featured topics will be the future of stem cell research. Later in the day, Mr. McConchie is scheduled to testify before the Oklahoma House of Representatives Health Subcommittee on Thursday, October 16 at 2:30 pm. Mr. McConchie will be addressing the moral and ethical issues surrounding stem cell research.

As we have blogged about before, adult-stem cell research is an exciting field, one that does not pose the moral problems of embryonic stem cell research. Read the rest of this entry »

Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, has the story.

According to the online resource, Wikipedia, “Religulous is a 2008 American documentary film written by and starring political comedian Bill Maher and directed by Larry Charles. According to Maher, the title of the film is a portmanteau derived from the words ‘religion’ and ‘ridiculous,’ implying the satirical nature of the documentary that is meant to criticize the concept of religion and the problems it brings about.^“

There is no way I could, in good conscience, justify supporting this movie financially by seeing it. Therefore, there is no way to provide our readers a movie review. So instead I wish to point to the “Bible Answer Man’s” (Hank Hanegraff), who has something to say about this so-called documentary in this brief blog entry.

I was privileged to attend a round-table luncheon this week featuring one of my favorite Christian spokesman, Richard Land. If this name is new to you, I wish to unlock the treasure trove. Feel free to Google him, or start by reading this TIME magazine piece about “God’s lobbyist.”

Dr. Land conversed about the hottest topics, such as the upcoming elections and embryonic stem cell research. When I asked him what he thought William Wilberforce, one of his heroes as well as mine, would think are the most pressing issues of the day, he answered: “The pro-life question and the definition of marriage.” I quite agree.

In fact, there was really only one issue on which Dr. Land and I cannot agree. He, a Texan, wants the Longhorns to win in the Red River match this weekend. To that I say, “Go Sooners!”

Update: Richard Land’s public policy group, the Ethics & Religious Liberties Commission, has produced an impressive “party-platform” guide for 2008. Find out more here about this nonpartisan resource.

I know I keep beating this Obama-and-abortion drum, but I think this is an extremely important issue to consider as November approaches. Andrew McCarthy, National Review’s legal-affairs editor, has a very sobering look at Obama’s abortion radicalism in an articled titled “Why Obama Really Voted For Infanticide.” Here’s a sampling:

• There wasn’t any question about what was happening. The abortions were going wrong. The babies weren’t cooperating. They wouldn’t die as planned. Or, as Illinois state senator Barack Obama so touchingly put it, there was “movement or some indication that, in fact, they’re not just coming out limp and dead.”

• No. In Obama’s hardball, hard-Left world, these least become “that fetus, or child — however you want to describe it.”

  Most of us, of course, opt for “child,” particularly when the “it” is born and living and breathing and in need of our help. Particularly when the “it” is clinging not to guns or religion but to life.

• When it got down to brass tacks, Barack Obama argued that protecting abortion doctors from legal liability was more important than protecting living infants from death.

Read the whole article for yourself. It’s quite a chilling and damning expose, I think, of the Senator’s position. If there’s ever an issue over which to be a one issue voter, this is it.