“Rethinking Abortion-Two Unexpected Witnesses”

Here’s a great article from Al Mohler on the abortion debate in America and the changing cultural attitudes on the subject:

Looking across the moral landscape of the last half-century, one issue looms larger than all others — abortion. Considered from a historical perspective, the intensity and duration of the abortion debate came as something of a surprise. Handing down its infamous Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, the majority of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court declared the abortion question settled and closed. They were wrong.

Almost four decades after Roe v. Wade, Americans are still torn over the issue of abortion. Indeed, the intensity of the abortion debate in 2009 exceeds that of 1973. The controversy over abortion is not only unsettled and unresolved — it is still developing before our eyes. To the great consternation of abortion-rights proponents, Americans have not accepted abortion on demand as a permanent reality. As a nation, we have debated any number of issues beyond abortion in recent years, but abortion remains the controversy that is most central, unavoidable, and deeply personal.

The personal dimension of the abortion controversy came to light this week from two unexpected witnesses. The first is Sarah Kliff, a reporter for Newsweek magazine. In a very personal column, Kliff describes her experience visiting Omaha, Nebraska and the abortion clinic of Dr. LeRoy Carhart, now perhaps the nation’s sole specialist in late-trimester abortions. As Kliff writes, her experience covering abortion for the magazine over the past two years has led her into contact and conversation with a range of persons on both sides of the abortion debate. She recognizes that, “both sides feel abortion is an issue worth waging war over.”

Given her journalistic experience, Kliff describes herself as “well-versed in abortion policy, the pro-choice and pro-life arguments, the latest legislation.” Her next sentence delivers the surprise: “But I’d never actually seen an abortion; I’d never watched the procedure that activists vehemently defend or deplore.”

But that is exactly what happened when Kliff went to Omaha to research her article on Dr. Carhart. Even as she anticipated observing the abortion, Kliff confessed to hesitancy and reluctance. She observed a first-trimester abortion, even though Dr. Carhart does perform late-term abortions. Why was she so ambivalent?

In her words:

Why was I reluctant to watch? To be fair, I’d never observed a surgery and knew myself to frequently flinch at ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’ But abortion isn’t like the complex, bloody operations you see on television: medically speaking, it’s a simple and common procedure. About 1.2 million were performed in 2005, the same, numberwise, as outpatient cancer surgeries. I was nervous, I think, to watch something so controversial; no one protests outside cancer clinics. I didn’t know how I’d react. Would I find the surgery repulsive? Encounter women whose choices troubled me? Whom I disagreed with? I was uneasy about coming in such close contact with such substantial decisions.

Observing the abortion, Kliff writes of seeing a woman prepared for the procedure and then of the suction tube that was inserted within her. Her report is both chilling and honest. “Carhart used a suction tube to empty the contents of the uterus; it took no longer than three minutes. The suction machine made a slight rumbling sound, a pinkish fluid flowed through the tube, and, faster than I’d expected, it was over.”

As Kliff recounts, she felt no physical discomfort observing the procedure. Nevertheless, she did experience a very strong emotional reaction. After describing this emotional reaction and her encounters with patients in the abortion clinic, Kliff tells of returning home only to discover that her friends who supported abortion rights “bristled slightly when I told them where I’d been and what I’d watched.”

In a profound statement, Sarah Kliff acknowledges that Americans just do not talk about abortion as they talk about other surgical or medical procedures. “Abortion may be a simple procedure medically,” she explains, “but it is not cancer surgery.”

Sarah Kliff does not condemn abortion in her article and she does not articulate a pro-life understanding of the abortion issue. Indeed, she speaks of abortion as involving a weighty choice that, “depending on how you view it, involves a life, or the potential for life.” This is a very weak way of describing the moral question of abortion, but it is at least a start. Sarah Kliff’s honest reflections on her experience of observing an abortion are, perhaps more than she knows or recognizes, a witness to the horror of abortion. Her description of “pinkish fluid” flowing through the suction tube is almost impossible to force out of one’s mind.

Another unexpected witness this week is actress Kourtney Kardashian. Her recently announced unplanned pregnancy became part of Hollywood’s scandal and publicity circus. But what caught the attention of the media this week was her decision to keep the baby and the straightforward logic behind her decision.

Kardashian has not adopted a pro-life position on the abortion question. Indeed, she told People magazine: “I do think every woman should have the right to do what they want, but I don’t think it’s talked through enough.” The actress told of many friends who just assured her that abortion was the easy way out. “Like it’s not a big deal,” the actress recalled.

Interestingly, Kardashian’s decision to keep her baby was at least partially prompted by her experience of reading the testimonies of women who regretted their abortions. “I looked online, and I was sitting on the bed hysterically crying, reading these stories of people who felt so guilty for having an abortion,” she explained.

“I was just sitting there crying, thinking, ‘I can’t do that,’ . . . And I felt in my body, this is meant to be. God does things for a reason, and I just felt like it was the right thing that was happening in my life.”

As she thought about her decision, Kardashian concluded that “all the reasons why I wouldn’t keep the baby were so selfish.” She also received encouragement from her doctor. “My doctor told me there is nothing you will ever regret about having the baby, but he was like, ‘You may regret not having the baby.’ And I was like: That is so true.”

The Culture of Death looms as a massive threat, but its foundations are crumbling. Unexpected witnesses such as Sarah Kliff and Kourtney Kardashian help us to see how moral insight can emerge from unexpected experiences, reflections, and witnesses. Some of the most profound witnesses to the horror of abortion and the sanctity of human life do not even know that they are so. The evil of abortion cannot be hidden once it is seen, and a voice for life cannot be forgotten once it is heard.

“Justice Satisfied”

“What are we to expect when we stand before God’s bar of judgment? Most people think God will somehow relax His inflexible justice and pardon all of us by mere sovereign prerogative. But God, by the perfection of His nature, cannot do that. He cannot exalt one of His glorious attributes (such as mercy) at the expense of another. Justice must be satisfied.

Through His death on the cross Jesus fully satisfied the justice of God on our behalf. Therefore everyone who has trusted in Christ as Savior can say, “God’s justice toward me is satisfied.” As believers we must steadily keep this in mind. Never again should we fear the retributive justice of God.

Yet many believers live under a sense of fear of God’s justice. We know we sin continually, and sometimes that painful awareness almost overwhelms us. At such times we’re still prone to view God as our judge meting out absolute justice. We fail to grasp by faith the fact that Christ Jesus has fully satisfied God’s justice for us.

One morning in my private devotions I was reflecting on my sin, which seemed particularly painful to me that day. In my discouragement I blurted out, “God, You would be perfectly just in sending me to hell.” Immediately on the heel of those words, though, came this thought: No, You wouldn’t because Jesus satisfied Your justice for me.

This is the stand we must take as believers. We must not allow the accusations of Satan or the condemning indictments of our consciences to bring us under a sense of God’s unrequited justice. Instead, we should by faith lay hold of the wonderful truth that God’s justice has been satisfied for us by our Lord Jesus Christ.”

-Excerpt from Holiness Day by Day by: Jerry Bridges

Why The New Atheists Are A Disaster…

Here’s an interesting article from atheist Michael Ruse on why he sees the New Atheists as a threat to the credibility of atheism. Really interesting stuff from a non-Christian perspective on the controversy surrounding Hitchens, Dawkins, and others and their new brand of religion hating atheism. Give it a read.

HT: Justin Taylor

Brett Favre Is a Viking…

I hate to say I told you so folks, but I told you so. Please go back and read my past posts on the Favre saga and you’ll see I called this from the beginning. There’s just no way Brett Favre could ever stay retired. He wanted to play, and finally, he decided to do just that. Assuming he’s healthy, this now makes the Vikings the favorites to win the NFC and make a little super bowl run. Wow, what a wild ride! I cannot wait to see what happens! Check out the story from ESPN’s Chris Mortensen broke the news.

I Wish I Had Taken Guitar Lessons…

This kid is eleven. Yep…

HT: Justin Taylor

Lauren Conrad Wrote a Novel?!?!?

When I found out that Lauren Conrad wrote a novel, I’m sure I had the same reaction most normal people did: I laughed uncontrollably. When the person who told me explained they weren’t joking, I’m sure I had the same reaction most normal people did: I laughed even more uncontrollably. First of all, does anyone actually believe Lauren Conrad from The Hills wrote a novel!?!? Perhaps she wrote a few words, maybe even a sentence or two, but a whole book? Forget about it! Two, if anyone is brave enough to admit they read it, could some brave soul defend it actually being worth spending time reading not to mention good. Please anyone, I beg you!

Debt Is Dumb…

“Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

The article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” is a little old and some of you have probably read it, but I re-read it the other day and thought it worthy of posting. Great stuff from Nicholas Carr. Here’s a little excerpt to wet your reading appetite:

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets’reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

How many of you made it through the entire article? Yep, that’s what I thought. Point proven…

“It’s The Post Office That’s Always Having Problems…”

Plain and simple, this is gold.

“UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems…” Couldn’t have said it better myself, Mr. President. So, why do we want government run health care again?

“Polyamory: The Next Sexual Revolution?”

In a recent Newsweek article, Jessica Bennett reports on a growing trend in American culture called polyamory. Basically, polyamory is a term that describes clusters of multiple sexual partners that live together in communities that are sometimes open and sometimes “polyfidelitous.” Um… yeah. Bennett’s article presents the trend as being made up of people in the cultural mainstream. Those adhereing to polyamory are numbered around half million in the United States and growing. There are a growing number of polyamory blogs, books, podcasts, and even a polyamory magazine that have spoken to the speed of the movement’s growth and growing level of acceptance.

On his blog, Al Mohler said in response to the article:

Legal theorists and opponents of same-sex marriage routinely (and rightly) make the argument that the legalization of homosexual marriage will, inevitably, lead to the legalization of polygamy. Once marriage is redefined to allow for same-sex unions, any determination to maintain legal prohibitions against polygamy will be seen as merely arbitrary. At the same time, once strictures against adultery were eliminated in the culture and in the law, something essentially like polygamy was inevitable.

Mohler concludes with this:

Perhaps the best way to understand this new movement is to understand it as a natural consequence of subverting marriage. We have largely normalized adultery, serialized marriage, separated marriage from reproduction and childbearing, and accepted divorce as a mechanism for liberation. Once this happens, boundary after boundary falls as sexual regulation virtually disappears among those defined as “consenting adults.”

The ultimate sign of our moral confusion becomes evident when virtually no one appears ready to condemn polyamory as immoral. The only arguments mustered against this new movement focus on matters of practicality. Polyamory is certainly not new, but this new movement is yet another reminder that virtually all the fences are now down when it comes to sex and sexual relationships. What comes next?

Mohler really hits on the heart of the issue. In a pluralistic, relativistic society such as our own, morality is no longer grounded in anything objective. It is simply defined by society at large as it sees fit. Morality becomes more about marketing campaigns and appearances to convince the masses that behavior x or behavior y is o.k. and should be socially accepted. The question really at this point is, “What comes next?” As more and more previously taboo behavior becomes accepted socially, more morality will be redefined legally as society sees fit. However, this cannot sustain itself. Society defining morality in this manner leads to mob rule and mobs tend to be poor rulers. Still, it seems that for know, it is anybody’s guess what comes next…