Couldn't Help Noticing

Forced abortion

I came across this report the other day (reproduced with permission):

Forced Abortion on Poor Ethnic Women Proposed in Holland

ROTTERDAM, Holland, February 21, 2006—Marianne van den Anker, an alderman in the Rotterdam city council in charge of public health and security, has proposed forced abortion and forced contraception for teenage mothers whose origin is in the Antilles and on drug addicts and people with mental handicaps. The alderman suggested that such mothers are nearly always guilty of child abuse.

While several reports have referred to van den Anker and her Leefbaar Rotterdam party as “right wing”, the alderman is the furthest thing from the right side of the social conservative spectrum. In addition to being pro-abortion, van den Anker has set up a program in the schools to counter intolerance of homosexuality.

Van den Anker told the NRC Handelsblad paper that children from these mothers run an “unacceptable risk” experiencing “violence, neglect, mistreatment and sexual abuse”. She added, “the exceptions, and there are some, can be counted on a pair of hands”.

Her announcement of her plan came during a workship on child abuse where she pressed her case for forced abortion saying, “What do you think of a 24-year old Antillean mother who visits the doctor, is 19 weeks pregnant, has three existing children, then abuses one of her children in the hospital, before announcing to the doctor that she wishes to proceed with her pregnancy, even though she doesn't know who the father is, has no idea how she's going to raise another child, take care, feed and dress the child, and on top of that is HIV positive?”

The politician noted that street gangs of Antillean youths were terrorizing the city.

Her colleague, Alderman Leonard Geluk of the same party, has blasted her ideas as “absurd and idiotic”.

© LifeSiteNews.com

It seems we are getting closer to the bottom of the slippery slope we started sliding down when we legalized abortion. In proposing this monstrous idea, van den Anker appears to have the aim of protecting children. Can she not see the terrible irony in trying to protect unborn children from “violence, neglect [and] mistreatment” by killing them? Can she not see the irony of promoting tolerance of one group of people while at the same time exhibiting almost unbelievable intolerance of another? It certainly calls to my mind the atrocities committed during Hitler's reign.

The Dove One

Australia is a long way from America. Having made the trip, I can understand why anyone would want to make the journey a bit easier. Well now you can help make it easier for Pastor Benny Hinn to get to Australia for his crusades. On his website, he is asking for 6,000 of his supporters to donate $1,000 each to fund The Dove One—a private jet to fly pastor Benny around the world so that he can proclaim the gospel.

By giving, you will be getting. You will make it easier for him to make more frequent trips to Sydney. His letter states that you will also receive these added benefits from your gift:

You will receive a beautiful art-quality model of Dove One for your desk or mantle as a constant reminder that you are a vital part of this last-days harvest for souls.

Your name will be placed prominently in a special area of Dove One where I study and pray during my travels, where I will also pray for you and your family as I go around the world preaching the Gospel. Everywhere I fly, your name will travel with me, millions of miles and for years to come, reminding me that you have made it possible for me to go and preach as God has called me to do.

A six-million dollar investment that provides an incalculable return ...

(Source: Challies.)

Heartbroken women and men

Last week I watched a documentary called The Choice. In it, six people (five women and one man) share their experiences of abortion. It was a very sad piece of television. Regardless of whether they remained pro-choice or not, abortion had clearly caused these people much pain, and affected them deeply and profoundly.

Three things struck me as I watched. Firstly, to be quite honest, I was shocked by the fact that at least two of the people interviewed had had two or three abortions. I'm not sure why that surprised me. It's hard to imagine the pain of going through it more than once, so maybe I thought that once you'd had one abortion, you'd take extra precautions to avoid being in that situation again.

Secondly, when pro-choice people talk about abortion they generally use language that dehumanizes the baby (words like ‘embryo’, ‘foetus’ and ‘termination’ are used in favour of words like ‘baby’ and ‘death’). What struck me about this documentary was how many times the participants used words like ‘baby’ and ‘life’ as they talked about the children they had aborted. It seems that whatever else they thought, the one thing they all accepted was that they had aborted real children—real lives. None of them were talking about ‘just a bunch of cells’.

Finally, as I watched these people share their stories, and as I saw their pain, I realised how many heartbroken women (and men) must be sitting in our churches each week, quietly grieving over their own abortions. It stands to reason, with the increasing rate of abortion in the West, that there are women at church who—for whatever reason—have had an abortion at some point in their life, whether before or after they became Christian. But it's one of those topics that we don't talk about except to say, “Of course it's wrong, so don't do it”. There must be many women in our churches who hide their pain for years because they can't bring themselves to tell anyone.

But God unconditionally forgives the repentant sinner, even when we can't forgive ourselves. I pray that we will be careful and sensitive in the way we talk about abortion at church so that those who quietly grieve might feel able to talk to someone about it and get some help in casting their burdens on Jesus:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matt 11:28-30)

Information about the documentary can be found here.

We Can’t Live Without Wal-Mart

The American retail giant is not very loved these days. For years, the political Left has charged that Wal-Mart runs local retailers out of business. For years, pro-union groups have railed against Wal-Mart for refusing to unionize its almost 1.2 million employees. Now, Christians have joined the bandwagon of Wal-Mart haters. Last week, a large conservative activist group called on its base to boycott Wal-Mart because of its support of gay and lesbian issues (view full story). The boycott was later called off because of ambiguity of the claims of Wal-Mart's support of such issues.

What I found interesting was that the boycott was only called for two days. Why only two days? Why not boycott until Wal-Mart changes its policies? There are plenty of other stores to patron, even in rural areas. A two-day boycott seems a bit pedestrian if one is serious about protesting such a serious issue.

I can only conclude that even Wal-Mart haters can't live long without it. Why? There is something these people hate even more than Wal-Mart—that is, wasting money. It is virtually impossible to find lower prices on groceries, toiletries and home goods than at Wal-Mart. Hey, that's more money I can keep for myself ... I mean ... to give to my church ...

Children of Men

After wanting to see the movie for weeks, I finally saw Children of Men recently. Based on a novel by PD James, the movie is set in 2027 at a time when humankind is looking at the possibility of its own extinction because of an inexplicable infertility crisis in the population. No children have been born for 18 years, and world is a very bleak place indeed. The movie's advertising tagline says it all: “No children. No future. No hope”.

Then, inexplicably, one woman falls pregnant. The movie tells the story of the struggle to protect this woman and her baby from various groups that want to use them for their own ends.

The contrast with current Western society could not be more stark. We seem to be in the business of destroying life—we abort babies because they come at inconvenient times, or might have something wrong with them. Now we even want to create babies so we can destroy them for the sake of research.

As I watched the movie, I kept thinking about Senator Natasha Stott Despoja's words during the recent Australian Senate debate on embryonic stem cell research. In her arguments to convince the Senate that we should allow research on cloned human embryos, she said, “... I believe it would be unethical not to invest in this research and the technology and possible clinical application that it will bring”. Senator Stott Despoja only has the luxury of thinking like this because babies have become a disposable commodity in our society.

Imagine this same debate happening in a world like the one in Children of Men. Imagine this same debate taking place in a society where women couldn't have children. Imagine the outrage we'd see at the idea that ‘spare’ IVF embryos, or created cloned embryos, should be used for research, when they could just as well be put inside a woman's womb to create a baby. (I wonder if some infertile couples already feel this way.) Imagine how society's views on the value of life would change.

I'm not saying this is the best argument against embryonic stem cell research, or against abortion. But it's not a bad argument, either.