Category: Ethics

Thinking of Roe v. Wade today and our new president

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Robert P. George doesn’t mince words in this essay for The Witherspoon Institute on the 36th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade  and Doe V. Bolton decisions legalizing abortion in this country. Specifically, he’s clear that he’s not wishing the new president success:

Barack Obama is trying to win over religiously serious Catholics and Evangelicals, without altering in the slightest his support for abortion, including late-term and partial-birth abortions, the funding of abortion and embryo-destructive research with taxpayer dollars, the elimination of informed consent and parental notification laws, and the revocation of conscience and religious liberty protections for pro-life doctors and other healthcare workers and pharmacists. He will ultimately fail. We must see to it that he fails.

To be clear, here is Obama’s stated agenda, from the whitehouse.gov site:

Reproductive Choice

  • Supports a Woman’s Right to Choose: President Obama understands that abortion is a divisive issue, and respects those who disagree with him. However, he has been a consistent champion of reproductive choice and will make preserving women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority in his Adminstration. He opposes any constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in that case.
  • Preventing Unintended Pregnancy: President Obama was an original co-sponsor of legislation to expand access to contraception, health information, and preventive services to help reduce unintended pregnancies. Introduced in January 2007, the Prevention First Act will increase funding for family planning and comprehensive sex education that teaches both abstinence and safe sex methods. The Act will also end insurance discrimination against contraception, improve awareness about emergency contraception, and provide compassionate assistance to rape victims

And, to those evangelicals who got behind Obama, George has strong words for you as well:

In this project, Obama is being served and abetted by a small number of Catholic and Evangelical intellectuals and activists who have been peddling the claim that Obama, despite his pro-abortion extremism, is effectively pro-life because of his allegedly enlightened economic and social policies will reduce the number of abortions. This is delusional. The truth is that Barack Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to serve in the United States Senate or seek the Office of President of the United States. The revocation of the Hyde Amendment, the Mexico City Policy, funding limitations on embryo-destructive research, informed consent laws, parental notification statutes—all of which Obama has promised to his pro-abortion base—will dramatically increase the number of abortions, and will do so for reasons that have been articulated by the abortion lobby itself. It is the pro-abortion side that tells us that the Hyde Amendment alone has resulted in 300,000 fewer abortions each year than would otherwise be performed—and that is why they so desperately want it to be repealed. Yet the putatively pro-life Obama apologists claim that the man who pledges to repeal it is going to reduce the number of abortions. Let me say it again: this is delusional.

How do we help the poor?

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There is a divide in this country, and you can almost discern it based on the question, “How do we help the

How do we help the poor?
How do we help the poor?

poor?” Politically, there is a divide for sure, but even within the church there is divergence on this question. To be sure, the Bible instructs us that we are to care for the poor, but even that point is debated as one group emphasizes responsibility and another justice.

Because faith without works is dead, we need to understand just how it is we should care for poor and downtrodden in our society. Tim Keller, writing at Thermelios, has written a thorough and helpful essay on the subject, “The Gospel and the Poor.” Keller is senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, N.Y., and an adjunct professor of practical theology at Westminsters Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Among the books he has written are “The Reason for God: Belief in the Age of Skepticism” and “The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith.”

In his essay, Keller explores from the position that the church is commanded to help the poor, yet this is not the primacy of the gospel:

So what does it mean to be committed to the primacy of the gospel? It means first that the gospel must be proclaimed. Many today denigrate the importance of this. Instead, they say, the only true apologetic is a loving community; people cannot be reasoned into the kingdom, they can only be loved. “Preach the gospel. Use words if necessary.” But while Christian community is indeed a crucial and powerful witness to the truth of the gospel, it cannot replace preaching and proclamation. Nevertheless, the primacy of the gospel also means that it is the basis and mainspring for Christian practice, individually and corporately, inside the church and outside. Gospel ministry is not only proclaiming it to people so that they will embrace and believe it; it is also teaching and shepherding believers with it so that it shapes the entirety of their lives, so that they can “live it out.” And one of the most prominent areas that the gospel effects is our relationship to the poor.

It is a lengthy read, but well worth your time. For conservatives, it is a good reminder that merely proclamation of the gospel while failing to help the poor and needy shows a lack of understanding of the gospel. For liberals, it is a good reminder that giving aid is not an end in itself.

Three questions on Newsweek’s “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage”

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Greg Koukl, who does the Stand to Reason radio broadcast — also available as a podcast — gives three questions we should ask when reading Newsweek’s “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage”:

1.    What do they want you to believe?
2.    What are the reasons they offer in support of this idea they want you to believe?
3.    Are the reasons good ones?

Koukl reviews the article and goes through these questions on the podcast.

Robert P. George: A citizen hero

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Robert P. George was honored for his service to the nation serving on the President Council on Bioethics
Robert P. George was honored for his service to the nation serving on the President' Council on Bioethics

Robert P. George, who has served our nation on the President’s Council on Bioethics, was honored this week with the Presidential Citizens Medal for “exemplary deeds of service for the nation. It is one of the highest honors the President can confer upon a civilian, second only to the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

The press release at the White House’s Web site said this about George:

With wisdom and integrity, Dr. Robby George has brought forceful analytic clarity to the study of America’s ideals and institutions. He has helped strengthen our Nation’s system of ordered liberty by exploring enduring questions of American constitutional law and Western political theory. The United States honors Robby George for his many contributions to our civic life.

Why should we care? We should because it was George who was among the scholars, reseachers, scientists and theologians who advised the president when he made his landmark decision to limit embryonic stem cell research to existing lines in 2001. George, who lectures on constitutional interpretation, civil liberties and philosophy of law at Princeton University, is a solid conservative who is pro-life and pro-family. In other words, he is the polar opposite of his Princeton colleague Peter Singer.

In a 2003 article in the Catholic Education Resource Center, it describes how George puts his own beliefs — and his mind — in gear wherever he operates.

George operates at high velocity, moving easily within the worlds of academia, politics, and religion. He serves on President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics, where, says council chairman Leon Kass, George brings “enormous integrity and decency. He is an absolutely lucid and careful thinker, deeply committed to the dignity of the human person from its earliest beginnings.” Like Socrates, Kass notes, George meets his interlocutors “on their own grounds but show[s] them that their arguments take them to places they don’t want to go.”

The idea that is repeatedly bandied about is that there is a disconnect between being a rational, thinking person and a person of deep faith. In answer to that, we can merely point to people like Robert George and how he lives his faith.

Related:

See President Bush’s address to the nation on Aug. 9, 2001, concerning stem cell research

Who’s in charge here? When foreknowledge is dangerous

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Collin Hansen, writing in the Web edition of Christianity Today, explores recent new medical advances that allow for non-invasive testing of pregnant women to determine whether the babies they’re carrying have cystic fibrosis, b-thalassemia, or sickle cell anemia — ailments all caused by a single mutated gene. Like new, expanded testing for Down syndrome, it ominously points to not treatment or education for the parents but an earlier opportunity to abort the child.

As we press forward for further knowledge, it becomes clear that we are less capable of handling that knowledge that we are so eager to have. Hansen puts it this way:

At the root of the quest for foreknowledge is control. Testing children for genetic abnormalities gives concerned parents a measure of control over the situation. But abortion can only negate the pregnancy; it cannot make their children healthy. We have much less control than we want or think we have. And that is the good news, because the God who knows all that was, all that is, and all that will be holds out the promise that by faith we can have peace with all that he brings to pass.

Science and religion: John Lennox, the merry warrior for Christ

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John Lennox is an Oxford proffesor of mathematics.
John Lennox is an Oxford professor of mathematics.

John Dickson at the Centre for Public Christianity has posted a series of video interviews with noted Oxford professor of mathematics and Christian apologist John Lennox. Among the topics addressed were:

Who is John Lennox?
Introduction to the Professor

A Good God?
Hope for a mucked up world

Science, Atheism and Belief
Has science buried God?

Face off!
Debating Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens

Science, the Bible and belief in the 21st Century
Do you have to put your brain to one side to read the Bible?

Atheism and morality
Does atheism provide grounds for morality?

The evils of Christendom
Do the evils done in the name of Christ show that Christianity has failed?

Russian adventures
Professor Lennox discusses his experiences in Eastern Europe

Creator or the Multiverse?
Does the fine tuning of the universe point to God or an infinite collection of universes?

Christianity and the tooth fairy
Does science deal with reality and religion with everything else?

HT: Justin Taylor

Killing to spare the child?

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Wesley J. Smith, who blogs at Secondhand Smoke, has recently resumed creating podcasts. You should be sure to check them out. He is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and has lent much wisdom to the debate about the value of human life.

This podcast, which he produced in 2007, talks about eugenic embryo screening, the idea that babies are screened before birth to identify — and sadly — eliminate those who have undesirable traits. How far will it go? You be surprised.

Click on the image to hear the podcast.
Click on the image to hear the podcast.