Lux Lucet

Implications of the Dobbs Decision  

When the draft of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked in May – by the way, it’s odd how the leak investigation has disappeared from the news cycle – some liberals were concerned that the same logic used by the conservative justices to overturn Roe v. Wade could be used to overturn same-sex marriage. 

The liberals were right. 

In May, Business Insider ran a piece titled “Supreme Court leak overturning abortion rights has Democrats concerned that same-sex marriage and civil rights could be next,” in which several noted progressives were quoted as saying the logic in the draft of Dobbs posed a threat to the Court’s same-sex marriage ruling. 

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez complained, “As we’ve warned, SCOTUS isn’t just coming for abortion – they’re coming for the right to privacy Roe rests on, which includes gay marriage + civil rights.” As John Robbins noted in his Trinity Review “Abortion, the Christian, and the State,” the problem with Ocasio Cortez’s thinking is that it uses the language of rights rather than referring to the Law of God.  Robbins wrote,

What is found in the Bible, what is logically sensible, and what these various phrases about human rights are designed to obscure, is the idea of divine law, specifically the Ten Commandments. It is not because a baby has an inalienable right to life that it is wrong to kill him; it is because God has said, You shall do no murder. Our moral authority is divine, not human. It consists of revealed commands, not invented rights. One of the dangers of using pagan terms – and even Francis Schaeffer did it in his book Whatever Happened to the Human Race? – is that of conceding the argument at the beginning. After all, it was on the basis of a theory of human rights – specifically the right to privacy – that the Supreme Court decided a mother has the right to kill her children.

Robbins, “Abortion, the Christian, and the State”

Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, wrote,

Predictable next steps after the Alito opinion becomes law: a nationwide abortion ban, followed by a push to roll back rights to contraception, same-sex marriage, sexual privacy, and a full array of textually unenumerated rights long taken for granted.

It is interesting to note that Tribe, a liberal’s liberal, admits that these “rights” which he holds dear are “unenumerated” in the Constitution.  Speaking of same-sex marriage, there is no such thing, and neither is there a right, Constitutional or otherwise, to such an activity.  Same-sex marriage is an abomination, and it is sinful for governments to enforce such contracts. 

Abortion is a Religious Issue

In the wake of the Dobbs decision, journalist Michael Tracy observed that, “An annoying aspect of the abortion debate is that lots of people oppose abortion based on religious conviction, which is fine, but then they pretend completely secular reasoning brought them to their conviction.” 

This is a good point.  Many times, Christians come to political convictions based upon their faith but then argue for these convictions in strictly secular terms.  In his epistle, James calls such individuals “double-minded” and says that such men will receive nothing from the Lord.

But as Robbins noted, “we must recognize that abortion is a religious issue, despite what some leading anti-abortionists would like us to believe” (“Abortion, the Christian, and the State”).

The Law of God prohibits murder, which the Scriptures define as the taking of innocent human life, and the Scriptures imply that the unborn child is, in fact, fully human.  On that reasoning, abortion is murder and prohibited under the Sixth Commandment.  

Robbins again,

As Christians we are commanded to do everything in the name and to the glory of God, and to bring every thought into captivity to Christ. The pagans want us to talk like Christians inside the church walls, and like pagans in the halls of government. If a Christian does that, he has betrayed Christ. The Bible claims to have a monopoly on truth, and it is about time that Christians began to talk and act as though they believed the Bible.

“Abortion”

It is high time Christians stopped talking like secularists and started talking like Christians. 

Beware Anti-Abortion Ecumenism

There is much more that can be said about the overturning of Roe v. Wade.  One topic not yet covered in this post is the extreme danger that anti-abortion ecumenism poses to Bible-believing Christians.  Rome has used anti-abortion activism since the 1970s to beguile Christians into thinking Rome is a Christian church and to draw them to herself.  Do not be deceived.  Rome is the system of Antichrist.  As important as it is to speak out against abortion, remaining loyal to the doctrine of the Justification by Belief Alone is much more so.

It is critical that Protestants be aware of Rome’s use of anti-abortion political activism for ecumenical activity.  The Scriptures warn us not to greet or to invite into our homes those who do not bring the doctrine of Christ.  To do so means that we share in their sins.  If we yoke in anti-abortion ministry with Roman Catholics, we become guilty of the many, heinous sins of Rome.

Christian, do not be deceived.

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