More Than These: A Call for Reformation by Pastor Ralph Ovadal. This is a hard-hitting, brilliant critique of the Roman Church State’s use of the Pro-Life Movement to advance its ecumenical efforts among Bible-believing Protestants. It includes numerous references to recently defrocked Roman Catholic Priest Frank Pavone, who is being held up as a martyr for his faith by some in the Conservative Movement. Not only is Frank Pavone an unrepentant Roman Catholic, but for many years he has also been at the forefront of Rome’s efforts to bring American Protestants “home to Rome.” I discuss Frank Pavone in this podcast.
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Thousands of abortion-rights activists gather in front of the U.S. Supreme Court after the Court announced a ruling in the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case on June 24, 2022 in Washington, DC. The Court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health overturns the landmark 50-year-old Roe v Wade case and erases a federal right to an abortion. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (Chip Somodevilla, 2022 Getty Images)
With the release of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision on Friday, June 24, 2022, the reign of the Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion in all 50 states was overturned.
This was a decision Christians have long hoped for but one that at times seems far from ever coming to pass.
A great deal has been written on this topic over the past two days, and it is not my intention here to recap all of it. But despite the volume of commentary about abortion, there are, I think, some important topics that are touched on but rarely, if they are discussed at all. It is to these topics that I now turn.
Dobbs v. Jackson Does Not Outlaw Abortion
The Supreme Court’s decision does not outlaw abortion in America. What it does is remove the Constitutionally guaranteed right to abortion, a right not found in the Constitution at all, but one invented by the Court in 1973.
When the Constitution was written, the intention of the framers was to establish a federal government of enumerated powers. That is, the Constitution spelled out in detail the powers of the federal government. Apart from these enumerated powers, the federal government had no authority. The 10th Amendment puts it this way, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
The logic here is the same as the logic behind the Regulative Principle of Worship. God alone tells us in his Word how he is to be worshipped. If the Bible does not specifically sanction a worship activity, that activity is prohibited. In like fashion, if the Constitution does not specifically spell out a governmental function as belonging to the federal government, that function is prohibited to it, and is, “reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
Following this line of thinking, we need to ask ourselves, does the Constitution have anything to say about abortion? This answer is, no it does not. Writing in Liberty Defined, Ron Paul noted,
[T]he Constitution says nothing about abortion, murder, manslaughter, or any other acts of violence. There are only four crimes listed in the Constitution: counterfeiting, piracy, treason, and slavery. Criminal and civil laws were deliberately left to the states.
Paul, Liberty Defined, 2
Those who believe the Supreme Court should ban all abortion in America likely are disappointed by the Dobbs ruling. For example, a tweet from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) read, “Following the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, a patchwork of state laws means abortion access will vary widely depending on where someone lives.” But what some would call a “patchwork” is simply the result of our federal system of government. As much as Christians would like to see abortion banned in all 50 states, that is probably not a possibility at this time. Some areas of the nation take a more biblical view of abortion, and some will be less Christian in their thinking.
While Christians can pray and work for the day when abortion is banned in all 50 states, we can receive with thanks the Court’s ruling that holds out the promise that abortions will now be banned or severely restricted in some parts of the nation.
Elizabeth Warren expresses her displeasure at the thought of women not being able to kill their unborn children. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Last week when someone leaked the Supreme Court’s draft majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, many commentators, including this author, viewed this leak to rally the troops and an attempt to intimidate the justices into withdrawing their support for the decision. The actions or inactions on the part of highly placed people over the past few days have done nothing to diminish this suspicion.
Of course, we don’t know for sure who leaked the draft opinion or their motives for doing so. But given the shrieking that started immediately on the pro-abort side, and which seems to be picking up momentum, it’s reasonable to speculate that stirring up the mob to bully the court was the intent.
Recent history also supports this notion. Think back just two years to the Black Lives Matter/Antifa rioting. Those riots were largely successful in advancing the woke agenda in schools, universities, and corporations and in helping to remove Donald Trump from power and installing the illegitimate Biden Regime in the White House.
Force works, as John Robbins noted. That’s why tyrants use it.
Democratic debate night 2, Miami FL, June 27, 2019. From left to right: Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Michael Bennet. Photo. Saul Loeb AFP/ Getty Images.
“I lack the words.” That was my first thought in hearing the remarks of the Democratic presidential candidates last week. From Beto O’Rourke and others babbling in Spanish – are these guys running for President of the United States or President of Mexico? – to lecturing Americans about how horrible they are for not wanting their country invaded by welfare migrants to Bernie Sanders admitting that, yes, he wants to raise taxes on an already over burdened middle class to pay for his big government initiatives of universal single-payer health care and free college for everyone, a more out of touch group of candidates seems hard to imagine.
The message I heard loud and clear from these men and women was this: America, we hate you and want to destroy you.
Generally, I try to steer clear of making overtly partisan remarks on this blog. When discussing politics, my preference is to frame the issue in terms of what the Bible has to say about a particular topic and critique the statements and actions of men based upon the standard of Scripture. I do this, because the problems facing our nation ultimately are not political or economic, but spiritual.
Further, I come from a family of Republicans and I myself have been a Republican and have been all my life. “You hypocrite,” someone may say, “You criticize the Democrats for their shortcomings but fail to see the problems with your own party.” Admittedly, going after the Democrats could be construed this way. But I would say this in my defense, I hardly thing the Republicans are perfect. Far from it. This author has many disagreements with mainstream Republican thought, including some of the policies of the Trump administration.
But what I see from the Democrats that I don’t see from the Republicans is the raw contempt for this country, its people and its institutions – a hatred that I’m even tempted to call demonic – that constantly issues forth from the mouths of various Democratic leading lights. Democrats as a matter of course regularly attack individual liberty, private property, limited government and equality under the law. They cry crocodile tears over the children of illegal immigrants while working overtime to make sure as many American women as possible retain the inalienable right to murder their children. They call their fellow Americans “deplorables” and “bitter clingers” while knowingly advocating policies that are damaging to the legitimate interests of the very people they presume to lecture. They stand for sodomy, socialism, feminism, and cultural Marxism. They can’t wait to take your guns and to give away your hard earned money. They are a party that countenances the use of violence against those with whom they disagree. They are world class experts in political dirty tricks. This is a party so corrupt that several times their activities have forced me to admit that, yes, I indeed have been wrong about them; the Democrats are in reality far more corrupt than I ever thought possible in my wildest imagination.
Not that massive corruption is anything new to the Democrats. They were the party of slavery in the ante-bellum South and the party of Jim Crow afterwards. The Democrats identification with the Confederacy is what in part led Presbyterian minister Samuel Burchard to famously refer to them as the party of “rum, Romanism and rebellion.” Burchard was right in 1884 and his words are still true today. The Democrats rebelled against the Constitution in the 19th century and they are still in rebellion against it the 21st. The 19th century big city political machines – Tammany Hall, for example – were all run by Roman Catholic Democrats.
So what are we to make of the 2019 edition of the Democrats? It seems to me that there are certain broad issues that characterize the party, among them are: Socialism, Environmentalism, Identity Politics, Open Borders and Abortion. All of these are openly at odds with the teaching of Scripture and the provisions found in the US Constitution. Let’s take a look at them.
Pro-choice supporters protest in front of the Alabama State House in Montgomery on May 14, 2019. REUTERS/Chris Aluka Berry
“What angers me about the GOP’s attempts to turn the United States into a far-right Christian theocracy is how dishonest they are about it. At least be forthright about your desire to subvert and dismantle our democracy into a creepy theological order led by a mad king.”
– Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D) New York, Twitter, 5/17/19
It seems as if America is on course for an abortion show down. A sort of Roe v. Wade version of pistols at noon.
In January of this year, the first shot in the latest iteration of the ongoing abortion war fired by the New York State Legislature when it passed the Reproductive Health Act (RHA). If ever a bill was fast tracked, this one certainly was. According to Wikipedia, the bill was introduced into the New York State Legislature on January 9, 2019, passed by both houses on January 22, and signed into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo that same evening.
The RHA, widely considered the nation’s most liberal abortion law, changed New York’s abortion laws in the following ways:
Removed abortion from the state’s criminal code
Allows medical professionals who are not doctors to perform abortions
To the states statue allowing abortion in the third trimester if the mother’s health is threatened, the bill adds language permitting abortion in the third trimester if the fetus in not viable
In Virginia, a bill was introduced earlier this year that would have greatly liberalized abortion in that state. When asked in a radio interview about the whether the bill would allow a fetus surviving abortion to be killed, Governor Ralph Northam created a major controversy with his answer that lent support to allowing such an infant to die.
In sharp contrast to New York and Governor Northam, just this week the Alabama State Legislature passed, and the governor signed, what is viewed as the nation’s most restrictive abortion law. The Alabama law makes it a felony offense for doctors to perform or attempt to perform an abortion, allows no exceptions for rape of incest, but does permit abortions in the event the mother’s life is at risk.
But while Alabama’s law is the most restrictive state-level abortion statute, other states have recently enacted legislation that will have the effect of significantly reducing abortions. In 2019 five states – Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi and Ohio – have passed heartbeat bills, legislation designed to prohibit abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected. Utah and Arkansas voted to limit abortions to the middle of the second trimester. Together with Alabama, this makes eight states in 2019 that have taken legislative action to restrict abortion.
Very clearly, when it comes to abortion America is a deeply divided nation.
With a majority conservative Supreme Court, it may well be, as several legal commentators have suggested, that state-level Republican legislators and governors have passed and signed into law these bills with an eye to challenging Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion in all fifty states.
If these laws are challenged in court, as they surely will be, it is entirely possible that the challenges could begin working their way through the federal court system just as the 2020 presidential election is coming to a head. If that happens, abortion could become the lightening rod of the 2020 presidential election.
Below are a few of my observations on brewing conflict.
“It is my firm conviction that the pro-life movement has been a convenient, effective tool in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church leadership in their drive to desensitize the average Christian to Rome’s heresy, idolatry, and blasphemy.”
– Pastor Ralph Ovadal
Last week’s post, devoted to a discussion of the movie Unplanned, was intended as a warning to Christians. Far from being the Christian film many have touted it to be, Unplanned would be better described as an effective recruitment tool for the Roman Church-State.
Although the movie was financed, at least in part, by Evangelical money, and presented to Evangelicals as a Christian movie, the screen play and the directing were done by two Roman Catholics. But more concerning is the central figure in the movie, Abby Johnson, who, having been raised Baptist, converted to Roman Catholicism after she was asked to leave her Episcopal Church upon leaving Planned Parenthood and becoming pro-life.
In that post on Unplananed, this reviewer quoted at some length from a book titled More Than These by Pastor Ralph Ovadal. When I cited the book, I was under the assumption that I had reviewed it some time ago. But to my surprise, after checking to confirm whether this was so, I found out that no such review had been posted on this blog. What is worse, a search of the internet revealed that, apparently, no review of the remarkable book has been written by anyone else either.
This post is intended as a partial remedy to this sorry state of affairs.
Well, that didn’t take long. The last echoes of the inaugural balls had scarcely faded when the first protest march against Donald Trump hit the Washington Mall. I refer, of course, to the Women’s March on Washington which took place on January 22, 2017, the day after Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States.
Beloved by much of middle America, reviled by the elites, from the very beginning of his presidential campaign Donald Trump has been a figure almost impossible to ignore.
It was not my intention to write about Saturday’s protest march against Trump. But the sheer size and radical nature of the event held in Washington and mirrored at other sites throughout the nation cries out for commentary.
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