An abortionist in sheep's clothing

“… Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit” (Matthew 7:16–17, ESV).

Esquire recently ran a long, disheartening profile on an abortionist I’d read about before. Willie Parker is a professing Christian who provides “abortion care” in Mississippi. Before he kills a woman’s unborn child “in an almost priestly cadence, he builds a sermon around the word required” and gives her his legally obligated spiel about the damage his act might cause. Then he says the same complications could arise if she gives birth to the child. In fact, according to Parker, “a woman is ten times more likely to die in childbirth than she is having an abortion.”

Is there anything more shameless? Parker tries to prepare women seeking an abortion to face the people outside the facility who oppose the heinous procedure:

“The last thing I want to say is a lot of times when you come, there might be protesters. There are people that are going to be telling you that what you’re doing is wrong. It’s immoral. That you can’t be a Christian. That you’re going to hell. And a lot of women that bothers. Because there are women here who also have a religious belief, who also feel like they’re Christians.”

If most of these women don’t belong to a good church or lack godly counsel, the deceptive Parker can easily lead them astray. A man who says he’s a Christian assures them that their decision is right in God’s eyes. But if Parker should remember that Christ said that whoever causes vulnerable Christians to stumble, “It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea. …”

It’s terrible to kill babies for a living, but it’s far worse to claim you’re killing them in the name of Christ. It’s difficult to read or hear about people who say they’re Christians advocating sinful behavior. Sadly, these stories do not surprise me anymore. But as angry as it makes me, I also fear for them in terms of eternal consequences.

Parker is on the board of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, which used to have the more honest name of the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights. Some of the board members have “reverend” in front of their names. Pro-abortion clergy? It defies logic. Satan, in his “going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it,” deceives even those convinced they’re saved.

The Bible says we can know other believers by their fruit. Parker’s “ministry,” as Esquire calls it, produces dismembered fruit, once living beings sucked down a sink. He should remember Matthew 7:21:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

Be wary of masquerading wolves. Don’t let them lead you astray. And pray for their redemption.