Culture Friday: Abortion narratives

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 4th of October, 2024.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

It’s time for Culture Friday, and joining us now is John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Good morning!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning!

EICHER: John, I’d like to begin today with the vice presidential debate … but with a very specific purpose. I know a lot of pro-lifers were and are disheartened by the political strategy of the Republicans—basically to duck and cover on abortion. But my specific question has to do with the very articulate vice presidential candidate, JD Vance, who had no trouble all night long … except, I’ll suggest here. Have a listen to his opponent, the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz.

WALZ: There's a young woman named Amber Thurman. She happened to be in Georgia, a restrictive state. Because of that, she had to travel a long distance to North Carolina to try and get her care. Amber Thurman died in that journey back and forth. The fact of the matter is, how can we as a nation say that your life and your rights as basic as the right to control your own body, is determined on geography. There's a very real chance, had Amber Thurman lived in Minnesota, she would be alive today. That's why the restoration of Roe versus Wade. When you listen to Vice President Harris talk about this subject, when you hear me talk about it, you hear us talking exactly the same.

It was about the best and most coherent he was this week … very skilled with pro-choice rhetoric. But how much damage, do you think, the pro-life argument sustains here because, even though it was well-delivered, it was not irrefutable. But it was left unrefuted. How damaging was this?

STONESTREET: I think these stories have done significant damage. I mean, I really do, because really the headline of the Amber Thurman case is not the danger of pro life laws. It's the danger of chemical abortions. It's not the fact that doctors are prevented by law from caring for women who need it. It's that somehow there is a disconnect between what the law clearly says, including in this case of Amber Thurman and what doctors are being told they can or cannot do.

And all of this, I think, is a reflection of this deep shift that has taken place, which is new. It's actually new in the history of the abortion debate, and I think that the Trump ticket has granted those terms of this debate now that we are now there: it's an unwinnable issue, it's unpopular, and also then that kind of makes it official that abortion, for many political conservatives, is a means issue, not an ends issue. So I think it's a really big deal.

I mean, we've talked here about the, you know, kind of GOP being, kind of where the Democratic Party was in the ’90s, kind of a safe, legal and rare.

The other thing that I'll say about this, and I think this can't be understated, for both Kamala Harris and for Tim Walz, their absolute best moments, and both of those debates, and no other moment comes close was when they were each talking about abortion. That's when they got the most animated. That's when their thoughts were the clearest, that's when they were the most passionate. That's where you kind of listen and thought to yourself, yeah, I don't doubt their commitment here one bit. I mean, there's plenty of areas where a politician says something you're like, I don't know if they really mean that, but for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, they absolutely both mean this to the extent that they will defend it.

So, you know, we're talking about this kind of shift that this is a another indication of in a far more pro death direction. And I think it leaves pro lifers in a tough spot, but there clearly is a worse position and a better position, but neither one are good positions.

EICHER: Who’s fault is this? Who’s to blame? Is this the fault of the pro-life movement, are the arguments not well-developed? Is it the fault of supposedly pro-life politicians who lack courage? Who do you blame?

STONESTREET: Yeah, it's a great question. I probably the right answer is not one thing, but a whole lot of things. And you know, one of those things being kind of a thoroughgoing, capitulation culture wide, to a deep moral relativism when it comes to sexuality.

So, you know, maybe it's our fault for not reading the signs as Jesus told us to do, because the public just wasn't where we thought they were. I think too that, you know, we said it over and over and over, Roe didn't settle the issue of abortion, and that means neither does Dobbs settle the issue of abortion. I think we all meant it, but we certainly weren't ready to seize that victory and then to run forward with it.

And realizing, too, that once the lawmaking returned to the States, that culture is upstream from that, and the culture wasn't properly seated, even in quote, unquote red states, to be able to move the needle legally in such a way as to prevent the loss of innocent lives. So, yeah, I mean, and, you know, that's, that's on us.

And then, and then finally, look, I can't say that I would, in all honesty, give the church a round of applause for their discipleship efforts, not only on the moral issue of abortion, but on the overall issue of where the value and dignity of life come from. You know, we use that same sort of language of autonomy and self esteem and self reflection, and we just kind of Christianize it. And the idea of the image of God has been taught, if it has, in many cases, has just been kind of a Christianized version of a very secular idea of self esteem. It actually isn't the theological grounding that it needs to be. That work, that discipleship, work, that worldview building work is just not being done in churches. So that's on us.

And then, you know, you could talk about the rampant misinformation, like what we're hearing about Amber Thurman. You know, it was a setback, not just that, that misrepresentation of her tragic story was allowed to say that the debate, but you watched any coverage after it, and I'm talking about CNN or CBS or ABC or Fox News or NPR, and Amber Thurman's name was brought up, and that narrative allowed to stand there as well. And so, you know, at this point you're you're talking about a dereliction of duty from the press.

So you know, is that upstream or downstream? And I think the answer is yes.

BROWN: Certainly the story that is on our minds and hearts is the devastation from Hurricane Helene. There have been other destructive storms. Living here on the Gulf Coast, I have lived through a few. But this one hit differently. Why do you think that is John?

STONESTREET: Well, it hit differently for me too, and I think, you know, at some level, it's because of the amount of time I've spent in western North Carolina. It's because of the number of drives that I took between Tennessee and western North Carolina to play basketball games during my college days, and the amount of time I made that same drive to speak at the many Christian schools in, you know, Asheville and Charlotte areas and so on.

And I think this does tell us something about the human condition, is that when it is personal, when you actually know real people, the destruction of stuff doesn't sit the same as when people experience great loss, and that's because humans were made different.

That's as CS Lewis said, in the weight of glory, nations, cultures, arts, civilizations, they're mortal. Their life is to ours like life of a gnat, but it's the immortals whom we work with and joke with and marry and snub and exploit, and I think it's really moments like these that elevate this. And we experience our friends and our neighbors and our loved ones go through that deep loss.

I have been thinking all week about you guys and about your colleagues, a World News Group I consider to be not just a partner organization with the Colson Center, though it is, but a partner organization made up of a bunch of friends. And there's a whole lot of other people I'd say the same thing about. I've been to the offices there in Asheville, and those offices now are devastated, and the loss that you guys feel, it sits differently.

And you know, there is a Christian view that helps us make sense of this to some degree, it doesn't mean we can explain exactly what God is doing by allowing this to happen. Why didn't he turn the storm this way or that way? And there were a lot of eternal immortals who lost their lives in this, a remarkable number, and who would have thought to prepare for a hurricane in western North Carolina?

You know, this tells us all kinds of things.

Number one is, is this unprecedented for the people western North Carolina? Absolutely. Is this unprecedented and so let's completely, you know, punt to climate change as the explanation for why it was like this? That's not a proper perspective.

Secondly, why is it that events like this hit differently? And it's because at the end of the day we know what's really important, and that's people. When the people in our lives hurt, we hurt too. And we also know too that we're even though people are more important than stuff. Stuff does matter because it matters to people. And we're not Gnostics. That's not a Christian view, because a Christian view actually takes seriously the goodness of the created world. That's one of the most beautiful places on the planet, western North Carolina. And so we can actually order our affections and order our cares around a Christian worldview.

And then the last thing I thought about this morning as I was talking to one of my colleagues who lives in that area in western North Carolina, and praise God, she's safe. And her husband just moved to the area not too long ago.

But I always think of the wisdom of Mr. Rogers, and you're already seeing it, which he said after 9/11 trying to explain this to young kids, look for the helpers. There will always be helpers. Now, why will there always be helpers? Even more, why is it that nine times out of 10 the best helpers, the quickest helpers, the most effective helpers, and the ones that always show up are followers of Jesus? And we're going to see those stories. And that doesn't mean that the loss didn't matter, because the loss mattered.

But it does mean that there is, you know, as Sam told Frodo, good in this world, I believe that there is, and you can see it in the hearts of people. And all of that points back to that wonderful, I think, truth that was expressed so well by CS Lewis, that nations, cultures, arts, civilizations, and even our buildings, and even beautifully, beautiful mountainsides where the trees change color and it looks like the whole thing is a painting, at the end of the day, people are eternal, and that's why this one hurts, and that's why we can have the right perspective, and the people who are themselves victims turn into helpers. It's really an amazing thing.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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