Culture Friday - Life at stake

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, May 6th, 2022.

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.

Let’s bring in John Stonestreet. He’s the president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast and he joins us now. Good morning, John.

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Ah, good morning, did, ah, anything happen since we met last week?

EICHER: Yeah, something about needing emergency plumbing in one of the government buildings, some big leak everybody’s talking about.

STONESTREET: You don’t say.

EICHER: Well, everyone knows about the leak of a Supreme Court opinion that would—assuming everything stays as-is—finally reverse Roe vs. Wade.

If anyone thought the outcome of this case is just not that big a deal, I think this leak puts that notion to rest. Whoever leaked this took an enormous risk.

I read that when someone leaked to Time magazine information on the Roe decision before the court officially released it, then Chief Justice Warren Burger instituted the “20-second rule,” meaning if a law clerk leaks, he or she is fired in 20 seconds. The current chief justice, John Roberts, says this is a “betrayal.”

Doesn’t that say the stakes are very, very high?

STONESTREET: Absolutely. If the 20-second rule applied to leaking information, leaking an entire draft of a majority opinion on the most significant court case of the most significant cultural war issue of our lifetime, yeah, this would make this a big deal.

But we know, for example, the hysterics that surround this issue and have for decades, we know the violence that has surrounded this issue with the issue itself is one of violence, life is at stake. This has the potential not only to reverse what is the central holding of the progress of the sexual revolution, which, and that's why you're hearing as people have now digested and seen this opinion, warnings that we're going to lose rights to interracial marriage, or same sex marriage or all these other things, which the rest of us are like, that's not even related.

But we forget that this whole thing for the left has been built on a right to privacy, something that was largely invented and extended into an area of taking of human life. And which created what Justice Scalia called the abortion distortion. In other parts, there's a number of ways to define the abortion distortion. I think what Scalia man is that rules don't apply when it comes to abortion or when it comes to, we've seen this with other issues of sexuality that apply in literally every other area of life. But also people just don't think right. People don't think clearly. Somebody thought this would work. What did they think would work? That part is not clear. And so it is a big deal.

And let me just say this, too. And this is something that I say with great care. We are on the verge of having a another divided country, like we haven't seen, and I mean, around state lines, that we haven't seen, since having free states and slave states. The gravity of the morality of the issue of abortion is as high for many people, the inherent right to have abortion, the inherent right that all children have to live. Are we entering a world, a country now, in which we have life states and abortion states?

And are the stakes that high? You know, I soundly reject the idea of moral evolution that somehow we're better than those who have gone before us. But I do hope, you know, we wouldn't see some of the same things. But that's what's at stake here. I mean, this is a big deal.

EICHER: Talk a bit about the opinion itself. We know it’s a genuine first draft and even though it could still receive some editorial tweaks and even though we’re assuming the majority justices who voted as they did initially don’t change at the last minute, feeling some pressure. But is this decision all you were hoping for?

STONESTREET: Well, it's everything that we wanted it to be.

I don't think anyone really thought that there would be, for example, a complete ban on abortion coming out of that or that a court could do this. I mean, the court was asked to rule on a restriction law out of the state of Mississippi, and to do it in such a way as to undermine the precedent. You know, this is why so much was made about stare decisis, this idea of overturning precedent, because essentially, most limitations were dead on arrival in the past because of this, you know, the things that Roe put in. The viability thing that was invented in 1973 has dramatically changed because of science and because of technology and because of medical care. The inconsistencies are more stark than ever. So you look at it and you're like, This is everything we hope.

Now what's, obviously what's not clear is this is a first draft and first drafts get edited. I know that as someone who does a daily commentary with a team of writers - things get edited. It's not clear how much it's edited.

It's really good news that it's Justice Alito that is writing it. I mean, that part I think we can now know for certain. That's a different opinion than if Justice Roberts writes it. And Alito is brilliant, and that part was obvious in what we have seen. So it is exciting. This is what we needed to happen. Roe has had a stranglehold on the American culture, you know, outsized, unfair, unjust way. And you know, this, this dismantles it top to bottom.

BROWN: John, you’ve often said if Roe is overturned, it’s not the end, the work is just beginning.

I've heard pro-lifers say if there is a reversal, we need to temper our joy in front of our pro-abortion neighbors.

Conversely, other pro lifers insist it is absolutely ok to joyfully celebrate this victory for the unborn. If you want to shout, do a little happy dance, go for it and make no apologies.

What do you think our posture should be as Christians?

STONESTREET: Well, as a real Christian, I'm morally opposed to dancing, so I won't be doing that. [Laughter]

Look, we should celebrate! This is good news. This is not a celebration of the win. It's a celebration of God's kindness. There's so much that brought us to this point. And it's not the end of the pro life movement in any stretch of the imagination.

And, and the whole thing reminds us, the Supreme Court, if this is the decision that comes out, then the Supreme Court has done its job. The Supreme Court was able to do its job because the rest of us did our jobs. Showing up day in and day out at pregnancy Resource Center's distributing ultrasound technology in very creative ways, coming alongside of women in crisis situations and their husbands, pointing people to forgiveness and redemption in the cases of those who came to regret and understand the sin of their choice of having an abortion. And being able to have the conversations, as Chuck Colson used to say, across the backyard fence, and around the barbecue grill, being able to answer some of these slogans.

And I do worry that we are hearing you know, some people basically say, “Okay, we you got what you wanted. Now, calm down.” We haven't gotten what we wanted. If this is what we wanted, then we wanted the wrong thing. The point is not that abortion is not fully legal. And then by the way, that's all this decision will do. This decision doesn't make abortion illegal, it makes abortion not unquestionably legal in every situation across 50 states. Now, the mistake then would also be to turn around and say that the state legislature needs to do our job. We came to realize that the Supreme Court couldn't do our job, we had to do our job, therefore, the Supreme Court could do its job. State legislatures everywhere now have a very important job to do.

And we need to pray for them. We need to support them, we need to do everything we can. And I'm grateful for all the wonderful work that's being done on the ground in these states. There's a lot more to be done. And you're going to have this division of free states and slave states now in this new chapter of life states and abortion states. I mean, California is now promoting legislation in which they will pay women to fly to their state in order to have an abortion. This is going to take what Roe allowed to a new level in these quote unquote, sanctuary states or whatever they're calling themselves. State legislatures will be able to do their job if we do our job.

And our job remains that the church's job now is more important than ever when it comes to this issue. So do your happy dance and then put the boots on and get to work.

BROWN: We won't see you next week because it's Wilberforce Weekend, but we'll see you in two weeks. Hope it goes well for you!

STONESTREET: Thanks so much!

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

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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