Culture Friday: Pro-life states

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: It’s Friday, the 10th of May, 2019. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Megan Basham.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up today, Culture Friday.

SIMS: Shame on you! There’s not a person coming here that needs your advice on what to do with their bodies. Not one. An old white lady telling people what’s right to do with their bodies. Shame! Shame on you! There’s no faith that tells you you are right and everybody else is wrong. There’s no faith that tells you it’s your job to stand out here and shame people for something that they have a right to do

This is a Pennsylvania state representative live-streaming his confrontation with a pro-lifer praying outside a local Planned Parenthood.

Reading the live pop-up comments, Representative Brian Sims’s online broadcast appeared to be a big hit with followers. It was a roughly 8-minute video, repeating insults, you’re old, you’re a bigot, shame on you. He berates the woman over and over. He alternated between calling the woman un-Christian and calling Christianity harmful.

The episode sparked online campaigns pro and con, some seeking fundraising for Planned Parenthood, some seeking fundraising for pro-life work.

In other news on the pro-life front…

KEMP: I am looking forward to signing House Bill 481, the LIFE Act.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, just before another of the so-called “Heartbeat Bills” becomes law. Sixteen states have either approved or are working on similar bills. They draw the line at the fetal heartbeat, often six weeks’ gestation. Unborn babies that far along would have the protection of law.

Kemp signed the bill on Tuesday. That’s the same day Vermont went the other direction, and passed a measure that would place abortion rights into the state constitution. Similar bills are in the works in 12 other states as well.

Well, it’s time to welcome John Stonestreet. John’s president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview.

John, good morning.

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Good morning.

EICHER: I would say you’re pretty well connected with pro-life groups and activists. Tell me what you know about this: Is this the aim of the heartbeat bills: (a) to target the Roe versus Wade decision and set up a legal challenge, while also (b) creating an environment for a favorable cultural debate over heartbeats, instead of, say, the more elusive legal term of art known as “viability”?

STONESTREET: Yeah, I think the answer might be all of the above. I think all of this has to be understood in the context that all the pundits who said in 1973, “Well, the Supreme Court has settled this issue,” have been proven to be more wrong than any other prognosticator in history. This is so far from a settled issue and it is fascinating that something like a heartbeat bill, which would have been, really, dead in the water, a non-starter just five years ago now is being pushed state after state after state.

Now, I’ve talked to enough people to know that, yes, what’s really happening here is a legal set-up. They had the majority in their states. They have the ability to make this about what it is. And they want to be the state to challenge Roe. I think when you have a mass like this—Alabama and Ohio and Georgia—then what that does is it forces the Supreme Court to do something rather than just dismiss an abortion restriction based on a technicality, like what happened in Texas a couple years ago.

So it’s just a brand new day in this debate. And I think also the Pennsylvania lawmaker—and I really struggle, you know, that you guys played earlier, I really struggle to hold him up. There’s something we try to avoid at the Colson Center. We call it “nut picking.” You take the crazy and you hold it up as indicative of the whole movement. And I struggle whether—because you don’t have very many state lawmakers that are that foolish and willing to do something that—I’d say controversial if it weren’t so kind of crude and just remarkably in bad taste. But you do have that. That happens all the time on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee or Late Night with Seth Meyers or across all kinds of portrayals of pro-life activists that we see in movies that promote abortion rights or anything like that. So this isn’t a one-off. That sort of opinion, what people think of pro-lifers and their willingness to rant and rave and lose their minds, I mean, we see the protesters, for example, dressing up like the Handmaid’s Tale. There really is, I think, a cultural desperation on the side of those who are pro-choice to that extreme. Now they’re kind of lost.

Of course, the whole pro-choice position—at least since embryology settled the issue of when life begins, at least since 4-D, even 3-D ultrasounds and so on. We’ve been able to look inside the womb and see what kind of thing we’re talking about when we talk about pre-born children. I mean, that side has been on the wrong side of science and logic anyway. And so the kind of illogic that you hear of a guy. I mean, it reminded me of Joy Behar on The View telling Jack Phillips Jesus would have baked the cake. And oh, by the way, you can’t trust an old book to tell you what’s right and wrong. It’s like, how do you know what Jesus said if you can’t trust the book. I mean, this kind of illogic of you’re un-Christian and Christianity is harmful is really amazing.

But I think so what we see when we put all these things together is a couple things. Number one is the other side is getting desperate because they know Roe’s back in play legally. Roe’s been back in play culturally for a while, but it’s back in play legally. There are some huge hurdles on this and the Supreme Court is usually reticent to reverse itself. If it does reverse itself, most likely it will be what these states I think are preparing for. And what I mean by that is states both on the left and the right, the pro-choice side and the pro-life side. What they’re positioning themselves for is to secure either abortion restrictions or abortion rights within their states because the most likely outcome of the Supreme Court decision—and, again, predictions are dangerous, as Yogi Berra said, especially predictions about the future. But I think the most likely outcome of a Supreme Court decision will be that the court will return the decision about abortion back to the states. I think that’s what we’ll see. It won’t be a reversal of Roe. It’ll be kind of a gutting of Roe and returning the voice to the state-level. This is where the new game is and I think that’s what we’re seeing from a state rep losing his mind on a sidewalk to Georgia and Alabama and Ohio and all the other states that are really doing what they can do to protect unborn children.

EICHER: A well-known young controversialist died last Saturday, Rachel Held Evans. She’d written books and blog posts popular with theologically liberal Christians. She leaves behind a husband and two very young children.

Back in 2001, she was a student at the World Journalism Institute. Bob Case, who was our founding director of WJI, had this to say:

“While we disagreed theologically, she was a fluid and engaging writer. I found her to be compelling and, at times, prickly but always respectful and engaging. I was proud to call her an alum of WJI.”

Rachel Held Evans, 37 years old.

John, you wrote about her for Christianity Today. I read that piece, and you chose after publication to withdraw the piece. So I’m not even going to characterize it, but I would like for you take a moment and explain your rationale. Why did you pull it, why ask CT to take the article down? Tell me about that.

STONESTREET: Well, the entire situation around the article played out very publicly, especially on social media. I don’t really have anything else to say other than as I initially wrote, an explanation. I just don’t ever want to add pain to the sort of grief that’s being felt right now, which underscores just how remarkable and how influential and how kind of larger than life Rachel’s life was. And right now she’s got a family who deeply loved her and who I’ve long known and consider friends and I am going to pray for them that God would kindly show the sort of grace and mercy and peace that they need at this time.

EICHER: All right, fair enough.

John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. It’s Culture Friday. John, appreciate you, brother. We’ll talk again soon.

STONESTREET: Thanks, Nick.

(Bob Andres/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP) Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, center, signs legislation, Tuesday, May 7, 2019, in Atlanta, banning abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected. 

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