The World and Everything in It - June 27, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Remember the name Dobbs. It is now part of the legal lexicon of abortion, the replacement for Roe and Casey. Dobbs, a one word descriptor for the crowning legal victory for the pro-life movement.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today on Legal Docket, analysis of Dobbs.

Also today the Monday Moneybeat: a market rally, but can it last?

Plus the WORLD History Book. 25 years ago, Britain hands over control of Hong Kong.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, June 27th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Abortion facilities shuttered in more than a dozen states » Abortion facilities are shutting down in more than a dozen states following the Supreme Court’s reversal of the Roe v Wade decision.

Arkansas is one of those states. And Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Sunday…

HUTCHINSON: This is a day that those in the pro-life movement [have] worked for for over 40 years. I didn’t think it would come this quickly, and the decision of the Supreme Court is really something that will save lives.

Friday’s high court ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson case reversed the 1973 Roe decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.

Arkansas and 12 other states—from Alabama to Texas to Idaho—already had pro-life laws on the books that were triggered by the ruling.

South Dakota is another one of those states. And GOP Gov. Kristi Noem said the court made the right decision.

NOEM: It gave the authority back to the states to make these decisions. So now that this decision’s been made, it will be up to each of the states and the state legislators and the people there to talk to their elected representatives about what their laws look like closer to home.

At the same time, many Democrat-led states have been working to maintain and even expand abortion access.

G7 leaders kick off three-day summit » President Biden gathered with Western allies in the Bavarian Alps of Germany on Sunday for the start of the three-day G7 summit. The meeting brings together many of the world’s top economic powers.

BIDEN: Today we officially launched the partnership for global infrastructure and investment. We collectively have dozens of projects already underway around the globe.

The partnership aims to leverage $600 billion with fellow G7 countries over the next five years for global infrastructure projects. Biden said United States will invest $200 billion in the effort.

It’s intended to counter China’s influence in the developing world and to help blunt the global economic fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Allied leaders were also set to announce new bans on imports of Russian gold— while looking at possible price caps on energy to squeeze Russian oil and gas profits.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday warned the leaders not to give in to “fatigue” as the war stretches into its fifth month. He said even as the costs of backing Ukraine continue to mount…

JOHNSON: The price of allowing Putin to succeed, to hack off huge parts of Ukraine, to continue with his program of conquest, that price would be far, far higher. And everybody here understands that.

Russia strikes Kyiv as Western leaders meet in Europe » Just hours earlier in Kyiv, an explosion rocked a high rise apartment building as a Russian missile struck Ukraine’s capital city. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: The cruise missile strike killed at least one person and injured six others—including a seven-year-old girl and her mother.

Many analysts believe the timing of the strike was no accident that Moscow meant to send a message to the West as G7 leaders arrived in Germany.

A Ukrainian government official said Russian war planes launched as many as 14 missiles at Kyiv from the skies over the Caspian Sea hundreds of miles away. That suggests Ukraine’s defense systems may have intercepted most of the missiles aimed at the capital region.

But many other long-range missiles found their targets across northern and western Ukraine over the weekend.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher

Iran launches rocket into space as nuclear talks to resume » Iran also reportedly launched a rocket in recent days into space.

AUDIO: [Rocket launch]

Iranian state media reported the rocket launch, but didn’t say when or where it happened.

Tehran has repeatedly tried to put satellites into space, with little success.

U.S. intelligence officials say any progress Iran makes with a satellite launch vehicle “shortens the timeline” to an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Iran recently tore down many of the UN surveillance cameras tracking its nuclear program.

Nuclear talks with Iran and other world powers have been stalled for months but are expected to restart in the coming days.

Gas prices tick down for first time in months » Gas prices have ticked down a bit for the first time in nine weeks, according to fuel price analysts Trilby Lundberg.

LUNDBERG: The average price of regular grade is down 4 cents in the past two weeks to $5.05.

AAA’s national survey has average prices a little bit below $5 per gallon.

Lundberg says the slight decline comes as demand for oil has softened.

LUNDBERG: There is concern in the trading circles that recession will cut into oil demand and demand for refined product.

And she said we could see pump prices drop further in the coming days.

Georgia has the lowest per-gallon price right now with an average of $4.41. Conversely, California drivers are paying an average of $6.32 per gallon.

Elvis tops weekend box office » The king of rock-n-roll was the king of the box office over the weekend.

TRAILER: Comic book heroes all find their super powers. Elvis found music. I wish to promote you Mr. Presley. 

Elvis very narrowly edged out Top Gun: Maverick in its opening weekend with an estimated $30 million domestically.

But the Top Gun sequel took in roughly the same amount and has now topped $1 billion worldwide.

I'm Kent Covington. Straight ahead: Breaking down the long-awaited reversal of Roe v Wade.

And later, WORLD History Book.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday morning and it’s a new day for The World and Everything in It. Today is the 27th of June, 2022.

Very good morning to you, I’m Mary Reichard.

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

It’s time for Legal Docket.

The U.S. Supreme Court handed down the landmark ruling on Friday that we’d been waiting for: Dobbs v Jackson Womens’ Health, the official opinion, one that closely mirrored the draft opinion leaked in May.

By now you know the bottom line: Both Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v Casey are dead!

REICHARD: To be clear: abortion in America is not dead. It’s now up to the individual states to regulate or ban abortion. Several states have already instituted greater protections for unborn babies.

Other states have done the opposite. They’ve put the interests of women seeking to end the life of the unborn first and foremost.

But remember Dobbs, and you will eventually. It will become as memorable as Roe and Casey have been.

I spoke to the director of a pregnancy care center in the nation’s capital about what Dobbs means for her.

Here’s Janet Durig of Capitol Hill Pregnancy Center:

DURIG: With abortion, with this being overturned? Nothing, because DC has very liberal abortion laws. And that doesn't change anything. As everyone's been saying on the news shows today this does not do away with abortion, it simply puts it back in the states. And in my case, it puts it back to the city of DC which has abortion and actually in its abortion law, you get a teenager can go have an abortion with without parental consent. So that none of that changes.

EICHER: Justice Samuel Alito wrote the 79-page majority opinion.

Four other justices joined him: Justices Clarence Thomas and the three newest to the court, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. President George W. Bush appointed Alito, President George H.W. Bush appointed Thomas, and President Donald Trump appointed Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.

So the decision was 5-4 to bring Roe and Casey to an end.

REICHARD: Recall what those decisions did: Roe legalized abortion across the country in 1973. It held states can’t ban abortion prior to the time when a child is able to live outside the womb, the point of viability, a contentious drawing of lines.

Roe created even more complicated lines by dividing a pregnancy into three trimesters and spelling out three different legal standards.

Casey re-affirmed Roe in 1992, but dropped the trimester scheme and added a new standard: courts had to determine whether a state’s abortion law created an “undue burden” for a woman seeking to abort before her baby is viable.

EICHER: And here’s where some of the reporting you’ve heard or seen has been inaccurate. On the question of overturning Roe, the vote was 5-4. Chief Justice John Roberts did not join that majority.

On another question, he did. That was the question upon which the court agreed to hear the case: whether Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks’ gestation is constitutional. Six justices upheld that state law, including the Chief Justice.

He wrote separately in a concurrence that reads more like a dissent in some ways.

REICHARD: Regardless, it’s a comprehensive majority opinion, replete with history and explanations of how the law works. Most of it lays out why Roe and Casey were wrong as a matter of law.

So let’s get into the details of the opinion and the dissent.

Much of the difference between the two has to do with a fundamental worldview, the language each side uses.

For example, what Roe called “fetal life,” Mississippi law calls “unborn human being.”

That has everything to do with where each side places the emphasis.

EICHER: The opinion begins with acknowledgement of what we all know: that Americans don’t agree on abortion or how to balance the rights of women with the rights of the unborn, or even whether unborn human beings ought to have any rights at all, at any point.

Given that intractable conflict, the opinion says the Supreme Court is not the place to resolve it. The court reads and interprets the Constitution. The court is not a legislature.

Therefore resolution must rest with the people and their closest elected representatives in their respective states.

REICHARD: That concept isn’t new. One case mentioned in the opinion is Washington v Glucksberg, decided in 1997. The question there was whether assisted suicide is a right under the Constitution. A unanimous court said “no.”

Listen to then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist announcing part of that opinion:

REHNQUIST: Out of respect for the democratic process and to prevent judges from over-reaching in this often difficult area, we have repeatedly emphasized that fundamental rights are those that are deeply rooted in our nation’s traditions. Thus, the issue before us today is not the broad question of whether there’s a constitutional right to determine the time and manner of one’s death but instead whether the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause includes a right to commit physician-assisted suicide.

And with that, the matter of assisted suicide went to the states. At the moment, the practice is legal in 10 states and the District of Columbia.

Dobbs is similar in that way. Because the first question that needs an answer is this: does the Constitution explicitly state a right to abortion?

The answer to that is no. Obviously no, as both sides are agreed on the point.

That neither Roe nor Casey started with that question is proof of poor reasoning, and it’s a point upon which even pro-choice constitutional scholars agree.

REICHARD: Casey brought in another legal error when it affirmed Roe’s central holding on the basis of stare decisis, a doctrine that means to stick with prior decisions.

But analysis of stare decisis hinges on five factors that the Casey court also didn’t think through. And as Justice Alito wrote, that doctrine is not a straitjacket. When a decision is terrible, it’s best to correct it. Just like the court did in overturning a ruling that upheld segregated schools for black and white children.

EICHER: So if abortion isn’t an explicit right in the Constitution, the next question is whether it is an implicit right.

Those are rights not mentioned specifically, but recognized by the court because they are deeply rooted in American history.

The Dobbs opinion goes into that history. One major point is that abortion was a crime in most states around the time of the ratification of the 14th Amendment. That was 18-68. One of the things the 14th Amendment did was to extend to the states the right of Due Process and Equal Protection, both of those found in the Fifth Amendment, which applies to the federal government.

And “Due Process” was where Roe v. Wade found abortion to be an implicit right.

REICHARD: In other words, no “deep history” to it, really at all.

And here I’ll insert the dissenting justice’s rejoinder to that: we cannot remain stuck in the 1800s when men ratified the Due Process Clause. Men weren’t attuned to female liberty because then they didn’t see women as equals.

The dissent says, times have changed, and now the majority “consigns women to second-class citizenship.”

EICHER: Still, it’s a tough argument to say abortion is part of the American tradition, when more than half of the states to this day don’t want it.

The dissent says it’s not about states, but about individuals; specifically, pregnant women who don’t wish to be pregnant. That one in four American women have had an abortion underscored the abortion industry’s key contention during oral argument in the Dobbs case: that sticking to precedent and affirming women’s reliance on abortion is paramount.

During oral argument, its lawyer Julie Rikelman pounded on that:

RIKELMAN: Mississippi's ban on abortion two months before viability is flatly unconstitutional under decades of precedent. Mississippi asks the Court to dismantle this precedent and allow states to force women to remain pregnant and give birth against their will.

REICHARD: One aspect of Casey the Dobbs opinion lingered upon was Casey’s famous definition of “liberty” to mean the right to define one’s own concept of existence, meaning, the universe, and the mystery of human life.

Justice Alito wrote this in response: “While individuals are certainly free to think and to say what they wish about [these things] … they are not always free to act in accordance with those thoughts. License to act on the basis of such beliefs may correspond to one of the many understandings of “liberty,” but it is certainly not “ordered liberty.” “Ordered liberty sets limits and defines the boundary between competing interests.”

EICHER: Without ordered liberty, anyone’s idea about anything would be a fundamental right—and the opinion gave as examples, illicit drug use and prostitution.

Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas wrote separate concurrences. Kavanaugh’s stated again what he said during oral argument:

KAVANAUGH: The Constitution is neither pro-life nor pro-choice on the question of abortion, but leaves the issue to the people of the states or perhaps Congress to resolve in the democratic process.

REICHARD: Justice Thomas also wrote a concurring opinion that is the source of alarmist headlines.

He has long taken issue with the modern Supreme Court concept known as “substantive due process.” He rejects it—legally and logically—because the words aren’t meant to go together. Due process is its own thing, a procedure. Substantive refers to rights that exist for their own sake. Thomas thinks that by putting the two together, the courts have taken for themselves entirely too much power.

And because prior court decisions have relied on substantive due process in their analyses, Thomas indicated he’d like to revisit, for example, the same-sex marriage decision and the decision that struck down laws on contraceptive use.

EICHER: Whatever you think about that, none of the other justices signed on with Justice Thomas’s concurrence. The majority opinion takes pains to specify that it is limited to abortion. Quoting from page 66: “[W]e emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”

REICHARD: We turn now to more of what dissenting justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan had to say.

During oral argument, Justice Sotomayor made this comment about Mississippi’s abortion laws:

SOTOMAYOR: The Senate sponsors said we're doing it because we have new justices on the Supreme Court. Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts? 

“Political acts.” That accusation pervaded the dissenting opinion. On page 57, the dissent shoots an arrow directly at the majority: “Neither law nor facts nor attitudes have provided any new reasons to reach a different result than Roe and Casey did. All that has changed is this Court.”

EICHER: The dissenters say they do care about the state’s interest in the lives of the unborn, but that the majority goes too far and erases the interests of pregnant women altogether.

They use the term “forced childbirth.” They say women’s rights to equality and freedom are in peril. They say, as Justice Breyer said during oral argument, what’s also in peril is the legitimacy of the institution:

BREYER: To overrule under fire in the absence of the most compelling reason, to reexamine a watershed decision, would subvert the Court's legitimacy beyond any serious question.

REICHARD: The dissent talks at length about the hardships of motherhood. They say the majority insists on the historical vision of women as the center of home and family life, even when some women don’t want that. Quote from the dissent: “A state can force (a woman) to bring a pregnancy to term….No matter if doing so will destroy her life.”

EICHER: Some questions posed by the dissent asked, where is the proper line? One example: Suppose a patient with pulmonary hypertension has a 30-to-50 percent risk of dying with ongoing pregnancy; is that enough to permit her to abort?

And short of the risk of death, how much illness or injury can the State require her to accept, consistent with the Constitution’s protection of liberty and equality?

In any event, these are now questions for policymakers in the states or in the U.S. Congress, as President Biden says he wants:

BIDEN: Let me be very clear and unambiguous: The only way we can secure a woman’s right to choose and the balance that existed is for Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade as federal law. No executive action from the President can do that. And if Congress, as it appears, lacks the vote — votes to do that now, voters need to make their voices heard. We need to restore the protections of Roe as law of the land. We need to elect officials who will do that.

REICHARD: With that statement, the president shows he understands one thing: the proper place for this debate is with the people through their elected officials.

And for all the furious reaction to Dobbs and the grateful reaction to it, the decision did only that one thing—return the question of abortion to the political branches.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now for our weekly conversation on business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen. He is on the line now. Good morning.

DAVID BAHNSEN, GUEST: Good to be with you, Nick.

EICHER: Alright, so last week we talked about the bear market on Wall Street that happens officially when a broad market index falls by 20 percent or more from its most recent high. And that happened with the Standard & Poor’s 500. But no sooner did that happen than the very next week the S&P 500 rose almost seven percent. The Dow and Nasdaq indexes also had a strong week—up 5 percent and 9 percent respectively. So do you think the market has found its low and this is the beginning of a bounce back?

BAHNSEN: Well, I get asked that quite a bit. And I was hoping you wouldn't have to ask me. But, you know, it's a pretty fair question right now. But I gotta say the same thing to you that I say to everyone. Nobody knows, you know, for sure. And I think that a week like this, the Dow was up 5.4%, that, you know, when the Dow was down a couple 1000 points, and then comes back a couple of 1000, there's a tendency to want it to have been a bottom. But unfortunately, there's two different variables that we're having to look at. One is whether or not we washed out all the excess valuation, and all of that froth and so forth, the kind of euphoria that had built up in some of the shiny objects of the market. And I think it's possible that those valuations have gotten low enough, at least in some elements, certain things, you have to remember down 70-80%. But then the problem is the second element is the earnings themselves. Do we go into a recession? Do we go into a prolonged one? Is there significant macro economic challenges ahead that could actually hurt not just the valuation of risk assets, but the underlying fundamentals, which up till now have not been substantially impeded. In fact, earnings growth is still on track to be up about 10% this year. So I don't know if markets go lower, particularly from their low of a week ago, like you said, it was a very impressive rebound this week. But you get what's called bear market rallies all the time. And my thought is the same as before this period of market turmoil and during it, and will be the same into the future. Trying to predict exactly what the market will do when is unhelpful. And yet focusing before, during and after on quality, focusing on those things that can be properly understood that are not rank speculation, I think that's the best place for people to be.

EICHER: Before we go, though, David, I do want to ask about this consumer sentiment measure. This is from the University of Michigan, consumer sentiment survey and we read that it has hit the lowest level on record. So is there ever a reason to put much stock in these reports?

BAHNSEN: Well, first of all, it is backward looking by definition, what a consumer feels about something at a given point in time is almost entirely driven by something that just got done happening. Consumers are no better crystal ball holders than anybody else. And so when you're referring to what some of the price levels have been, it's very interesting to see retail spending go higher. And consumer confidence, say it went lower, like people feel worse about the purchases they just got done making. I've never cared about this data metric. I've never paid any serious attention to it. We see it every month. The media loves talking about it. But do I think it has any predictive value? I do. I think it has contrarian predictive value, that basically consumer sentiment generally does get its lowest at the end of recessions. And so as a forward looking indicator, it tends to indicate that things might even start to be on to an upswing. The issue here is there's just a lot of unknowns, you know, what will the Fed end up doing? What will its impact be on certain things. By the way, the consumer is not going to suffer from them succeeding and breaking down housing a little bit, to the extent that higher interest rates help lower housing prices and and bringing back some realm of affordability which is totally lacking right now. That could end up being very positive for a consumer. What has been negative for a consumer is having the percentage of their income that they're spending on rent and mortgage be the highest it's ever been in history. So there's moving parts here, Nick.

EICHER: All right, that's David Bahnsen. He's a financial analyst and advisor and head of the financial planning firm, the Bahnsen group. David writes daily at DividendCafe.com. You can sign up there to receive his daily newsletter, the DC today. David, thank you so much, and we will see you next week.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, June 27th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming up next, the WORLD History Book. This week marks a special anniversary for America’s national bird, as well as the anniversary of Britain’s giving up Hong Kong.

REICHARD: But first, America’s most prestigious children’s-book award celebrates its centennial. Here’s WORLD arts and media editor Collin Garbarino.

SONG: “ANGEL CHILD” BY AL JOLSON

COLLIN GARBARINO: On June 27th, 1922, the American Library Association gave the first John Newbery Medal to Hendrik Willem van Loon for his book The Story of Mankind. They named the award after John Newbery, an eighteenth century publisher in England who prioritized children’s literature.

Each year since that first award, the ALA gives the Newbery to the American book that made the most distinguished contribution to children’s literature the previous year. But who gets to decide? Cara Frank of Clermont County Public Library explains.

FRANK: Every year they pick a new committee to choose the Newbery Medal, so you never really know what you’re going to get, because they all kind of start from scratch, other than that manual. Because everything’s confidential, you don’t know what the previous committee talked about or how they made their choices, which is a really cool way to go about it, because every year’s awards are really different based on that committee.

Lately Newbery winners appeal more to the tastes of progressive librarians than the tastes of children. For example, last year’s winner slipped a lesbian romance into the final pages of the book.

By today’s standards, van Loon’s The Story of Mankind seems out of place with its celebration of Western Civilization. But even in 1922, the award honored progressive literature. In the The Story of Mankind’s first chapter, van Loon offered a Darwinian view of humanity. And in a brief chapter later in the book he describes Jesus only from the Roman perspective, never mentioning miracles or the resurrection.

From handing out awards to handing over a territory.

CLIP: “GOD SAVE THE QUEEN” FROM CEREMONY

Twenty-five years ago in a midnight ceremony, the Union Jack was lowered in Hong Kong as Great Britain handed the colony to China. Britain had controlled Hong Kong for 156 years. And in 1898, the British government expanded the colony on the mainland with a 99-year lease from China. In the 1980s, Britain agreed to handover the entire colony to China when the lease expired.

Prince Charles and newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair attended the ceremony along with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Prince Charles offered the justification for the handover in Britain’s farewell address.

PRINCE CHARLES: Britain learned long ago that Hong Kong people know best what is good for Hong Kong. We have no doubt that Hong Kong people can run Hong Kong, as the Joint Declaration promises, and that faithful implementation of the Joint Declaration is the key to Hong Kong’s continued success. The eyes of the world are on Hong Kong today.

The Joint Declaration created the Hong Kong special administrative region. Communist China agreed to respect Hong Kong’s economic and political institutions for 50 years. Most world leaders, including U.S. President Bill Clinton voiced optimism about the transition.

BILL CLINTON: Well, the agreement says that there will be one China and two systems. And it’s hard to have a system with free elections and freedom of speech and an open press without dissent.

Despite the promise to allow Hong Kong autonomy for 50 years, in the last decade, the mainland’s communist government has curtailed dissent and civil liberties on the island and has punished pro-democracy groups.

From questions of national sovereignty to solutions about a national symbol.

SOUND: AMERICAN EAGLE

That’s the sound of America’s national bird, the bald eagle—a sound that three hundred years ago could be heard in every corner of North America, from the tip of Florida to the furthest reaches of Alaska. But bald eagles almost disappeared, and only recently made an amazing comeback.

Despite its status as a patriotic symbol, the bald eagle was almost driven to extinction. Americans used to shoot bald eagles considering them pests that threatened livestock. Some people even told stories about bald eagles snatching away children. Growing awareness and governmental regulation have brought back the eagles numbers. Conservationist Jeff Corwin talks about the success.

JEFF CORWIN: For me the bald eagle is not only a powerful symbol of the United States, but it is an incredible example of environmental stewardship, conservation, and the importance of the Endangered Species Act. Amazingly, not so long ago, this mighty bird species was pushed to the brink of extinction, but today it has recovered, and it is thriving because we all came together and we protected this amazing symbol of the United States.

In 1995, the bald eagle was transferred from the endangered species list to the threatened species list. Fifteen years ago this week, the government removed the bald eagle from its threatened species list, making it a species of least concern.

And the bald eagle’s numbers continue to grow. The Department of the Interior estimates the eagle population quadrupled between 2009 and 2021. More than 316,000 bald eagles now live in the lower 48 states.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Collin Garbarino.

MUSIC: [Steve Miller Band “Fly Like an Eagle”]

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: why Turkey is holding up NATO expansion.

Also, asylum seekers in Australia.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear… Fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. (1 John 4:18 ESV)

Go now in grace and peace.

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