The Republicans in DC have decided, with Lindsey Graham as their mouthpiece to pursue passing legislation which would ban abortions after 15 weeks. Here he is in his own words:
Now, on one hand I applaud him for not sitting on his hands post-Dobbs. The Dobbs ruling wasn’t a final victory. Roe until Dobbs was like the pre-season, and now we’ve got a 50 game season to decide the champion.
However, as my tweet of this video articulates, the GOP has decided to couch their moral reasoning in two things: the opinion of the average American voter, and what the coolest nations over at the UN doing. If your teenager made a decision like the GOP has made here, you’d probably respond with the cliché about jumping off a cliff if all their friends did. Public opinion polls are not where our morality should be derived from. Morality can’t be decided by a vote. Morality must be transcendent, or else it will be transient. Scripture should be the basis for our civil laws and how we understand morality, justice, and equity.
Regardless of whether this bill has a shot of even coming close to passing, our elected officials are not tasked by God to execute justice and peace only insofar as public opinion will go along with it. Our standard for what constitutes murder shouldn’t be drawn on the basis of where other 1st world nations draw the line.
As we await more information on this bill and the strategy behind it, the concern which we ought to raise is that it will be very easy for pre-Dobbs pro-life politicians to weasel their way (post-Dobbs) into a spot where they can preserve their pro-life credentials while sidling away from language such as “from conception”. They can now look reasonable, respectable even, without having to continue the fight further.
Make no mistake, I hope every GOP member of congress supports & votes for this bill, and it would be a wonderful step forward if it became law. But it is also rife with temptation to stop there. The Bible doesn’t tell us that compliance to God’s law in 62.5% of cases is good enough. Rather, Moses promises Israel, “But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries (Exo. 23:22).” The GOP should take heart, and by faith walk in the promise of those words, regardless of how many Handmaid’s Tale costumes are on the capitol steps. We are to obey all that God commanded us in His Word, not just to the extent that Gallup tells us will satisfy voters during the mid-terms.
The GOP should be pressed to clarify that this is just step one of their plan to ban abortion from conception. Is that a steep political hill? Yes. Does that matter? No. God’s Word condemns half-hearted obedience far more than just rank disobedience (Jer. 3:11). In other words, keep a close watch on how this proceeds, and don’t step off the gas.
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