Pew Research recently released a report on an accelerating trend in the U.S. — adults who were raised in Christian homes and who formerly described themselves as Christian leaving the Christian faith and joining the growing number of religious “nones.” According to Pew, nearly a third of those raised Christian describe themselves as “nothing in particular” as adults. This trend is expected to continue in the next few decades. Combined with a decrease in “transference” — that is, children who were raised in Christian homes becoming Christians themselves — Pew’s research team predicts that between 2050 and 2070, the majority of Americans will not describe themselves as Christians.
This trend is sobering because it shows that a growing number of people are living their lives without the hope of the gospel. While some of the decline in Christianity in the U.S. is likely due to a shift in cultural attitudes toward Christianity leading to fewer people describing themselves as Christians without holding strong convictions, the rise of “deconstruction” has seen a not insignificant numberof young people who once expressed zeal for their faith now rejecting Christianity.
Pew’s prediction is that this shift won’t see its full effectuntil 30 to 50 years from now. However, their research and research from other groups show that America’s teens and young adults are already experiencing this shift. Atheism is more widespreadamong Generation Z than any previous generation in the U.S. Just over half of America’s teenagers are Christians, and a little less than half of adults in their 20s.
It was a blustery January day in Washington, D.C. as I made my way around the corner of the national mall. Suddenly, tens of thousands of pro-life activists came into my line of sight. I immediately froze in my tracks, overwhelmed at the sheer number of people who had traveled to march for the unborn.
Did you know that the largest human rights march is against abortion? I knew this truth before attending the national March for Life, but it was only when I witnessed the vast army of advocates willing to dedicate their lives for the voiceless that I truly understood what it meant. Over 150,000 activists unified on this cold day–making it the highest attended March ever.
Not only was I encouraged by the sheer amount of people, but also by our diversity. As I looked out across the vast sea of young and old, liberal and conservative, religious and atheist, men, women, and children, I realized how much of an impact we are making. United for life yet diverse in background, we are a powerful force to be reckoned with. Rather than fighting for ourselves, we fight for those who cannot speak for themselves, for women facing crisis pregnancies, and women seeking to heal from the trauma of abortion.
U.S. Senate Considers Abortion Extremism, Senator Tina Smith Praises Planned Parenthood
On Monday of this week, the U.S. Senate voted on the most radical abortion bill in history.The “Women’s Health Protection Act” would have established a “right” to abortion in federal law and removed state-level protections for the unborn, allowing abortion up until birth in all 50 states. The bill would also have preventedthe government from holding abortion facilities to certain medical standards and would have removed limits on mail-order abortions. In a vote that fell almost entirely along party lines, it did not receive the 60 votes it needed to pass. Both of Minnesota’s Senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, voting in favor of abortion extremism.
Our modern culture takes pride in twisting the meaning of words. Abortion is now “maternal healthcare,” and physician-assisted suicide is now “death with dignity.” Unfortunately, this disturbing change in semantics has real life impacts, subtly changing our culture’s views on these issues and normalizing the devaluation of human life. As activists attempt to pitch physician-assisted suicide to the world, it has devastating consequences for our society.
A report from the Journal of Ethics in Mental Health found that when assisted suicides are present in a society, the number of non-assisted suicides increases dramatically. It should be obvious to many that when ending one’s own life in a hospital is seen as a solution to suffering, non-assisted suicide will become accepted as well. This is the sad truth of the situation, and it cannot be covered up with weak attempts to change the semantics.
The state of Oregon has long been a proponent of physician-assisted suicide. Death with Dignity, an organization devoted to the subject since 1989, “believe[s] individuals with terminal illness have a right to die with the same autonomy and agency in which they lived their lives.” Sadly, as Oregon has embraced a culture of death, they have seen a spike of youth suicides in recent years. In 2018, suicide was the leading cause of death for youths across the state.
Sarah Stoesz, CEO of Planned Parenthood in Minnesota for the past twenty years, will be stepping down later this year. Stoesz has led Planned Parenthood in creating more clinics, expanding its reach to other states, and impacting local politics. A replacement will be selected this fall. Her roots in Minnesota go deep, especially with the Democratic party.
Liberal leaders from across the state have been quick to commend her. Senator Tina Smith, a former Planned Parenthood executive who worked with Stoesz, praised her for influencing how health care professionals treat abortion. Sadly, instead of putting effort towards building Minnesota up, Stoesz and her team attempt to carefully pull apart what holds our state together — the family.
While Stoesz may be leaving Planned Parenthood permanently, her impact on the abortion landscape in our state will remain. Under Stoesz, Planned Parenthood has been preparing for the overturn of Roe v. Wade and the eventual abolition of abortion in neighboring states. She says when Roe v. Wade is overturned “we will be welcoming people from other states to Minnesota.” The ugly truth is that Minnesota will become a haven for so-called “health care access” that only leads to the death of the unborn.
We are so excited to announce that Ryan Bomberger of the Radiance Foundation will be speaking at LEAD 2022! Ryan is an Emmy Award-winning creative professional, international public speaker, columnist, and author of Not Equal: Civil Rights Gone Wrong. He is also the co-founder of RadianceFoundation.org, a life-affirming organization that illuminates that every human life has purpose. As one of ten children who were adopted and loved in a family of 15 and a father of four, he enjoys illuminating the intrinsic worth we all possess.
Ryan has done incredible work in the pro-life movement, from Congressional briefings on Capitol Hill to speaking at the March for Life in Washington D.C. to billboard and multimedia campaigns, including TooManyAborted.com, an ad campaign addressing the hugely disproportionate impact of abortion in the black community.
A recent study from Care Net and Lifeway Research found that nearly 4 in 10 men whose partners have had an abortion said that, of the people their partners spoke to before having an abortion, they had the most influence on her decision. This is consistent with past research from Care Netfinding that the same percentage of post-abortive women said that their baby’s father was the most influential in their decision to abort. Despite the enormous influence that men play in abortion decisions, the abortion movement continues to insist that this is solely a women’s issue and that pro-life men must be silent on the matter. Men’s influence on abortion decisions also shows why it is so important for men to stand up for the lives and rights of the unborn. Pro-life men make a difference, and the abortion industry knows it.
The supposedly “male feminist” talking point from men whoclaim that their support for abortion is pro-woman falls apart considering the reality that 38% of post-abortive fathers and the same number of post-abortive mothers acknowledge that the baby’s father played the most significant role in the decision to abort.
The FDA finished out the year by permanentlylifting safety restrictions on the abortion pill regimen, an unsafe abortion procedure that is made more dangerous by the removal of in-person requirements. For over two decades, the abortion pill regimen was regulated under the FDA’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) program. In that time, thousands of women who have undergone chemical abortions have experienced adverse effects and 24 have died, and there is evidence that abortion pill complications are significantly underreported. Under the FDA’s new rules, “DIY” at-homeabortions can be distributed by mail after a telehealth visit without so much as meeting the prescribing provider face-to-face.
Recent data from the CDC revealed that chemical abortions made up 44% of reported abortions in 2019. CDC data for 2020 has not yet been made available,but the influence of lockdowns and temporary lifting of REMS protocolslikely contributed to an even further increase in chemical abortions, as was seen here in Minnesota.
This is the next front in the fight for life. For decades, pro-life sidewalk counselors and pregnancy resource centers have done incredible work offering hope to abortion-minded women. While the need for their work will continue, increasingly, women who feel like abortion is their only option will be making that decision without even leaving their home or dorm room. The pro-life movement needs to reach these women, as well, and help them see that abortion is not the answer.
The so-called “Abortion Care Network” (ACN) recently reported that independent abortion facilities are closing at an “alarming rate.” In the past five years, 113 independent abortion facilities have closed, including 34 since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the past decade, the number of independent abortion facilities has declined by 30%. The rate at which these clinics are closing is not what is alarming. What is alarming is that they ever opened in the first place and that, far too often, we are numb to the daily massacre committed by the abortion industry.
It’s well past time for these clinics to close. Abortion is a grave injustice that has plagued the United States for too long, and the sooner these clinics close the doors, the better. Although Planned Parenthood continues to commit over a third of abortions in the United States, ACN reports that independent abortion facilities commit 58% of all abortions.
In many ways, the decision to terminate a pregnancy is not unlike the decision to go through transition: It is a fundamentally private choice that can be made only by the individual in question — a person who alone knows the truth of their heart, who alone can understand what the consequences of their choices will be in the years to come.
While Boylan is incorrect in how the two movements are two sides of the same coin, it is true that abortion and transgenderism are rooted in the same set of ideas. Both rest on the assumption that one’s “true self” or personhood can be separated from biological realities and both have a distorted understanding of the purpose of medicine.
Just as the abortion movement insists that an unborn child is not a person even though science has proven that life begins at conception,the transgender movement insists that a person’s “true self” can be separate from his or her physical body. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justice Anthony Kennedy infamouslystated, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." In that statement, he captures the mindsetthat is behind both abortion and transgenderism — the idea that each of us has the “right” to define our own concept of existence.
In May of 2018, a nurse at the University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMMC) was called into the operating room to assist with a “surgery.” Upon arrival, she discoveredthat the “surgery” she had been called in to help with was in fact an abortion and that she had been lied to. Although she was on the hospital’s list of conscientious objectors who had made clear to the hospital that they were morally opposed to abortion and there were other nurses available who were not on the list, UVMMC staff refused to call in a replacement and she was faced with losing her job and possibly her license if she refused to participate.
In response to this clear violation of conscience rights, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in 2019 against the hospital, signaling their support for the religious freedom of healthcare workers. That changed in late July when the Biden administration quietly dropped the lawsuit, leaving the nurse with no further recourse.
Columnist Tanya Gold recently lambasted a young writer who criticized proposed legislation that would have allowed abortion on demand for any reason up until birth in the U.K. In her op-ed Mercy Muroki described her experience with unplanned pregnancy in her teens and her decision not to abort. Tanya responded with her own story, insisting that for her, anything other than abortion would have been “impossible.” Chillingly, Tanya acknowledges that her abortion killed not a “clump of cells” but her baby. She writes,
How many women, do you think, walk into an abortion clinic not knowing what they are doing, and why? It’s not really a baby, say some pro-choice activists. It’s an, er, embryo. Of course, it’s a baby, and those having to make the decision know that better than anyone. I know that from my own experience. I don’t need people to tell me what I have done. It is always with me.
Tanya knows that her abortion took the life of her child. The abortion industry’s lies could not conceal that fact. In the aftermath, she is parroting the abortion industry’s talking points even as she struggles to live with what she claims was a choice she “had to make.”
“When I was 22, I had an abortion,” explains Tanya. “I was very sick, with alcoholism, and I didn’t know who the father was. I had no job, no money and no home of my own.” Reading those words, my computer screen blurred in front of me as my eyes filled with tears as I thought of how my sister’s birth mom was in almost the exact same situation when she found out she was pregnant. Battling mental illness and addiction, unsure of who the father was, aware that the child she was caring wouldbe born with disabilities, and knowing that she would not be able to raise her child, she chose life. I am forever grateful for that she didand I cannot read Tanya’s insistence that her abortion was “necessary” without thinking of how different my life would have been if my sister was not part of it.
Whole Women’s Health was one of the largest providers of abortion in Minnesota, at least until 2020. For at least six months in 2020, the state of Minnesota’s abortion report showed that Whole Women’s Health committed zero abortions.
Eagle-eyed pro-life activists, including Pro-Life Action Ministry’s Brian Gibson, quickly realized that couldn’t be true. After all, pro-life activists were outside Whole Women’s Health every day last year - they knew women had entered the premises to receive abortions.
Abortion reporting is taken seriously in Minnesota, with the potential of financial penalties for a late or inaccurate report. So did Whole Women’s Health fail to report accurate numbers? Or did the state garble the report?
I wanted to get information straight from the source, so I called Whole Women’s Heath. After a long day, I was finally able to get Jackie Dilworth, Director of Marketing and Communications for the abortion chain, to pick up the phone.
A group of activists in Arkansas vandalized the 65-foot-tall Christ of the Ozarks statue with a “God Bless Abortions” banner last week. Members of the activist art group INDECLINE disguised themselves as construction workers and used pulleys to scale the statue and hang the 40-foot banner. “In Arkansas, there is only one 65-foot statue of Jesus. There is also only one abortion clinic,” the group wrote on Instagram in a post celebrating their act of vandalism. Two days later they posted a picture of a baby wearing a “God Bless Abortions” t-shirt announcing that the shirts were availableat their online store.
INDECLINE said in a statement that, "The project, entitled ‘God Bless Abortions,’ is in direct response to the dramatic attempts being made in Arkansas and throughout the South, to ban abortion services to women in need.” Women don’t need abortion and they certainly don’t needthe abortion industry’s lies. INDECLINE’s message completely ignores the women whose lives have been upended by the horror of abortion and the babies whose lives have been lost.
According to Minnesota’s recently released annual abortion report,9,108 babies lost their lives to abortion in our state last year. The vast majority (79%) of those abortions were committed after fetal heartbeat was detectable and 45% of Minnesota’s abortions were paid for with taxpayer funds in 2020.
The fact that over 9,000 babies lost their lives to the gruesome practice of abortion is staggering and heartbreaking. But at the same time, there is hope. These are the lowest abortion numbers on record in Minnesota and represent an 8% drop from the previous year’s abortion numbers! Not only did 2020 see the lowest number of abortions on record, it also saw the lowest abortion rate on record at 7.6%. One child losing his life to abortion is too many, and we must continue to fight for life until abortion is illegal and unthinkable. The decline in abortion rates in Minnesota over the past three years is a hopeful sign that the pro-life movement is gaining ground and that life is being valued in our state!
An attempt to repeal Illinois’s parental notification law failed to advance out of committee before the end of the legislative session, leaving Illinois’s 1995 law requiring parental notification before a minor undergoes an abortion intact. The parental notification lawis the last remainingrestriction on abortion in Illinois after Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a law in 2019 legalizing abortion up until birth for any reason, repealing abortion clinic regulations, and requiring all health insurance plans to cover abortions. That year abortion rates in Illinois increased by 10%.
Like Minnesota, Illinois requires parental notification, but not consent, before a minor undergoes an abortion. The parental notification lawis not only the last remaining abortion restriction in Illinois, it is also a policy that has widespread support among parents, including parents who describe themselves as pro-abortion. Removing this law would take away the last protection Illinois offers to the unborn while also attacking parental rights and teens’ relationships with their parents. The Illinois Parental Notification of Abortion Act points out that abortion can lead to long-term medical, emotional, and psychological harm and that it is not in a minor’s best interest to keep their parents in the dark.
Recent polling data reveals that the radical abortion agenda being embraced by the political leftis not even popular with their own base. In a nationwide survey, the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List found that “53% of likely voters are more likely to vote for a Republican candidate who supports a 15-week limit on abortion versus just 28% of voters who prefer a Democratic candidate who supports unlimited abortion up until the moment of birth. Independent voters break strongly to the GOP side by a 54% to 18% margin.”
This is especially relevantas the Supreme Court considers Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case challenging Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks. The Court has agreed to rule on the central question of “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” This case could significantly undermine Roe v. Wade and play an essential role in ending abortion.
This year marks 23 years since Oregon legalized physician-assisted suicide, and as in previous years, the reasons that patients sought to end their own lives were primarily loss of autonomy and a decreasing ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable. Additionally, over half expressed a concern that they were “becoming a burden” to their family and caregivers. In other words, fear and discouragement have been major factors motivating people to end their own lives, and rather than being offered help and hope, they were offered lethal drugs.
And yet, as people continue to turn to assisted suicide out of fear, the assisted suicide lobby consistently calls for the erosion of any safeguards that are in place. This is because the logic of assisted suicide allows no limits. Even when proponents claim that safeguards will be in place, those safeguards without fail begin to erode within decades or less. Dr.Joshua Brisoce, a hospice and palliative care physician and professor at Duke University, recently pointed out where the logic of assisted suicide leads, writing,
If suffering warrants assisted suicide, why should seemingly arbitrary limits like terminal illness or even autonomous choice limit it? For surely non-terminally ill, incapacitated patients can suffer — and for longer than a cancer patient with 6 months to live!
When HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra was nominated to his current role, pro-life leaders rightly pointed out that Becerra has a longstanding record of abortion extremism. During his confirmation hearings, when he was asked directly why he had voted against a ban on the gruesome practice of partial-birth abortions, Becerra refused to give a straight answer. Now, in a House subcommittee hearing, he has denied that partial-birth abortions are illegal.
In a hearing for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Health Subcommittee on Wednesday, Representative Gus Bilirakis asked Becerra if he agrees that partial-birth abortion is illegal. In response, Becerra claimed that “there is no law that deals specifically with the term partial-birth abortion.” This is not true. Partial-birth abortion is specifically prohibited in U.S. Code § 1531. Representative John Joyce pointed this out later in the hearing and also drew attention to the fact that the law gives a clear definition of partial-birth abortion. Even though Representatives Bilirakis, Joyce, and Dan Crenshaw all pressed Becerra on the issue, he refused to say that partial-birth abortion is illegal or that he would enforce the law.
Recent polling data from the Pew Research Center suggests that 59% of Americans support legalized abortion in all or most cases. This is one percentage point lower than it was at this time in 2020, but it is still a tragically high number. If this poll is representative of real views, a majority of Americans would vote to keep this murderous practice legal.
The pro-life movement has spent decades fighting to make abortion not just illegal, but unthinkable, and we will continue to fight until that is the case. In order to successfully eradicate abortion, the fact that the majority of Americans are ambivalent or supportive of abortion needs to change. So we have to ask ourselves, what can we do to change people’s hearts and minds on abortion?
