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When you want to defend unspeakable evil, the only way to get away with it is to do a demolition job on truth, logic, reason, and reality. And if you want to pretend to be a Christian while defending the indefensible, then you have to do a demolition job on Scripture as well.

We find this happening all the time, and I have often written about some of these woke wonders who twist Scripture, mangle morality, and stomp on rationality as they seek to pretend that you can be a follower of Jesus Christ and still fully support the slaughter of unborn babies.

But the most recent case of this that I came upon is a real doozy indeed. This gal should be absolutely embarrassed by what she has said. None of it makes the slightest bit of sense — and certainly not Scriptural sense. I refer to Hillary Scholten, a Michigan Democrat and member of the US House of Representatives.

Twisting Scripture

A debate was underway on what has to be a most humane and reasonable bill: the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, or H.R. 26. It simply says that when a baby is born alive after a botched abortion, there should be provision made to keep the baby alive, and not dump him or her into a rubbish bin or whatever. Yet this woman wants nothing to do with this! I kid you not. Check out what she had to say:

As a pro-choice Christian who chose life, this issue is so personal to me. My faith informs my actions, but it doesn’t dictate the policy of an entire nation. And further, when I read the Scripture, I turn to passages and I’m guided by passages like Jeremiah 1 verse 5, which states, ‘I knew you before I formed you and I placed you in your mother’s womb.’ It doesn’t say the government’s womb or the Speaker’s womb. It says the mother’s womb.

Good grief, dumb as — on so many levels. Let’s start with the text she has managed to mangle out of all recognition. It refers of course to God’s call upon the life of the prophet Jeremiah. And it is among the most pro-life passages in all of Scripture. Here is the entire passage:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

God is telling the prophet that even before he was born, God knew all about him as a person. His humanity and dignity were there even while still in his mother’s womb. Because he, like all of us, are image-bearers of God, we all have unique dignity and value. We certainly all have an inherent right to life.

The personhood of the unborn is clearly being assumed in a text like this, as in other passages, such as Psalm 139:13-16:

For You formed my inward parts;
You knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are Your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from You,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in Your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.

How anyone reading the Bible without secular left glasses on cannot see what is being said in texts like this really should not be discussing such matters. Telling lies for God never goes down well. As I wrote in my 2015 book The Challenge of Abortion:

From passages like this we see that “Scripture assumes a significant personal continuity between prenatal and postnatal life”, as John Frame remarks. Indeed, the same personal language is used of those both in and out of the womb.

Says Frame, “At the very least, this continuity indicates that God is not only forming and caring for the unborn child; He is forming him as a specific individual, to fit him specifically for his postnatal calling.”

And she seems altogether clueless about the role of government. Guess what, Scholten: the number one goal of the state is to protect human life. What does the American Declaration of Independence speak about? What about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”? The job of government is to protect people.

So spare us this nonsense of the ‘government’s womb’ and the like. You might as well foolishly claim that the state should have nothing to do with lung cancer or breast cancer, since it is neither the government’s lung nor breast. But when folks insist on pushing untenable positions (in this case, ‘leave those lousy babies alone to die in cold, hard steel dishes’), then they make untenable and irrational ‘arguments’.

Australian Connection

It is worth being aware of a similar bill that has been brought into the Australian Parliament by Senators Matthew Canavan, Alex Antic and Ralph Babet. Theirs is the Human Rights (Children Born Alive Protection) Bill 2022 introduced to the Senate. They say this about the proposal:

“The Bill was first introduced by George Christensen, the former Member for Dawson in the House of Representatives last year, but lapsed when that Parliament ended. If successfully passed, the Bill will ensure that a child who survives an attempted termination of pregnancy will be entitled to the same level of medical care and treatment as any newborn child.”

They offer these gruesome statistics:

– A child of 22 weeks gestation, Jessica Jane, who was born alive weighing 515 g after a botched late-term abortion, with “good vital signs”, was left in a dish to die and was heard crying for 80 minutes until she died.

– In Melbourne, The Age reported: “In 2007, 52 babies survived late-term abortions, according to government figures. In some clinics they had simply been put on a shelf and left to die, and the public deserved to know what was happening now.”

– In Victoria from 2012-2016, 198 babies were born alive and left to die.

– In Queensland from 2005-2015, 204 babies were born alive and left to die.

– In Western Australia from 1999-2016, 27 babies were born alive and left to die.

You can sign a petition to support them in this here. Please sign it and share it with your friends.

Since Scholton clearly does not know her Bible, let me finish with three key texts that are quite relevant to the abortion debate:

• Psalm 82:2-4 ~ Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
• Proverbs 24:11 ~ Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter.
• Proverbs 31:8 ~ Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.

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Originally published at CultureWatch. Photo by Ambady Kolazhikkaran.