A Word of Caution to Religious Leaders Who Fail to Protect the Unborn (http://professorcarolswain.blogtownhall.com/)

October 1, 2009 by Carol M. Swain

The Prophet Hosea issued a warning to the misguided religious leaders of his day, in which he cried: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being My priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children (Hosea 4:6).

Black religious leaders today who use their elevated positions in the community to mislead their flock would do well to heed the same warning that Hosea issued to his people. In particular, I refer to a group of "pro-life" black evangelicals who endorsed President Obama's proposed healthcare legislation with the public option provision that might have greatly expanded the use of taxpayer funds to cover abortions via its inclusion of the public option. Wisely, however, the Senate Finance Panel voted on Tuesday afternoon, 15-8 to reject the public option. Nevertheless, other avenues for expanded abortion coverage remain in the legislation awaiting further debate.

The religious leaders I criticize here were led by none other than renowned Bishop Charles E. Blake, Sr., head of a major Los Angeles's congregation of Church of God in Christ, a heretofore conservative Pentecostal denomination with an estimated membership exceeding 6 million. Bishop Blake was among a group of black pastors of large churches whom President Bush wooed in his fight against abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and same-sex marriage.

In making their endorsement of the President Obama's proposed health care legislation, Bishop Blake's issued a statement: "In accord with our commitment to Christian teaching, we wholeheartedly affirm the president's position that medical costs related to the abortion of fetuses shall not be covered by healthcare plans funded by the imitative." Mysteriously, the bishop had concluded that abortion would not be covered by President Obama's plan. Did this bishop know that he and his clerical colleagues were swearing their allegiance to a President who in his 100 days of office had already proven himself to be anti-life with his reversal of executive orders banning embryonic stem cells research and by the lifting of the Mexico City Policy which had banned the use of federal tax-payer dollars for abortions of women abroad?

But all is not lost. Fortunately, there remain some strong voices in the black community who have consistently taken unequivocal positions for life that does not change depending on the political winds. Examples include Reverend Walter B. Hoye II, Founder and President of Issues4Life Foundation, who has repeatedly and unapologetically risked his freedom for the cause of saving little black lives. Another bold voice is Bishop Harry Jackson, Senior Pastor of Hope Christian Church in Washington, D.C..

The Washington Times gave African-Americans advocates for life a badly needed forum to address this issue. Dr. Alveda King, Director of African American Outreach, niece of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, "Abortion has taken a gruesome toll on the black community, killing more than AIDs and crime combined. Some 14 million black babies have been aborted since the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court Roe v. Wade." Similarly, Day Gardner, President of the National Black Pro-life Union recently pointed out that "today, for every black baby born, another black baby is killed by abortion. Planned Parenthood is the nation's largest abortion chain. It has planted its clinics strategically in our urban and minority neighborhoods". . .Gardner cited well-known data by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, and data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that show a large majority of abortion clinics are placed in minority neighborhoods. Moreover, she said Planned Parenthood raked in $1 billion last year, including more than $350 million in taxpayer funds that are used to help "fund an organization that gets excited about taking donations earmarked to abort black babies."

But on the horizon is an even greater threat than the legislation being debated in Congress. Researchers at the Oregon State University and at the London School of Economics are busy publishing new studies that babies are bad for our environment because of the huge carbon footprint each one leaves. One can easily see where this argument leads. It will be the poor women of the world who will be expected to pay the greatest cost and most of them will be women of color. Given the current officeholders, we cannot expect protection for human life to emanate from President Obama and his appointees who include John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, who in the 1970s co-authored Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment along with Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich:

Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society (p. 837).

It would even be possible to require pregnant single women to marry or have abortions, perhaps as an alternative to placement for adoption, depending on the society (p. 786).

Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock (p. 787-8).

As a Christian, I believe that nations will be judged on the basis of how they treat the most vulnerable among them, and that "We the People" will be held responsible for the collective actions of the leaders whom we elect. We have bloodied our hands and seared our consciences with our failure to protect the lives of unborn human beings--both near and far. The United States' role in the expansion and exportation of abortion is an issue where we need our Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders to resist the temptation to ignore or misrepresent this blatant attack on innocent life.