Christians Must Stand With Those Who Stand for Life

Commentary

In January of 1983, then-President Ronald Reagan spoke on the importance of protecting the unborn in his weekly radio address to the nation, asking, “Until someone can prove the unborn child is not a life, shouldn’t we give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it is?”

Thirty-three years later, science has proven what our faith told us all along, and the doubts have been erased. A simple ultrasound shows any parent that life indeed begins in the womb, and a study from The New England Journal of Medicine published last year found that premature babies have now been saved as early as 22 weeks into fetal development.

Incidentally, the undercover videos at Planned Parenthood clinics produced by the Center for Medical Progress helped further put those doubts to rest. Americans watched as Planned Parenthood associates haggled over the cost of unborn children’s tissue and organs and were reminded that no abortionist can procure a heart, a liver or a brain from a lifeless being — that is a baby.

So to answer President Reagan’s question posed all those years ago: The proof of our unborn’s humanity is clear, but, for some, that proof is hard to accept.

Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider and is a powerhouse in secularist politics. It is funded by American taxpayers to the tune of $1.5 million per day, all while performing some 320,000 abortions a year, according to its own math. It has a vested interest in performing as many elective abortions as possible, even if it means skirting the law along the way — as evidenced in these undercover videos.

On Jan. 25, a runaway grand jury in Houston, tasked with conducting a criminal investigation into Planned Parenthood, decided to turn a blind eye to the video footage we all witnessed with our own eyes and, instead, set its sights on the whistleblowers who caught them in the act: David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress.

The grand jury indicted Daleiden on two charges, including “purchase and sale of human organs” — raising an obvious question as to why David Daleiden was indicted for trying to purchase fetal tissue but Planned Parenthood was not indicted for selling it.

Dr. Russell Moore, the president of the Southern Baptist Church’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), expressed the thoughts of many of us when he said, “It’s as though the Watergate House Judiciary Committee were to have impeached Woodward and Bernstein instead of Nixon.”

I’m a nurse, not a lawyer, but I would challenge anyone to watch the videos produced by the Center for Medical Progress and then tell me who should be standing before a judge in this situation.

The indictment against the Center for Medical Progress is disheartening; but I believe that, in time, the words of Genesis 50:20 will ring true: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

As this battle continues, more Americans will investigate the claims against Planned Parenthood for themselves, and hearts and minds can be touched with the truth about the violence of abortion and the sanctity of life.

When this case moves to trial, we will enter a discovery phase when both parties will present their facts to a court of law and a court of public opinion. Americans will determine if these videos of Planned Parenthood employees, in their own words, discussing the harvesting of aborted babies’ tissue and organs, are a sham or — as the most recent forensic analysis says — are a true account of what has happened behind closed doors at Planned Parenthood clinics while taxpayers unwittingly foot the bill.

The pro-life cause is bigger than the flawed decision of 12 jurors in Texas. We were reminded of that last month, when tens of thousands of pro-life Americans took to Washington for the annual March for Life. I believe this injustice can ultimately be a catalyst for meaningful advances within our movement, but only if those who know the truth about abortion — that it is indeed the taking of a human life made in the image of God — remain firm in our resolve.

Now is a time for people of faith to stand with those who stand for life.

Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., is a registered nurse, a member of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus

and the author of the House-passed Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015.