Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, on May 9, signed a bill into law that defunds Planned Parenthood – more than this, a bill that prevents state funds from subsidizing the work of any abortion providers. According to House Bill 2634, it is “unlawful for any public funds to be expended to any abortion facility, or to any affiliate of such abortion facility.”
“Our administration has been the strongest pro-life administration in Missouri history,” Gov. Parson said, according to a May 9th press release. “We’ve ended all elective abortions in this state, approved new support for mothers, expecting mothers, and children, and, with this bill, ensured that we are not sending taxpayer dollars to abortion providers for any purpose.”
Parson is right to celebrate Missouri’s pro-life record in recent years. Because of the labor of pro-life elected officials – as well as the leaders and volunteers connected with pro-life agencies across the state – we have become one of the most pro-life states in the nation.
Benjamin Hawkins, editor of The Pathway
As such, and for good reason, Missourians may be tempted to think of our state as a pro-life “city on a hill,” leading the way in nationwide efforts to save pre-born babies’ lives.
Nevertheless, Missourians must remember that our state is also a “besieged city.” Precisely because of our exemplary pro-life record, abortion activists across the nation are laboring to undo all that Missourians have done to save babies’ lives.
Most notably, according to a May 3 press release from Missouri Right to Life (MRL), abortion activists are moving forward in their efforts to legalize the murder of babies by amending the state’s Constitution through the initiative petition process.
On May 3, the so-called “Committee for Constitutional Freedom” (that is, freedom, as MRL correctly notes, “to kill babies and harm women”) delivered signed petitions to Missouri’s Secretary of State, Jay Ashcroft.
“The signatures must be from six of eight Congressional districts and must equal 8 percent of the votes that were cast in the last Gubernatorial election, so the total number needed varies depending on the districts in which they collect signatures,” MRL explains.
“This process, which began a year ago in March, started with the filing of multiple pro-abortion petitions. Secretary of State Ashcroft wrote truthful ballot language which was challenged by the abortion advocates and ultimately ended with the court using the pro-abortion ACLU language as the ballot language. The next step in this process will be the Secretary of State’s office, verifying all signatures.”
If these petitions have enough signatures, and if Missouri voters amend the Constitution to legalize abortion this fall, our state will become one of the most pro-abortion states in the nation.
According to MRL, if this Constitutional amendment succeeds, abortion will be allowed through all nine months of a woman’s pregnancy. Abortions could be performed on minors without the permission from or notification of parents. Existing state laws requiring the health and safety standards at abortion clinics would be eliminated – threatening the health and safety of women. Women wouldn’t be able to sue abortion clinics or doctors for malpractice. Pro-life pregnancy resource centers would be forced to refer women to abortion facilities. And taxpayers would be forced to fund the abortion industry – making Missouri’s recent defunding of abortion providers null and void.
Nearly a dozen years ago, theologian Robert Yarbrough – in a lecture series at Southwestern Seminary – spoke powerfully convicting truths that frequently pass through my mind. After sharing with us about the legacy of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed in 1945 for opposing the Nazis, Yarbrough spoke words that we must take seriously in our own day:
“Bonhoeffer seemed to have an eye for what one could call the apocalyptic dimensions of his era in the run up to Axis hegemony [that is, more specifically, in the rise of Nazi power],” Yarbrough said. “Bonhoeffer saw things behind the scenes that I think other people didn’t see. … The question arises whether we are not on the cusp of some analogous international cataclysm that’s already unfolding, and we can’t see it.
“We could wish for Bonhoeffer’s prophetic instincts. It might put fire in our bones when we are prone to be at ease. Well might this help: It’s been plausibly estimated that, since the early 1920s, around the world there have been nearly one billion abortions, about 950 million, actually. …
“Six million Jews is horrendous, but 950 million is about 158 times the Holocaust. Scripture indicates God is slow to anger, not bereft of the capacity. If justice exists in or around this cosmos, how short the time may be for us to extend the good news of redemption in whatever ways granted to us.”
Missouri Baptists, it is far past time that we humble ourselves in repentance and fervent prayer, pleading with God to show us mercy and to wipe out the evil of abortion within our state and nation.