Tag Archives: contraception

Religion in the Culture

Reproductive Rights–Very Important

Fetus at 8 weeks

The political discussion surrounding an issue labeled “reproductive rights” carefully avoids what most political discussions avoid: truth.

The discussion labeled “reproductive rights” is not about reproduction at all. This discussion is about not reproducing. The USA is full of people who do not want to reproduce, and we have the statistics to prove it. The political discussion labeled “reproductive rights” is about the fact that many, many people in the USA do not want children.

The lengths to which they will go to avoid having children appears to have no limit.

  • They will take drugs to prevent ovulation.
  • They will take drugs to prevent implantation.
  • They will take drugs to kill the embryo that managed to come to life despite all the other drugs.
  • They will abort fetuses that cannot survive outside the womb.
  • They will abort fetuses that can survive outside the womb using methods that assure the fetus will not survive.
  • They are beginning to advocate that parents have the right to do away with post-born children that displease them.

Activists for “reproductive rights” ask why anybody objects to any of this behavior. They ask, doesn’t a woman have the right to control her own body?

The answer to that question is “yes.” Emphatically “yes.” A woman does have the right to control her own body. A woman can refuse to engage in sexual activity that might lead to the fertilization of an egg in her body. There are certainly situations where that control is wrested from a woman by men whose drive toward sexual climax leads them to assault a woman, but those situations are statistically very rare and can be dealt with as abnormal exceptions to the affirmation that every woman can say “no.”

The one contraceptive that works without exception, every time it is used, is abstinence. This contraceptive is available at no charge to any adult human being by saying the word “no.” With that word, a woman can assert and confirm that she is in control of her body, or a man can do the same. Men also have the right to choose to abstain. Adult humans of either gender can say “no” and abstain from actions that might lead to the conception of a new human being.

The use of drugs and devices and abortions are all statements that an adult human’s body is controlling the human being; the human being is not controlling his or her body. The point of drugs and devices and abortion is that adults, both men and women, have sexual desires, needs, urges, even demands, that they do not want to resist. The subject of “reproductive rights” is about evading reproduction while continuing to engage in sexual activity that is likely to end in reproduction.

There is nothing inherently wrong with sexual activity, just as there is nothing wrong with choosing not to reproduce. There is a lot wrong with doing anything at the expense of the human being one has reproduced. Babies, even babies without faces, babies who have not matured to a point where they could speak, or even think a thought to be expressed as speech, babies at every developmental level, are human beings.

Sometimes discussions of rape or incest or marriage or divorce become entangled in the discussions of “reproductive rights.” . Those issues are related, but not central. The central issue best stated in two questions:

Does an adult human being have the right to control his or her own body?
Will an adult human being exercise the right to control his or her own body?

An adult human being certainly does have the right, indeed, he or she has the obligation, to control his or her own body. An adult is in control of his or her body when that adult makes a choice about sexual activity consistent with that adult’s intent to reproduce or not to reproduce. An adult is controlled by his or her body when the decision about bearing children is deferred until after that adult’s sexual activity has resulted in the conception of a human being.

Related but peripheral questions are:

  • May an adult human being delay pregnancy and childbirth for a time in order to pursue a career? YES. (It is not necessary to murder unborn children in order to achieve this goal.)
  • Does society have the right to impose on an adult human being the obligation to conceive, bear and rear children? NO (Society may not require any adult human being to conceive children. However, after an adult has engaged in activity that results in the conception of a human being, society has a right to expect that the responsible adult will take responsibility for the well-being of the child that was conceived.)
  • Does society have the right to impose on an adult human being a prohibition against conceiving, bearing and rearing children? NO (Society may not forbid an adult human being from conceiving children. What society does have a right to expect is that adult human beings will control their bodies and take responsibility for rearing the children they do conceive.)
  • Doesn’t an adult human being have the right never to be saddled with children if he or she does not want any? YES (It is not necessary to murder unborn children in order to achieve this goal. It is necessary for the adult human being to control his or her body.)
  • Does an adult human being have the right to kill an unborn human being that is the result of the voluntary choice by the adult to engage in sexual activity that could lead to the conception of that unborn human being? NO (To kill a human being who exists because an adult made a mistake is to commit murder.)
  • Does an adult human being have the right to kill a post-born human being under the age of 0 days? 1 day? 1 year? 3years? whose existence is a problem for that adult human being? NO (To kill a human being of any age is to commit murder.)

The Founders of the USA knew that life is God’s most precious gift to human beings. They wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” Life is an unalienable right, and the right to life is one of the reasons that murder is a crime not subject to a statute of limitations. The right to life is so important that protecting it is one reason for the existence of human government. The person who murders another human being knows that he is guilty and subject to arrest and prosecution no matter how much time has passed since the murder. No matter the age or skin color or ethnicity or political persuasion of the victim. Murder is a crime.

Only legal subterfuge by playing with language permits the murder of an unborn baby to be treated any differently than the murder of a twenty-year-old college student. Legal language says that murder is a crime against a person, and the legal term person has a definition not equivalent to the definition of human being. Because our founding documents assert that life is an unalienable right, endowed by the Creator, every law based on a definition of the word person as something different from a human being is actually in error. It is illegitimate, based on the Declaration of Independence, to treat any human being as something less than human, because every human being has the right to life.

The Declaration calls on a still higher power, the Creator, by which the authors of the Declaration of Independence meant God, the God who created the universe. Yet, even if they could be accused of making up God, they could not be accused of making up a right to life. God writes certain truths in the human heart at the moment of creation. Human beings know that certain things are right and others are wrong. This is a fact observed by anthropologists worldwide. Whether one believes that this knowledge originated with God or is simply part of the evolved nature of human beings, it is still the case that human beings all recognize the unique value of human life. Slave-holding societies don’t thrive on a belief that human slaves are worth less than other humans; they shut down their consciences that tell them slavery is wrong by declaring the slaves to be less than human. This subterfuge is the legal equivalent to declaring a fetus not to be a person, and therefore not entitled to human rights.

Secular thinkers proudly declare themselves to be protectors of human rights, even though they deny any divine origin for their values. It is not necessary to acknowledge the existence of God in order to observe that humans inherently recognize the right to life. It is the foundation of human society. The vast amounts of time, energy, and treasure devoted to the protection of life would not exist. The family itself crosses all tribal and ethnic boundaries, as a core protection for human life. If not for the inborn human value for life, nobody would try to find cures for diseases. There would be no Band-Aids or aspirin or heart transplants. Human beings inherently know that the value of a human life is beyond measure. Humans regard it as the ultimate dehumanization to put a price on a life—as in cases of slavery or hired assassins. It is this inborn understanding that makes it necessary in a secular mind to distinguish between a human being and a person.

Every human being has a right to life, just as every man and woman has a right to control his or her own body and sexual activity. Every adult human being has the right to say NO to sexual activity, but no human being has the right to say NO to human life. The unborn baby is a human life, from the moment of conception. The human egg produced in the body of a human woman can only be fertilized by a human sperm produced in the body of a human man, and the consequence of that fertilization is a human being.

Christians believe that God himself creates each human being, which means that, for Christians, there is another dimension in which the issues of life and reproduction are discussed. Christians read the story of God’s creation of human beings and discern his activity in the conception of each human being. Christians treasure the biblical image where God “breathed into [man’s] nostrils the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7 ESV). For Christians the issue of the sanctity of life transcends anybody’s personal rights, because a human being is created not only with the God-given right to life, but also with a God-given purpose in God’s created order of things. God has plans for this person. When we argue the right to life with secular thinkers in the public forum, we must speak the language they understand, but in our hearts and minds, we see the whole issue in a much larger perspective. The right to life in time and space has standing in an eternal and infinite context.

To assert a human being’s right to life in a political discussion is to engage in a conversation with people from all points of view. It is a godly work to stand for God’s gift of life and to speak from a godly worldview. It is equally godly to recognize that God created all the participants in that conversation. The person who speaks most vehemently in favor of murdering unwanted children is, nevertheless, created by God. God breathed his breath into that person and loved that person into being. Our discourse on behalf of the right of every human being to life itself must include respectful recognition that God created the opponent in the argument also.

Christians must engage in this discussion remembering that the real enemy is Satan, not the person enslaved by Satan’s lies. Our testimony to the love of God for all people must include his love for those who adamantly reject everything we say. We must copy the model Jesus gave us on the cross when he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

By Katherine Harms, author of Oceans of Love available for Kindle at Amazon.com. 

Image: courtesy of Phototgraphy by Shaeree :
License: CC BY-NC
Source: http://foter.com

Religion in the Culture

Does Government have a Compelling Interest in Controlling Population Growth?

The creation story in the Bible includes God’s first commandment to human beings: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” (Genesis 1:28 NIV) The implication of the commandment is that babies are blessings. Loving parents and the patter of many little feet in a family is a good thing, according to this rule, God’s first instruction to Adam and Eve.

After God later tries to destroy by flood the humankind that has chosen evil instead of good, he regrets doing so and decides never to do it again. He wants the earth to be full of people, even if they are headstrong and easily lured into bad choices by Satan. After Noah has come out of the ark with his family and a large assortment of animals, God repeats his first commandment, saying “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.” (Genesis 9:1 NIV) God, who loves people, wants lots of them to live in the world he has created for their joy.

The psalmist had a similar inspired thought when he wrote, “Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.” (Psalm 127:3-5 NIV) The Bible is full of stories centered on yearning for children and the joy of filling up a home with them. The most beautiful story in the world is the story of the birth of a child whose arrival was heralded by angels, but a birth story need not be filled with angels, shepherds and wise men in order for it to be filled with joy.

Why, then, the worldwide outcry that the world is overpopulated? The earth is far from being “filled” with people. What is the problem? Why does the UN have annual conferences around the theme of population control by means of contraception and abortion on demand? Why do so many politicians feel that it is politically correct to support abortion on demand? Why are the parents of large families treated as pariahs in some circles simply because they enjoy their children? When did the blessing of children become a curse that needs to be limited if not eliminated?

These questions are important. There is huge social and political pressure to remove any possibility of a woman giving birth to an “unplanned” baby. All this emphasis on “planning” opens the door to planning by someone other than a pregnant woman. It is so important that the US government is prepared to dive even deeper into financial deficits in order to assure that no woman need pay for birth control and that every woman be able to abort an unplanned baby as easily as she might discard last year’s sunglasses. The UN is in complete agreement with this principle. It is busy even now crafting a new statement of human rights that includes the right to avoid having children.

This imperative is having some effect. US population growth is slowing. European population growth is stalled. Apparently the UN wants the same thing to happen in Africa. The Chinese government has been doing its part for decades. Why do citizens permit governments to tell them when they may have children and how many? What makes citizens willing to suppress the birth of babies? How did the choice to have children become entangled with the power and responsibility of government?

These questions are at the root of the case now pending in the Supreme Court. Two companies, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood, will have the opportunity in March to address the Supreme Court on this very subject. It comes to a head over the fact that the owners of both companies live by principles that are rooted in their religious convictions. Those principles proscribe the destruction of human beings, even if the human is only one fertilized cell. Because they believe that human life is God’s gift which human beings must protect at all costs, they cannot comply with the government requirement to pay for health insurance coverage that gives free contraceptives and abortifacient drugs to their employees.

A major point in the arguments will be whether the government has a compelling interest that is served most appropriately by forcing these business owners to act against their own consciences. It all really comes down to the ugly question in the early paragraphs of this post: Why do citizens permit governments to tell them when they may have children and how many? What makes citizens willing to suppress the birth of babies? The only compelling interest the government could have in bulldozing people of faith and their principles over contraceptives and abortion is population control.

The government may have some political idea that limiting the population is in its interest, but neither the goal itself nor the objective of achieving a precedent that puts the interests of government ahead of the convictions of people of faith is consistent with the Constitution’s limitations on the power of the federal government.

There are plenty of political spokespersons who will claim that these employers want to take charge of the lives of their employees. That is a ridiculous charge, because the employers do not now attempt to prevent their employees from obtaining whatever contraceptives or abortifacient drugs they want, and the employers do not intend to attempt to interfere with the private choices of their employees in the future. Contraceptives and abortifacient drugs are readily available today to any woman who wants them, and those who cannot afford them can easily find services to help them. The issue here is whether the government has the right to tell an employer that the employer must act against conscience.

The root argument of this case has nothing to do with abortion or contraceptives. The root argument is whether a government has the right to force anyone to act against conscience. The ancient Roman government had the same mindset as many members of the current federal administration. In the Roman Empire of the first century AD (I still like AD more than CE) the emperor expected people to worship him as an act of citizenship. A good citizen worshiped the emperor. Only a traitor refused. This same attitude is being displayed by the US government. Worship is not the word the present government uses; it simply demands submission.

In the first century AD Christians suffered arrest, imprisonment, torture and execution rather than worship the emperor. The book of Revelation was written for those Christians. That book is replete with reminders of the rewards God has in store for Christians who hold on to their testimony and refuse to disobey God in order to serve the government. Christians who believe that the Bible is their guide for faith and life understand that the message of Revelation applies every time any government tries to stand in the place of God, every time a government asks any citizen to choose whether he will serve God or human government. Christians in Nazi Germany chose to obey God rather than government to protect Jews. Christians in Iran today choose to obey God rather than their government, which says that being a Christian is a threat to Iran’s national security. The same sort of choice is facing some Christians in the USA.

The title of this post asks about a compelling need for government control of population growth, but the real point of this post is that God asks every human being to put him first. The government may have all kinds of agendas, and Christians who want to be good citizens always also want good government. Nevertheless, as the founders of the USA knew very well, it is possible for government to overstep the bounds God has placed on its role in society. When that happens, Christians cannot and will not comply with government mandates.

Do we need the government to control population growth? The answer is no. Some Christians may dispute the theological interpretation which puts other Christians at odds with the government, but every Christian holds dear the principle that God has made him a priest to understand and obey God’s teaching as well as he understands it. Each believer is responsible before God for the choices of his own conscience. Every believer knows that he cannot justify disobeying God on any point by accusing the government of forcing the disobedience. The authors of the US Constitution wanted the US government to respect each person’s conscience before God, and that is why the First Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

The real question: is there any time when the government has a right to demand that someone act against his conscience to serve the government? The Bible and the US Constitution alike say emphatically NO.

Religion in the Culture

Great is the Lord

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols    Ps 96:4–5 

When I listen to the news or page through online reports and commentary, it is astonishing that so much of the material is related to the topic of sex. It may be sexual misbehavior by a political candidate. It may be protests at attempts to limit abortions. It may be discussion of employers who sue to escape the legal requirement to provide free contraceptives in group health insurance. It may be gay marriage, or it may be about whether a person with a gender identity problem can use the girls’ bathroom at school. Sex is pervasive in the news, and there is daily raucous conversation in public about things people used to believe were subjects only for private, adult conversations.

Americans think they have come a long way since ancient times, but they have actually regressed in a major way; Americans worship the gods of the ancient cultures. Tribal gods in primitive cultures and gods in the state religions of ancient empires usually had their roots in the need for fertility of crops and livestock. Worship of the gods included sex acts of various kinds. The Bible records that the lure of the sexual element of worship of those false gods repeatedly drew Israel away from faithful worship of God. Today’s Americans are at least as focused on sex and sexual behaviors as the ancient religions that threatened Israel, and with less reason. The ancient worshipers hoped that their sexual activity would result in abundant food for the survival of the culture, but they also hoped that they themselves would have many children in order to perpetuate their own families. Today’s Americans want to have sex with anybody they choose at any time they choose with no consequences, not even pregnancy. All they want is the buzz. Everything else about sexuality is considered trivial and not worth mentioning. The cultural fixation on sex has led to the destruction of respect for fertility.

The American wish to have free sex with no consequences or connections has led to another ancient practice: Americans sacrifice their children. In ancient cultures, living children, post-born fetuses, fourth trimester babies, to use some of the current jargon, were routinely sacrificed to the gods for various reasons, or for no reason other than an alleged demand from the god. In the USA, children are routinely sacrificed for the purely selfish reason that the parties to copulation never wanted children, and had no intention to produce children. They just wanted the buzz. They don’t burn the child up on an altar or make a virgin cast herself into the sea. They take drugs that reverse normal body processes and reject the implantation of a fertilized egg. If that approach fails, or if they don’t decide to sacrifice the child till later, they resort to surgery and outright murder of a living, sentient baby. The news this year has included evidence of the murder of unwanted babies any normal human being would love and cuddle and welcome into the world. In a normal hospital the birth of a baby with life-threatening issues automatically initiates a full-bore effort to save the life of the baby. Yet we now know that many babies with no threat to their lives at all except rejection by their own mothers are murdered by the doctor, a person who took an oath, “first, do no harm.” How can people who do these things believe that they are in any way superior to ancients who burned up their babies for the gratification of an idol? How can Americans credibly proclaim that people are learning more and more about life and becoming better and better in every way when the number of babies aborted in the USA would populate a sizable country all by themselves if they came back to life.  

When the psalmist confronted cultural attitudes and behaviors like these, he responded. The psalmist saw and heard his culture acting on concert with idolators, engaging in orgies for the supposed gratification of the idol, burning their children to satisfy demonic gods. The psalmist chose instead to give his testimony to God in praise and thanksgiving:

I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing your praise.  Psalm 138:1

This choice of words creates the obvious image of a believer testifying to God’s love and grace, as well as God’s call to use the gift of sexuality the way God intended it to be use. Robert Alter interprets the scene this way: “I hymn to You in defiant presence before all these deities that people imagine to be real gods.” (Alter, The Book of Psalms, 2007, p.476) The rabid, frenzied defense of sexual libertinism in the culture is a testimony to the presence of those ancient demonic idols. Christians who deplore the abuse of the gift of sexuality and the sacrifice of children to the god of sex feel the presence of those demons. They, like the psalmist defy the culture, giving thanks to God for all his blessings including the gift of sexuality. They endure the scorn of the general population and even of some Christians when they praise God and uphold God’s standards for human beings – a call to treasure and respect the gift of life and the gift to reproduce life which is the gift of sexuality.

An important lesson of the Bible is that human beings never change. There is a popular way of thinking that says humans are becoming better and better, constantly learning new and better things about living. The evidence of human behavior is that humans from ancient times to the present prefer self-gratification to any other pleasure. There has been no change in that attitude, no improvement in the moral view of it. Libertine enjoyment of sex is the most powerful force for self-gratification, and it is easiest to justify it if you call self-serving behavior a good thing. It is justified by saying that the things that make a person feel happy are the things he should do. The current sexual attitude in the culture certainly looks just like the behavior of ancient idolators who at least attempted to cover up their lust with a spiritual wrapping. Contemporary hedonists don’t even bother. They don’t worry about hiding their behavior from a God whom they consider to be an imaginary friend.

The psalmist had one more message for the current culture. Psalm 14 and Psalm 53 both start with these words: “The fool says in his heart, There is no God.”  These psalms continue to describe the evil of those who reject God, that “not even one” does what is right. It is no comfort to Christians to figure out that contemporary people live by moral standards that were considered degenerate thousands of years ago. Rather, it is a reminder that we must look to God, and to the Bible for our moral guidance, not to the culture.

A couple of years ago, someone told me that if I did not endorse same-sex marriage, I would be on the wrong side of history. The psalmist reminds all of us that the judgment of history is the judgment of human beings. In the eternal scheme of things, the judgment of history matters not at all. It is only God’s judgment that matters. We may be on the “wrong side” of history, but it is much more important to be on the “right side” of God. Christ Jesus ascended to heaven where he sat down at the right hand of God the Father. When the landscape of history is burned up in fire it won’t any longer matter which side someone stood on. It will only be important to be standing with the Lamb at his marriage supper in the New Jerusalem. That is what the psalmist was saying when he wrote:

I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart; before the gods I sing your praise.  Psalm 138:1

 

Faith Practice, the Exercise

A Verse for Meditation

Torah ScrollIs anything too wonderful for the Lord?  Genesis 18:14

  • This very short verse packs a very big meaning. Think of something in your own life that asks the same question.This Old Testament question is an angel’s response to Sarah’s doubtful question, “Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?” Where in the New Testament does a woman ask a similar question and receive a similar answer (“nothing will be impossible with God.”)?
  • What is the attitude of these women toward pregnancy in circumstances that might seem less than optimal? What might public advice for these women be today?
  • In the Garden of Eden, God said, “Be fruitful and multiply.” (Genesis 1:28) When Moses said good-bye to the children of Israel, he shared God’s blessings with them, saying, “If you heed these ordinances …[God] will love you, bless you and multiply you; he will bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground.” (Deuteronomy 7:12-13) Over and over, God condemned child sacrifice through the voices of the prophets, mourning that the Israelites offered up “their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination.” Jeremiah 32:3 Today’s verse characterizes pregnancy as a wonderful blessing from the Lord. How can this view be reconciled with the view that preventing or terminating pregnancy is a “medically necessary preventive health service?”
Religion in the Culture

The Consequence of Making Science a God

“To deny young adolescents access to medically necessary and proven care is essentially reproductive slavery.” Read more.

These words in an op-ed by Cathleen London, MD, were written in reaction to the news that the US Government had dropped its attempt to impose age restrictions on sale of “morning after” contraceptives.   The author triumphantly closes her column by saying, “Finally, science trumps politics.”

The vast majority of parents in the US will not share Dr. London’s good feelings about this action. Despite the increasing evidence that secular thinking dominates the federal government, evidence of polls and votes reveals a populace whose values and convictions are rooted in a different worldview. Some parents may believe that children know best what they need, but most parents believe that children need guidance and instruction in order to learn right from wrong and to develop the character to choose right rather than wrong.

Dr. London’s words make it clear that she sees nothing wrong with adolescent children being sexually active, and she does not believe that parents have the right to know if a sexually active child fears being pregnant. Dr. London does not believe in the family the way most people believe in family. She does not believe in the role of parents in the upbringing of their children the way most people do. Clearly, she does not believe in the biblical admonitions to parents that they have the obligation to instruct and admonish and guide their children to a high standard of personal morality. She also clearly does not believe that a family is the sort of relationship the Bible teaches it to be.

 

Why do Christian parents object to this policy?

  •  Christian parents trying to teach abstinence feel that the public attitude makes it harder for them to teach their values. (They know that the world does not share their values, but they thought the government respected them. Now it seems that the government is deliberately making it hard for them.)
  • Christian parents respect the natural consequence of sexual activity, and therefore they reject a practice that leads a child not to respect it. The “morning after” fix trivializes sexual activity. 
  • Christian parents want to teach children to respect the sexual union as God intended it. Easy availability of “morning after” contraception implies that unplanned pregnancy is a human inconvenience, not a blessing of God. 
  • Christian parents believe that fertilization is the beginning of human life – as would any scientist who knows that a fertilized human embryo will never produce anything but a human being. They want to teach their children to respect human life from the moment of conception. 
  • It is a fact that abstinence prevents pregnancy, but Christian parents teach abstinence in the context of biblical teaching about marriage and family. Diminishing sexual intercourse to the status of a recreational choice diminishes the meaning of marriage and family at the same time. 

This is not a triumph of science over politics.

This is a triumph of secular worldview over Christian worldview. Since the secular worldview makes science the source of the “discovery” of moral standards, it can appear that this policy is a triumph of science, but the policy came into being through purely political processes. People with political views expressed their views for and against the policy. Science had no opinion.

Science never has an opinion.

Science is about what is and what isn’t – within the time/space frame of reference. Science is not about the value of a discovery; science is about the discovery.

Science discovers that a drug initiates a sequence of events that results in a lack of hospitality for the implantation of an embryo in the lining of the uterus. That is all science has to say about the drug. Science doesn’t care if the drug is used or not. Science doesn’t care if everyone can get the drug. Science doesn’t care about drug versus abstinence or about the age when sexual activity is appropriate or whether age has anything to do with the appropriateness of sexual activity. Science simply reveals that certain chemicals act in the human body in a certain way.

Politics speaks to a specific worldview. In fact, politics is the establishment of a worldview by force of law.

Secular worldview says that sex is natural, and that physical maturity that inspires and drives sexual activity appears simultaneously with the maturity of judgment to choose or not choose sex and to choose or not choose the drug. The secular worldview says that sexual activity is as natural and normal as eating, and that adults (anyone past puberty) only need to be sure that sexual activity is a mutual choice carried out safely. The moral boundaries people with other worldviews establish are not part of a secular worldview.

Christian worldview says that sex is natural, but that the physical maturity to engage in sexual activity may well develop before the emotional maturity to make good judgments about sexual activity. It also says that parents are responsible for the moral upbringing of their children and that parents must participate in the decisions children face when they are not mature enough to make those decisions on their own. Christian worldview sees sex as God’s gift for the creation of human life as well as for mutual joy and as the energy that fuels marriage and family. Therefore the Christian worldview does not support the trivialization of sex into a recreational choice.

The idea that the “morning after” drug is “proven” is an opinion based on a particular view of the science that produced the drug. Many, many drugs have been marketed as “proven safe and effective” only to prove otherwise in the real experience of users. The idea that it is “medically necessary” either means that pregnancy is a disease as undesirable as pneumonia, or it means that every physician faced with the “symptoms” of unprotected sex would consider it “necessary” to prescribe this drug. There is no evidence for either interpretation. It is a secular worldview that says the expectation that a woman carry an unplanned pregnancy to term is “reproductive slavery.” In fact, the secular worldview appears to say that human beings are powerless against sexual desire. That powerlessness implies slavery to the sex drive, a notion that millions of people, even non-Christians, reject. Certainly Muslim parents will strongly object to the political insistence on the availability of the drug for children, and they will almost certainly reject the idea that it is “medically necessary.” The most troubling element of this situation is the insistence of the government to create pressure to separate children from the guidance and influence of their parents.

Christian parents have the same job they always had – to teach their children to love and serve God in the midst of a hostile world. The “morning after” policy makes the job harder, but it never was easy.  Rearing a child to live differently from the prevailing worldview is always hard. The first Christian parents contended with the worldview of the Roman Empire. The current US worldview is not really worse, despite its differences.

The real problem Christian parents have is their own equivocation with the world’s views. Christians who themselves adopt secular views and blend them with Christian views make it hard for themselves to keep their children within the boundaries of faith and life. The evidence of polls that ask self-identified Christians what they believe reveals that many people who call themselves Christians actually hold a worldview closer to secular thinking than to Christian. Many self-identified Christians do not believe that the Bible is either true or authoritative. Many self-identified Christians do not believe in abstinence. The notion that human life begins at conception will find opponents in any group that calls itself Christian. A parent who does not believe the Bible is actually God’s guide for faith and life will not likely teach a child to believe the Bible, either. Christians who do not believe Christian teaching make it harder for Christian parents who do believe Christian teaching to inculcate their children with the same values. They also fuel the cultural momentum against a Christian worldview.

Dr. London holds the view that science has triumphed over politics, and she believes that science is the proper arbiter of moral and social values. She is wrong. Science is a neutral engine of discovery and learning. The assignment of value and the imposing of political force upon any discovery comes from somewhere outside of science. In the case of the Plan B contraceptive, the value is assigned by people who agree with Dr. London’s worldview, but the values do not originate in science. They originate in people. Dr. London may want science to be the god from whom all values originate, but that is not the domain of science. To find the source of the political activism that has resulted in the Plan B policy, one must search among political activists.

The Plan B contraceptive is just one more factor in the political/cultural drive to overrun and suppress Christian influence in the public forum. Christians must not mistake government for the kingdom of God, but they must be sure they carry out their civic duty to participate in the public discussion of policy and law. For the moment, in this issue, the secular worldview prevails. It need not prevail in every issue at all times. The First Amendment still protects the right of people of all faiths to express and exercise their faith in public.