Life-affirming pregnancy help should not be controversial. Helping women embrace the motherhood in which they find themselves however the arrived there is something everyone should be able to support.
This use to be a value our entire culture supported.
Certainly, medicine did for more than a millennium. We can see the evidence of this in the Hippocratic oath. The “Father of medicine” Hippocrates, 400 years before Christ, established his work under spiritual direction (his was “Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius the surgeon, likewise Hygeia and Panacea”). In so doing he incorporated the physician, patient, and Providence. And he included the statement, “I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion.”
In 1964 Dr. Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean at Tufts University School of Medicine, rewrote the Hippocratic Oath into what is called the “modern or revised” Hippocratic Oath. In it the references to any god or gods are removed reducing the Oath to only the physician and patient. Being a product of the Sexual Revolution of the 60’s the new “modern” version also removed the Hippocrates prohibition of providing abortion to women.
This is among the first evidences of the “abortion distortion” that has become part of our cultural, political, and societal narratives.
Such intentional revisionism in our national institutions is now evidenced in mainstream media decisive declarations about the loss of a “right” to abortion.
In its way, this is the very dynamic our country experienced in the early 1800s. As slavery became less and less tolerable in Free States, it was even more important for Slave States to create laws that protected slavery, slave owners, and slaves as property. The latter often allowed slaves who escaped their masters to be returned to their “owners.”
Today we see the fruit of abortion distortion manifesting in Abortion States making laws to protect abortion, abortionists, and even the profiteering practice across state lines.
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In the wake of the leak of the impending decision on Dobbs (in May), angry abortion activists not only took to the steps of the Supreme Court but also immediately attacked churches and pregnancy help centers. This only continued after the official ruling was handed down June 24.
Politicians supported by Big Abortion campaign contributions have also begun lashing out at pregnancy help centers, abortion pill reversal and anything else that dares to be an antidote to abortion.
Loving and supporting a woman in her unexpected pregnancy should not be controversial. Yet, somehow, the abortion distortion has made it so.
Controversy does not dissuade the people of God. After all, we know that crosses and creches are controversial. Kneeling for prayer on football fields is prosecuted even while kneeling in protest is celebrated. Ignoring biology is de rigueur, while championing motherhood is maligned.
The people of God, though, understand the Gospel of Life - and the spiritual attack against it, which dates all the way back to the garden.
In our role of leadership in pregnancy help organizations we know that our call is to continue even in the face of controversy. We are both appointed and anointed to champion the Gift of Life. God promises us the wisdom to advance His Kingdom even against the god of this world.
Editor's note: This article is a lightly edited version of a column produced for pregnancy help leaders. Heartbeat International manages Pregnancy Help News.
