The leftist assault on life is unbridled. In 1992 then-President Bill Clinton said that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” This idea was repeated in 2008 by Hillary Clinton. Since the early days of legalized abortion, the left has assured Americans and the rest of the world that abortion was only suited for extreme cases and rarely implemented. However, in recent years they have changed their rhetoric.

Abortion advocates are now arguing that the word “rare” causes a stigma and the Democratic party removed the phrase from their platform in 2012. Now abortion advocates instead prefer to use the term “unapologetic.” It should not shock us that the world is unrepentant of the sin of abortion. However, it is shocking that the left is targeting more individuals and no longer hiding their eugenics agenda to eliminate the most vulnerable among us.

The World Health Organization recently put out both a Tweet and Facebook post that created a list of birth defects, stating that “Most birth defects can be prevented and treated with access to quality maternal and newborn care. Yet, every year, they cause the deaths of close to 250,000 babies within just 1 month of birth.” Although this may seem like an innocuous statement, WHO went on to list Down Syndrome as a so-called preventable birth defect. Down’s Syndrome is not a birth defect, and the only way to prevent a child from having the chromosomal variant is abortion.

Countries worldwide have increasingly targeted children with Down Syndrome and other genetic anomalies. In Denmark, since offering chromosomal testing to women, nearly 95 percent of pregnancies determined to be of a Down Syndrome child are aborted. In Iceland, that number is almost 100 percent. Health officials worldwide are suggesting to women that they would not want to bring a child with Down Syndrome into the world. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), there are 6,000 children a year born with Down Syndrome or about 1 in every 700 births in America. Imagine if the United States adopted such a devastating policy as Denmark and Iceland. We would eliminate the potential of these children’s lives.

Some of the arguments that the left makes in favor of aborting children diagnosed with Down Syndrome is that they will negatively affect the parent’s relationship and other siblings, create a financial burden, and not have a productive or happy life. These are all myths that the Global Down Syndrome Foundation and other advocates are trying to dispel. If given a chance, children with Down Syndrome can have productive and happy lives and enrich the lives of their family and friends.

Determining the value of a life based on a medical diagnosis is a dangerous and slippery slope. If we decide that children in the womb with Down Syndrome have no value, what stops the world from determining that those born with this, and other diagnoses also lack value. The very idea of determining value in life has led to some of the worst examples of eugenics in history.

Sadly, there is a growing number of individuals on the left with this very agenda. They would have the world believe that suffering can be eliminated by ending the lives of babies inside and outside of the womb. This statement is not merely rhetoric; Maryland just introduced a bill to allow for the murder of a child up to 28 days of age to go without legal charges brought against the murderer. The possibility of individuals killing children unexpectedly born with genetic disorders under such a law is very high.

Take ACTION: If you are concerned about the increased push from the left to justify the murder of Down Syndrome babies in and outside the womb, please contact your state and federal representatives to ask them to support life, as well as supporting the rights and protection for those with Down Syndrome and other medical diagnoses.

History is undoubtedly repeating itself as we follow the path of the Nazis and determine who is allowed to live and unapologetically eliminating all others. We must recognize that all life has value regardless of the medical label applied to that baby. God creates life, and each life he creates should be cherished.

Psalms 139:13-14a teaches us:

“For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

Written by Julie Tisdale

In the 1880s, Sir Francis Galton coined a new term, “eugenics.” A look at the history is shocking and horrifying because of the speed with which the ideas gained widespread support. In less than 30 years, major philanthropic organizations like the Carnegie Institute and the Rockefeller Foundation were funding the movement, states were passing forced sterilization laws, and state fairs were hosting “better baby” competitions. Even groups like the NAACP were eventually engaged in these activities. Read through the history of eugenics in America, and it seems like just about everyone was buying in.

Of course, much has changed. Eugenics has now been rejected by the vast majority of people, and the ideas are generally considered to victimize racial minorities, the mentally ill, women, and the poor. No respectable person calls himself a eugenicist any longer.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that the ideas and philosophy underlying the sordid history of eugenics in America has gone. For if we define eugenics as “The study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable,” then we’re forced to admit that it is still very much alive and well.

The forms have changed. Forced sterilization is no longer nearly as prevalent as it once was, and state and federal laws have been enacted to largely ban the practice. All too often, though, doctors recommend abortions for women whose babies test positive for “undesirable” traits. Genetic testing of unborn babies for a whole range of conditions is absolutely routine. And if the tests come back positive for something incurable, say Down Syndrome, the recommendation by many is that mothers abort.

The reason that many give for terminating these pregnancies is fear that the child won’t be able to reach the potential of a “normal” kid, that she may not ever be able to live fully independently, that he will be a burden to his family or society at large. And this is where we see the parallels with eugenic policies most clearly. Eugenics advocates used slogans like “Some people are born to be a burden to the rest” to argue that everyone was better off if such people were never born. It is exactly the same logic used with pregnant women today.

That alone is bad enough. The idea that we would deem a person unworthy even of being born because of a genetic condition should deeply offend anyone who believes that all people are valuable, regardless of ability or disability, intelligence, gender, race, or age. It should horrify people of faith who believe that all people are created in the image of God and therefore possess inherent dignity.

But it’s even worse than that, because the tests themselves are unreliable. The Colson Center’s BreakPoint recently reported on a series of studies that show false positive rates of prenatal screenings for various genetic conditions. These false positives range from around 50 percent for Down syndrome, to as high as 90 percent for Prader-Willi syndrome. So, the end result is that many are pressuring mothers into aborting babies who don’t even have the conditions that they think they’re avoiding. These are moms who want their babies, but are convinced by an unreliable test that they’re better off aborting. What a terrible, cruel thing to do to a woman who wants a child.

Years ago, a friend of mine went in for a routine prenatal exam, and her doctor started talking about all the usual genetic tests they were planning to run. My friend stopped the doctor and asked how many of the things they were testing for were treatable in the womb. Were they able to do anything about any of these conditions? Could they, for example, do surgery to correct a heart defect before the baby was born, thereby increasing his chances of survival? The answer, of course, was that the doctor wasn’t planning to test for anything that was treatable in the womb. The only reason to even do the tests was so that the parents could decide whether or not to abort.

This sort of cultural mindset that devalues people because of their genetic traits, because their lives are unlikely to be as economically productive, because they’re likely to require more time and money to care for than their “normal” counterparts, needs to be challenged. We need to see these sorts of screenings for what they are—a new form of eugenics. Instead of falling into the trap of believing that the world is better off without “defective people,” we should remind ourselves that all human beings are fearfully and wonderfully made by God.

This article was originally published by NCFamily.org.

Written by Megan Basham

In September, Wheaton College dean Ed Stetzer interviewed National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins on his podcast, “Church Leadership” about why Christians who want to obey Christ’s command to love their neighbors should get the Covid vaccine and avoid indulging in misinformation.

For those not familiar with Stetzer, he’s not just a religious liberal arts professor and this wasn’t just another dime-a-dozen pastorly podcast. To name just a few of his past and present titles in the evangelical world, Stetzer is also the executive director of the Billy Graham Center and the editor-in-chief of Outreach media group. He was previously an editor at Christianity Today and an executive director at LifeWay, one of the largest religious publishers in the world. That’s to say nothing of the dozen-plus books on missions and church planting he’s authored.

Which is why, when Stetzer joined a line of renowned pastors and ministry leaders lending their platforms to Obama-appointee Collins, the collaboration was noteworthy.

During their discussion, Collins and Stetzer were hardly shy about the fact that they were asking ministers to act as the administration’s go-between with their congregants. “I want to exhort pastors once again to try to use your credibility with your flock to put forward the public health measures that we know can work,” Collins said. Stetzer replied that he sometimes hears from ministers who don’t feel comfortable preaching about Covid vaccines, and he advises them, in those cases, to simply promote the jab through social media.

“I just tell them, when you get vaccinated, post a picture and say, ‘So thankful I was able to get vaccinated,’” Stetzer said. “People need to see that it is the reasonable view.”

Their conversation also turned to the subject of masking children at school, with Collins noting that Christians, in particular, have been resistant to it. His view was firm—kids should be masked if they want to be in the classroom. To do anything else is to turn schools into super spreaders. Stetzer offered no pushback or follow-up questions based on views from other medical experts. He simply agreed.

The most crucial question Stetzer never asked Collins however, was why convincing church members to get vaccinated or disseminating certain administration talking points should be the business of pastors at all.

Christians and Conspiracy Theories

Stetzer’s efforts to help further the NIH’s preferred coronavirus narratives went beyond simply giving Collins a softball venue to rally pastors to his cause. He ended the podcast by announcing that the Billy Graham Center would be formally partnering with the Biden administration. Together with the NIH and the CDC it would launch a website, coronavirusandthechurch.com, to provide clergy Covid resources they could then convey to their congregations.

Much earlier in the pandemic, as an editor at evangelicalism’s flagship publication, Christianity Today (CT), Stetzer had also penned essays parroting Collins’ arguments on conspiracy theories. Among those he lambasted other believers for entertaining, the hypothesis that the coronavirus had leaked from a Wuhan lab. In a now deleted essay, preserved by Web Archive, Stetzer chided, “If you want to believe that some secret lab created this as a biological weapon, and now everyone is covering that up, I can’t stop you.”

It may seem strange, given the evidence now emerging of NIH-funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, to hear a church leader instruct Christians to “repent” for the sin of discussing the plausible supposition that the virus had escaped from a Chinese laboratory. This is especially true as it doesn’t take any great level of spiritual discernment — just plain common sense — to look at the fact that Covid first emerged in a city with a virology institute that specializes in novel coronaviruses and realize it wasn’t an explanation that should be set aside too easily. But it appears Stetzer was simply following Collins’ lead.

Only two days before Stetzer published his essay, Collins participated in a livestream event, co-hosted by CT. The outlet introduced him as a “follower of Jesus, who affirms the sanctity of human life” despite the fact that Collins is on record stating he does not definitively believe, as most pro-lifers do, that life begins at conception, and his tenure at NIH has been marked by extreme anti-life, pro-LGBT policies. (More on this later).

But the pro-life Christian framing was sure to win Collins a hearing among an audience with deep religious convictions about the evil of abortion. Many likely felt reassured to hear that a likeminded medical expert was representing them in the administration.

During the panel interview, Collins continued to insist that the lab leak theory wasn’t just unlikely but qualified for the dreaded misinformation label. “If you were trying to design a more dangerous coronavirus,” he said, “you would never have designed this one … So I think one can say with great confidence that in this case the bioterrorist was nature … Humans did not make this one. Nature did.”

It was the same message his subordinate, Dr. Anthony Fauci, had been giving to secular news outlets, but Collins was specifically tapped to carry the message to the faithful. As Time Magazine reported in Feb. 2021, “While Fauci has been medicine’s public face, Collins has been hitting the faith-based circuit…and preaching science to believers.”

The editors, writers, and reporters at Christian organizations didn’t question Collins any more than their mainstream counterparts questioned Fauci.

Certainly The Gospel Coalition, a publication largely written for and by pastors, didn’t probe beyond the “facts” Collins’ offered or consider any conflicts of interest the NIH director might have had before publishing several essays that cited him as almost their lone source of information. As with CT, one article by Gospel Coalition editor Joe Carter linked the reasonable hypothesis that the virus might have been human-made with wilder QAnon fantasies. It then lectured readers that spreading such ideas would damage the church’s witness in the world.

Of course, Stetzer and The Gospel Coalition had no way of knowing at that point that Collins and Fauci had already heard from leading U.S. and British scientists who believed the virus had indeed escaped from a Chinese lab. Or that they believed it might be the product of gain-of-function engineering, possibly with funding from the NIH itself. Nor could they have predicted that emails between Collins and Fauci would later show the pair had a habit of turning to friendly media contacts (including, it seems, Christian media contacts) to discredit and suppress opinions they didn’t like, such as questioning Covid’s origins and the wisdom of masks and lockdowns.

What Stetzer and others did know was that one of the most powerful bureaucrats in the world was calling on evangelical leaders to be “ambassadors for truth.” And they were happy to answer that call.

The question was, just how truthful was Collins’ truth?

Evangelicals of a Feather

Stetzer, CT, and The Gospel Coalition were hardly alone in uncritically lending their sway over rank-and-file evangelicals to Collins. The list of Christian leaders who passed the NIH director their mics to preach messages about getting jabs, wearing masks, and accepting the official line on Covid is as long as it is esteemed.

One of the most noteworthy was the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), an organization funded by churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.

While a webinar featuring Collins and then-ERLC-head Russell Moore largely centered, again, on the importance of pastors convincing church members to get vaccinated, the discussion also moved on to the topic of masks. With Moore nodding along, Collins held up a basic, over-the-counter cloth square, “This is not a political statement,” he asserted. “This is not an invasion of your personal freedom…This is a life-saving medical device.”

Even in late 2020, the claim was highly debatable among medical experts. As hematologist-oncologist Vinay Prasad wrote in City Journal this month, public health officials like Collins have had a truth problem over the entire course of Covid, but especially when it comes to masks. “The only published cluster randomized trial of community cloth masking during Covid-19,” Prasad reported, “found that…cloth masks were no better than no masks at all.” [emphasis mine].

At this point, even the CDC is backing away from claims that cloth masks are worth much of anything.

Yet none of the Christian leaders platforming Collins evidently felt it was worth exploring a second opinion. And the list of pastors who were willing to take a bureaucrat’s word that matters that could have been left to Christian liberty were instead tests of one’s love for Jesus goes on.

Former megachurch pastor Tim Keller’s joint interview with Collins included a digression where the pair agreed that churches like John MacArthur’s, which continued to meet in-person despite Covid lockdowns, represented the “bad and ugly” of good, bad, and ugly Christian responses to the virus.

During Saddleback Pastor Rick Warren’s special broadcast with Collins on behalf of Health and Human Services, he mentioned that he and Collins first met when both were speakers for the billionaires and heads of state who gather annually in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum. They reconnected recently, Warren revealed, at an “off-the-record” meeting between Collins and “key faith leaders.” Warren did not say, but one can make an educated guess as to who convened that meeting and for what purpose, given the striking similarity of Collins’ appearances alongside all these leading Christian lights.

Once again, Warren and Collins spent their interview jointly lamenting the unlovingness of Christians who question the efficacy of masks, specifically framing it as a matter of obedience to Jesus. “Wearing a mask is the great commandment: love your neighbor as yourself,” the best-selling author of “The Purpose-Driven Life” declared, before going on to specifically argue that religious leaders have an obligation to convince religious people to accept the government’s narratives about Covid.

“Let me just say a word to the priests and pastors and rabbis and other faith leaders,” he said. “This is our job, to deal with these conspiracy issues and things like that…One of the responsibilities of faith leaders is to tell people to…trust the science. They’re not going to put out a vaccine that’s going to hurt people.”

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that government does have a record of putting out vaccines that “hurt people,” is it truly the pastor’s job to tell church members to “trust the science?” Is it a pastor’s job to slyly insult other pastors who chose to handle shutdowns differently, as Warren did when he quipped that his “ego doesn’t require” him to “have a live audience to speak to.”

And still the list goes on.

The same week MacArthur’s church was in the news for resisting California Governor Gavin Newsom orders to keep houses of worship closed, Collins participated in an interview with celebrated theologian N.T. Wright.

During a discussion where the NIH director once again trumpeted the efficacy of cloth masks, the pair warned against conspiracies, mocking “disturbing examples” of churches that continued meeting because they thought “the devil can’t get into my church” or “Jesus is my vaccine.” Lest anyone wonder whether Wright experienced some pause over lending his reputation as a deep Christian thinker to Caesar’s agent, the friends finished with a guitar duet.

Even hipster Christian publications like Relevant, whose readers have likely never heard of Collins, still looked to him as the foundation of their Covid reporting.

Throughout all of it, Collins brought the message to the faithful through their preachers and leaders: “God is calling [Christians] to do the right thing.”

And none of those leaders thought to question whether Collins’ “right thing” and God’s “right thing” must necessarily be the same thing.

Why not? As Warren said of Collins during their interview: “He’s a man you can trust.”

A Man You Can Trust

Perhaps the evangelical elites’ willingness to unhesitatingly credit Collins with unimpeachable honesty has something to do with his rather Mr. Rogers-like appearance and gentle demeanor. The establishment media has compared him to “The Simpson’s” character Ned Flanders, noting that he has a tendency to punctuate his soft speech with exclamations of “oh boy!” and “by golly!”

Going by his concrete record, however, he seems like a strange ambassador to spread the government’s Covid messaging to theologically conservative congregations. Other than his proclamations that he is, himself, a believer, the NIH director espouses nearly no public positions that would mark him out as any different from any extreme Left-wing bureaucrat.

He has not only defended experimentation on fetuses obtained by abortion, he has also directed record-level spending toward it. Among the priorities the NIH has funded under Collins — a University of Pittsburgh experiment that involved grafting infant scalps onto lab rats, as well as projects that relied on the harvested organs of aborted, full-term babies. Some doctors have even charged Collins with giving money to research that required extracting kidneys, ureters, and bladders from living infants.

He further has endorsed unrestricted funding of embryonic stem cell research, personally attending President Obama’s signing of an Executive Order to reverse a previous ban on such expenditures. When Nature magazine asked him about the Trump administration’s decision to shut down fetal cell research, Collins made it clear he disagreed, saying, “I think it’s widely known that the NIH tried to protect the continued use of human fetal tissue. But ultimately, the White House decided otherwise. And we had no choice but to stand down.”

Even when directly asked about how genetic testing has led to the increased killing of Down Syndrome babies in the womb, Collins deflected, telling Beliefnet, “I’m troubled [by] the applications of genetics that are currently possible are oftentimes in the prenatal arena…But, of course, in our current society, people are in a circumstance of being able to take advantage of those technologies.”

When it comes to pushing an agenda of racial quotas and partiality based on skin color, Collins is a member of the Left in good standing, speaking fluently of “structural racism” and “equity” rather than equality. He’s put his money (or, rather, taxpayer money) where his mouth is, implementing new policies that require scientists seeking NIH grants to pass diversity, equity, and inclusion tests in order to qualify.

To the most holy of progressive sacred cows — LGBTQ orthodoxy — Collins has been happy to genuflect. Having declared himself an “ally” of the gay and trans movements, he went on to say he “[applauds] the courage and resilience it takes for [LGBTQ] individuals to live openly and authentically” and is “committed to listening, respecting, and supporting [them]” as an “advocate.”

These are not just the empty words of a hapless Christian official saying what he must to survive in a hostile political atmosphere. Collins’ declaration of allyship is deeply reflected in his leadership.

Under his watch, the NIH launched a new initiative to specifically direct funding to “sexual and gender minorities.” On the ground, this has translated to awarding millions in grants to experimental transgender research on minors, like giving opposite-sex hormones to children as young as eight and mastectomies to girls as young as 13. Another project, awarded $8 million in grants, included recruiting teen boys to track their homosexual activities like “condomless anal sex” on an app without their parents’ consent.

Other than his assertions of his personal Christian faith, there is almost no public stance Collins has taken that would mark him out as someone of like mind with the everyday believers to whom he was appealing.

How did Collins overcome all this baggage to become the go-to expert for millions of Christians? With a little help from his friends, who were happy to stand as his character witnesses.

Keller, Warren, Wright, and Stetzer all publicly lauded him as a godly brother.  When presenting Collins to Southern Baptists, Moore gushed over him as the smartest man in a book club he attends that also includes, according to Time Magazine, such luminaries of the “Christiantelligentsia” as The Atlantic’s Pete Wehner and The New York Times’ David Brooks.

In October, even after Collins’ funding of the University of Pittsburgh research had become widely known, Moore continued to burnish his friend’s reputation, saying, “I admire greatly the wisdom, expertise, and, most of all, the Christian humility and grace of Francis Collins.” That same month, influential evangelical pundit David French deemed Collins a “national treasure” and his service in the NIH “faithful.” Former George W. Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson struck the most poetic tone in his effusive praise, claiming that Collins possesses a “restless genius [that] is other-centered” and is a “truth-seeker in the best sense.”

Except, apparently, when those others are aborted infants or gender-confused children and when that truth pertains to lab leaks or gain-of-function funding.

Since news began breaking months ago that Collins and Fauci intentionally used their media connections to conspire to suppress the lab-leak theory, none of the individuals or organizations in this story has corrected their records or asked Collins publicly about his previous statements. Nor have they circled back with him to inquire on record about revelations the NIH funded gain-of-function coronavirus research in Wuhan. They also haven’t questioned him on the increasing scientific consensus that cloth masks were never very useful.

The Daily Wire reached out to Stetzer, Keller, Wright, Warren, Moore, and French to ask if they have changed their views on Collins given recent revelations. None responded.

Francis Collins has been an especially successful envoy for the Biden administration, delivering messages to a mostly-Republican Christian populace who would otherwise be reluctant to hear them. In their presentation of Collins’ expertise, these pastors and leaders suggested that questioning his explanations as to the origins of the virus or the efficacy of masks was not simply a point of disagreement but sinful. This was a charge likely to have a great deal of impact on churchgoers who strive to live lives in accordance with godly standards. Perhaps no other argument could’ve been more persuasive to this demographic.

This does not mean these leaders necessarily knew that the information they were conveying to the broader Christian public could be false, but it does highlight the danger religious leaders face when they’re willing to become mouth organs of the government.

What we do know about Collins and his work with Fauci is that they have shown themselves willing to compromise transparency and truth for PR considerations. Thus, everything they have told the public about the vaccines may be accurate and their message a worthy one for Christians. But their credibility no longer carries much weight. It would’ve been better had the evangelical establishment never platformed Collins at all and shipwrecked their own reputations to showcase their lofty connections to him.

While these evangelical leaders were warning about conspiracy theories, Collins was waging a misinformation campaign himself — one these Christian megaphones helped further.

Why they did it is a question only they can answer. Perhaps in their eagerness to promote vaccines, they weren’t willing to offer any pushback to Collins’ other claims. Certainly, the lure of respect in the halls of power has proved too great a siren call for many a man. Or perhaps it was simply that their friend, the NIH director, called on them for a favor. If so, a friend like Collins deserved much, much more scrutiny.

There’s an instructive moment at the end of Warren‘s interview with Collins. The pastor misquotes Proverbs 4, saying, “Get the facts at any price.”

That, of course, is not what the verse says. It says get wisdom at any price. And it was wisdom that was severely lacking when so many pastors and ministry heads recklessly turned over their platforms, influence, and credibility to a government official who had done little to demonstrate he deserved them.

This article was originally published by The Daily Wire, which is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. 

On January 22, 1973, U.S. Supreme Court Justices William Rehnquist and Bryon White rightly identified in their dissents that Roe v. Wade was a bad (to put it mildly) decision:

“The decision here … partakes more of judicial legislation than it does of a determination of the intent of the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

“There apparently was no question concerning the validity of this provision or of any of the other state statutes when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted [more than a century]. The only conclusion possible from this history is that the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the power to legislate with respect to this matter [prohibiting abortion].”

Among the numerous and grievous consequences of the unlawful decision in Roe, and in combination with improved medical technology, is the fact that the medical profession has overwhelmingly persuaded parents that the death of their unborn children known to have Down syndrome is preferable to the life they would otherwise lead, despite God’s command and overwhelming evidence to the contrary [1].

On April 2, 2019, to prevent this selective abortion from eradicating its population with Down syndrome [2], Arkansas enacted the Down Syndrome Discrimination by Abortion Prohibition Act.

On April 9, 2021, in perhaps the most persuasive case against Roe to date, the Arkansas Attorney General officially asked the U.S. Supreme Court (after defeat in the lower courts) to affirm this law. The case, known as Rutledge v. Little Rock Family Planning Services, is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

On May 13, 2021, the Illinois Family Institute joined a friend of the court brief in support of the prohibition [3], along with numerous other patriotic Americans, including the American Center for Law & Justice, the Jerome Lejeune Foundation (a Down syndrome advocacy group), Americans United for Life, 82 United States Senators and Representatives, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the State of Missouri and 21 other states.

IFI’s joining the brief is very important for three key reasons.

First, the name “Illinois Family Institute” prominently displayed in official proceedings, on the morally right side of the issue in this potentially landmark case, makes a very strong statement that the People of Illinois are not the extremist, Marxist, “blue state” ideologues most are led to believe by virtue of the lopsided Chicago control of our electoral votes and our state government.

Second, focusing precisely on the particular result of genocide of a particular group gives a tangible, rational, and emotionally-charged illustration of the truth of the tyranny resulting from Roe.

Roe v. Wade is a 54-page opinion which uses euphemisms and grand language to hide the fact that it writes entirely new law, which deprives a small and defenseless minority of unborn persons of their most important Constitutional right: life itself (known non-euphemistically as murder).

“Whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death.” – Leviticus 24:17

American values protect minorities of human beings from tyranny of the majority and, even more, genocide, as is rapidly becoming the case with Down syndrome children.

These uncomfortable truths have been glossed over by the Court and the culture in addressing the euphemisms of “abortion” and “terminating her pregnancy,” rather than the truth of the matter of murdering [4] innocent persons in America according to the desire of others.

Rutledge begins to destroy these dishonest euphemisms by focusing on the almost complete genocide of a precise group of persons, those with Down syndrome, who are valuable and would otherwise lead happy and productive lives.

Selective abortion of babies with Down syndrome is the very sort of tyranny of the majority that led our founders to despise Democracy (rule by a majority) as a form of government, and rather create a Republic (rule by law) based only upon securing those inalienable rights given to us by our Creator. Rutledge presents this in a way that both the Court and common Americans can see and feel clearly.

Finally, this particular Court has the sound jurisprudence necessary to finally recognize and overturn the great injustice of Roe, redeeming the moral authority of the court from the judicial tyranny of its last five decades [5].

For approximately 34 of the years following Roe, either Rehnquist himself, or his former clerk and current Chief Justice John Roberts, have led the High Court.

Six of the current justices have expressed judicial understanding consistent with Justice Rehnquist’s dissent in Roe.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett chose not to kill her unborn son (now 8) pre-diagnosed with Down syndrome.

Pray for all members of the U.S. Supreme Court.

For those who are believers and to whom God has given judicial wisdom, that they will be strong and courageous, leading the Court and the Nation from error into the path of righteousness and able to withstand Principalities and Powers, as well as the flesh and blood of the leftist culture that will attack them mercilessly.

For those who espouse foolish and unlawful judicial philosophies, that God would turn their hearts (the King’s heart is in the hand of the LORD) to righteousness and destroy their efforts to usurp His authority by promoting unrighteousness and tyranny.

Pray for God’s favor upon this case, that the Court would choose to hear it (grant “certiorari”), and seeing this illustration of judicial tyranny against a few (depriving these small, disabled, and helpless persons, within the jurisdiction of the United States of America, of their rights to life and liberty without ANY process of law or ANY protection of the laws), rule authoritatively that Roe was wrongly decided and must be overturned.

Pray that God would bring shame upon any Americans who would continue to promote this evil.

[1]   Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, Leslie Rutledge, in her official capacity as Attorney General of the State of Arkansas, et al., v. Little Rock Family Planning Services, pp. 2-9.

[2]    Box v. Planned Parenthood of Ind. & Ky., Inc., 9139 S. Ct. 1780, 1791 (2019) (Thomas, J., concurring) (“In Iceland, the abortion rate for children diagnosed with Down syndrome in utero approaches 100%.”).

[3]    Brief Amici Curiae, Rutledge v. Little Rock Family Planning Services.

[4]   Historically, “anyone who takes the life of a human being is to be put to death.”  According to the Indiana Code, 35-42-1-1, a person who knowingly or intentionally kills another human being commits murder, a felony.  States since Roe have added vague words to accommodate their legalization of murder, for example, Illinois Code 720 ILCS 5/9-1 specifies that a person who kills an individual without lawful justification commits first degree murder.

[5]    The three theories of constitutional interpretation taught in contemporary law schools: Natural Law (e.g., Clarence Thomas): there is an objective higher law (of the Creator in our case, though they don’t typically mention that source) which man can never supersede, and upon which the Constitution is based; Strict Construction (e.g., Scalia, Rehnquist): the Constitution can only be understood as what the document itself was understood to mean when passed; and Living Constitution (e.g., Oliver Wendell Holmes, Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor): the Constitution means what Justices believe it means based upon their own current understanding (a subterfuge to enable Judges to ignore the text of the Constitution and substitute their own opinions).  Holmes is the author of Buck v. Bell, saying that “three generations of imbeciles are enough,” while upholding forced sterilization of the intellectually disabled.)

Written by Patience Griswold

In a TEDx talk called “I have one more chromosome than you. So what?” disability rights advocate Karen Gaffney commented to her audience, “Imagine that, ladies and gentlemen. Here we are… removing barriers to education, making inroads into a full and inclusive life for people like me, and we have those who say we shouldn’t even be born at all?”

Born in 1977, Gaffney grew up in a time when the neglect and mistreatment of people with Down syndrome had recently been brought to light by disability rights advocates calling for reform. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the beginning of the end of mass institutionalization, but as recently as the 1980s, babies with Down syndrome could be denied life-saving treatments and even food and water until an act of Congress prohibited this kind of discrimination.

Recent decades have seen remarkable strides in the advancement of the rights of people with disabilities. Unfortunately, ableist assumptions about the “quality of life” of people with disabilities are still far too common and have lethal effects. Currently, the majority of preborn babies diagnosed with Down syndrome in the U.S. and in many European nations are aborted. Gaffney is one of many individuals with Down syndrome speaking out against this injustice. “I believe Down syndrome is a life worth saying yes to,” Gaffney told her Portland audience. “It is a life worth saving.”

In 2017, a geneticist in Iceland told CBS news that Down syndrome had been “basically eradicated” from the country. That year only three children were born with Down syndrome in Iceland, drawing attention to Iceland’s nearly 100 percent abortion rate of preborn babies who are diagnosed with Down syndrome. Iceland has not eliminated Down syndrome, they have eliminated people who have Down syndrome. This is eugenics.

Tragically, the U.S. is on a similar trajectory with between 67 percent and 75 percent of babies who are diagnosed with Down syndrome being aborted. Too many medical professionals encourage parents to abort and “try again” rather than equipping them with resources and support for raising a child with special needs and reminding them that they are not alone. This attitude toward people with Down syndrome has even led parents to sue for “wrongful birth” because they would have aborted their child if they had known he or she would be born with Down syndrome.

The idea that someone’s life is less valuable if they are disabled flows out of the belief that a person’s worth is not innate but is based on what he or she can do. This is not only a horrible devaluation of fellow image-bearers that reaps deadly consequences when brought to its logical conclusion, but it also shows a failure to understand what makes people valuable in the first place. No one’s value or dignity comes from their abilities or lack thereof and we must never attempt to base anyone’s worth, our own or someone else’s, on something so fragile and transient. Each of us is priceless because we are made in the image of our Creator, and that is why each life is “a life worth saying yes to.”

People with disabilities should not have to plead for elected officials, medical professionals, or society as a whole to recognize their value. The ableist eugenics of disability-based abortion must end, and discrimination against people with disabilities, born or unborn, must never be tolerated. We must proclaim the value and dignity of each and every human life, fight for the protection of the vulnerable, and help people to understand that their value comes from the fact that they are made in the image of God.

This article was originally published at MFC.org.

Written by Dr. Paul Kengor

My family just visited Chocolate World at Hershey Park in Hershey, Pennsylvania—the so-called “sweetest place on earth.” For those unfamiliar, it’s a giant candy-land. The primary attraction is a tour where visitors ride in self-guided vehicles through an exhibit learning about the history of Hershey’s chocolate.

At the end of the tour stands a Hershey’s employee who hands everyone a complimentary chocolate bar. It’s a highlight. The last several times we’ve done the tour, the boy handing out chocolate has been a kid with Down Syndrome—a job he does without a hitch. It’s an added sweet thing that makes you smile. In fact, everyone smiles. I observe a mom who looks him in the eye and says very deliberately, “Thank you very much.” I generally say something like, “Thank you, sir!”

What strikes me about the moment, however, is something much less happy; nonetheless, I think it should be expressed, especially at this time of year, October, when America quietly marks Down Syndrome Awareness Month, and when many religious believers also happen to mark Respect Life Month.

While probably 80-90% of the people passing through that line at Hershey happily accept a chocolate bar from that Down Syndrome child (actually, the number is probably more like 100%), it’s tragic that upwards of 80-90% of women in America who receive a prenatal identification of a Down Syndrome child choose to abort. In Denmark, the rate is 98%. And in Iceland, officials assert that they have almost completely “eliminated” Down Syndrome.

“My understanding is that we have basically eradicated, almost, Down Syndrome from our society,” says Kari Stefansson, a geneticist in Iceland, “that there is hardly ever a child with Down Syndrome in Iceland anymore.”

How so? A magic pill? Surgery in the womb? Chromosomal engineering? No, they’ve done so by so thoroughly identifying Down Syndrome in utero, and creating a culture that embraces abortion, that Down Syndrome children are not born to begin with.

Only one or two Down Syndrome children are born per year in Iceland. Oftentimes, those one or two result from parents having received inaccurate pre-screenings.

“Babies with Down Syndrome are still being born in Iceland,” concedes the head of the nation’s leading Prenatal Diagnosis Unit. “We didn’t find them in our screening.” They’re the lucky ones. The others are aborted.

“We don’t look at abortion as a murder,” shrugs another “health” official in Iceland. “We look at it as a thing we ended. We ended a possible life that may have had a huge complication … preventing suffering for the child and the family.”

Some solution, eh?

But what millions of Down Syndrome children like that boy at Chocolate World show us is that these children are not a thing to be ended. They are lives to be welcomed. And as anyone with a Down Syndrome child will tell you, they are happy. They are, literally, among the happiest people on the planet, bereft of the anxieties and complexities that afflict so many others.

One of my favorite testimonies to such human beings, and how they can bring out the best in us, is a letter that Ronald Reagan received from New York’s Cardinal Terence Cooke, which Reagan shared in a July 1987 talk to pro-life leaders. “I’d like to leave with you a quotation that means a great deal to me,” said Reagan. “These are the words of my friend, the late Terence Cardinal Cooke, of New York. ‘The gift of life, God’s special gift, is no less beautiful when it is accompanied by illness or weakness, hunger or poverty, mental or physical handicaps, loneliness or old age. Indeed, at these times, human life gains extra splendor as it requires our special care, concern, and reverence. It is in and through the weakest of human vessels that the Lord continues to reveal the power of His love.’”

Yes, the gift of life is God’s special gift, and it’s no less beautiful when it involves a Down Syndrome person. Quite the contrary, it’s in caring for such people that human life carries extra splendor and can bring out the best in us. Through these human vessels, we can mirror God’s love for His creatures.

I shared this message from Cooke-Reagan with a former student who is the proud, loving parent of a daughter with Down Syndrome. He smiled and said, “Ah, that’s so true. So true.”

It’s also so counter-cultural in modern Western society, from Iceland to the United States. Here in America, the largest abortion provider is Planned Parenthood, founded by Margaret Sanger, who began her work precisely for purposes of eugenics and “race improvement,” to rid America of what she termed “imbeciles” and “idiots” and “morons.” Sanger insisted that “the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.” In her 1922 book, The Pivot of Civilization, Sanger urged that “every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive period. Otherwise, she is almost certain to bear imbecile children, who in turn are just as certain to breed other defectives.”

For Sanger and many of her disciples, these weakest vessels (her “moron class”) were to be lamented, prevented, eliminated. Iceland is achieving Margaret Sanger’s dream.

Again, this month of October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month, and Respect Life Month. Unlike, say, Pride Month, every June, now unmistakable by the profusion of rainbow flags in every major city, few will see visible reminders of Down Syndrome Awareness Month. The month is not marked by any signature symbols, nor by the Down Syndrome children who were eliminated. Their lives were erased before they were born. We should take pride, however, in those who are here, and we should not fear or halt those yet to be born.

This article was published by The Institute for Faith & Freedom.

It’s been a revolting year on the fetal front.

Recently, pro-abortion activists chanting “Hail Satan” in the Texas State house worked feverishly to protect the ghastly legal right of women to kill their preborn babies even after these babies can feel pain.

A few months back Kermit Gosnell’s filthy fetal abattoir was exposed, forcing feticide-facilitator Nancy Pelosi to try to distance herself from Gosnell with a completely incoherent statement:

What was done in Philadelphia was reprehensible, and everybody condemned it. For them [those proposing pro-life legislation] to decide to disrespect the judgment a woman makes about her reproductive health is reprehensible….As a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me when you talk about this. I don’t think it should have anything to do with politics, and that’s where you’re taking it, and I’m not gonna go there.  [Emphasis added.]

Let’s see if we can untangle the miasmic confusion that animates Pelosi:

• She believes that killing a live baby who’s just exited the womb is “reprehensible,” but opposition to killing a live baby yet in the womb is reprehensible.
• As a “practicing Catholic,” the issue of prenatal life is sacred to her, but she endorses abortion, a practice which the Catholic Church views as an unmitigated evil.
• She believes that the sacred ground of prenatal life shouldn’t have anything to do with politics, but she supports legislation that secures the legal right of women to destroy prenatal life.

Nope, can’t untangle it.

Light, however, is beginning to pierce the darkness. It’s possible to imagine a world in which more babies will be lucky enough to survive the treacherous waters of the womb. Maybe we can even hope for a day when the genocide being perpetrated against Down Syndrome babies who are murdered for no reason other than their physical imperfections and cognitive limitations will end. 

And maybe this father’s inspiring story of transformation can contribute in some small way to the transformation of the culture: