On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court of the United States overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which fabricated the “right to privacy,” making abortion legal throughout the nation.

The case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, centered around a Mississippi law that banned abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy and has now put the battle to save pre-born human lives at the state level. It is no longer a protected “right” at the federal level. The case was decided by a 6 to 3 decision and means that the only abortion clinic in Mississippi will have to shut it’s doors when the state’s trigger law banning abortions takes effect in July.

Within the first few pages of the 213-page decision, Justice Samuel Alito stated there is no constitutional right to abortion. There is no federal protection of a civil “right” to kill pre-born babies.

Illinois Family Institute celebrates the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the 1992 Casey v. Planned Parenthood that established that states cannot ban pre-viability abortions, i.e., those done before a child can survive outside the womb.

Governor J.B. Pritzker has made it abundantly clear that he intends to make the state of Illinois an abortion sanctuary. He, with the help of pro-abortion legislators, intends to force Illinois taxpayers to pay for all abortions.

Illinois Democrats have already removed all safeguards in the Land of Lincoln by repealing the Parental Notice of Abortion law.

Now they want physician assistants, nurses, and midwives along with other healthcare personnel to be legally able to commit abortions in Illinois in order to accommodate the flood of women coming across state lines. And several companies are offering to pay for women to travel to abortion states to kill their babies. Some pro-life leaders think that Illinois abortion numbers will increase by 25k to 30k a year.

In the ABC Nightly News segment below, they highlight the abortion mill in Fairview Heights and rightly point out that they are at the epicenter of this spiritual and political battle. In her report, Rachel Scott claims “the phones keep ringing. The staff are helping out-of-state patience secure transportation and hotels.” Dr. Colleen McNicholas admits that they are ground zero of this battle between life and death. She pridefully reports that they are facilitating the death of an unborn human being for women in “Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Mississippi.”

Our work to protect life is just beginning. Abortion cheerleaders are determined to make Illinois the destination point for the Midwest. Proverbs 24:11 exhorts us to “deliver those who are drawn toward death, and hold back those stumbling to the slaughter.” We MUST respond with the love and compassion of Jesus Christ to rescue innocent children and their mothers.

Illinois Family Institute upholds the sanctity of life from conception to natural death. Please join us in the fight to protect the most innocent among us.

Today we give thanks to God for the wisdom and courage of U.S Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito,  Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett for holding that the “Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey are overruled; [and] the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”

The syllabus (i.e., summary) in Dobbs v. the Jackson Women’s Health Organization outlines the major arguments addressed by the majority:

• Without any grounding in the constitutional text, history, or precedent, Roe imposed on the entire country a detailed set of rules for pregnancy divided into trimesters much like those that one might expect to find in a statute or regulation.

• Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. No state constitutional provision had recognized such a right. Until a few years before Roe, no federal or state court had recognized such a right. Nor had any scholarly treatise. Indeed, abortion had long been a crime in every single State.

• Attempts to justify abortion through appeals to a broader right to autonomy and to define one’s “concept of existence” prove too much. … Those criteria, at a high level of generality, could license fundamental rights to illicit drug use, prostitution, and the like. What sharply distinguishes the abortion right from the rights recognized in the cases on which Roe and Casey rely is something that both those decisions acknowledged: Abortion is different because it destroys what Roe termed “potential life” and what the law challenged in this case calls an “unborn human being.” None of the other decisions cited by Roe and Casey involved the critical moral question posed by abortion.

• [T]he Court cannot allow its decisions to be affected by such extraneous concerns [i.e., stare decisis/precedent]. A precedent of this Court is subject to the usual principles of stare decisis under which adherence to precedent is the norm but not an inexorable command. If the rule were otherwise, erroneous decisions like Plessy would still be the law.

Writing for the Court, Justice Alito made mincemeat of the lousy arguments proffered in Roe and Casey, but the political invertebrate Chief Justice John Roberts did what he does best. He tried to swim smack dab down the middle of this roaring river. Hard to do without a spine. The political Roberts voted with the majority but refused to overturn Roe and Casey despite numerous leftist legal scholars acknowledging for decades that Roe lacked any grounding in the U.S. Constitution.

Justice Thomas again renewed his quest to revisit “substantive due process” jurisprudence, which he argues “has harmed our country in many ways,” and, therefore, “we should eliminate it from our jurisprudence at the earliest opportunity.” He shares this view with Justices Antonin Scalia and Hugo Black as well as Robert Bork and many other legal scholars.

Thomas has long argued that because of the “erroneous” nature of substantive due process jurisprudence, “in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”

Those cases addressed, respectively, the purported constitutional right to access contraception, the purported constitutional right to engage in homosexual sodomy, and the purported constitutional right of two people of the same sex to marry.

To be clear, Thomas’ argument regarding substantive due process jurisprudence has nothing to do with his moral view of contraception, sodomy, or marriage. Rather, he is making an argument about the constitutional basis—or lack thereof—of substantive due process doctrine, which Justice Antonin Scalia too criticized:

The entire practice of using the Due Process Clause to add judicially favored rights to the limitations upon democracy set forth in the Bill of Rights (usually under the rubric of so-called “substantive due process”) is in my view judicial usurpation.

Justice Hugo Black was similarly critical of substantive due process doctrine in Griswold:

[T]here is no provision of the Constitution which either expressly or impliedly vests power in this Court to sit as a supervisory agency over acts of duly constituted legislative bodies and set aside their laws because of the Court’s belief that the legislative policies adopted are unreasonable, unwise, arbitrary, capricious or irrational. The adoption of such a loose, flexible, uncontrolled standard for holding laws unconstitutional, if ever it is finally achieved, will amount to a great unconstitutional shift of power to the courts which I believe and am constrained to say will be bad for the courts and worse for the country. Subjecting federal and state laws to such an unrestrained and unrestrainable judicial control as to the wisdom of legislative enactments would, I fear, jeopardize the separation of governmental powers that the Framers set up and at the same time threaten to take away much of the power of States to govern themselves which the Constitution plainly intended them to have.

Leftists mock Thomas for his substantive critique of substantive due process mischief. They do so because they fear losing the power of the Court to act as a supreme law-making body. Well, they did fear that while they controlled the Court.

But Thomas’ critique is not a fringe critique, and he may have at least one ally on the Court: Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Now, the arduous work of changing hearts and minds that have been corrupted by nearly fifty years of leftist propaganda becomes even more urgent.

We need to donate more money to crisis pregnancy centers, both to help mothers who are considering abortion and to repair damage from domestic terrorists like Jane’s Revenge that promises violence to organizations that seek to protect children in their mothers’ wombs.

We need to pour money into creative, compelling public service/social media campaigns and the arts in order to elicit support for protecting preborn babies.

We need to elect wise, courageous state leaders who stand boldly for the sanctity of lives that pro-abortion activists deem unworthy of life.

We need to pass fiscal and social policies that end—rather than create—poverty, and we need to create a culture that doesn’t think a solution to poverty is baby sacrifice.

And we need to educate our children in places that teach that humans in their mothers’ wombs are sacred and that neither their developmental status, nor their convenience for others, nor their imperfections grant to their mothers the moral right to have them killed.

And we need to pray ceaselessly for the least of these. We must pray that incipient human lives are able to survive the dangerous waters of their mothers’ wombs.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/The-Nightmare-of-Roe-Ends.mp3

January 22, 1973 – This is a horrible date that we should all know — the day the horrific decision, Roe v. Wade, was issued and announced. Almost 50 years later and over 63 million lives taken, this drastic decision could finally be overturned.

On May 2, 2022 Politico obtained a leaked draft written by Justice Samuel Alito that contained the majority opinion that would overturn both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992).

We anticipate that the leaked draft indicating the decision will not change and that very soon we will hear the final decision announced.

Here are some matters for prayer both now and after the decision is made:

1] Let us pray especially for Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. We pray for their physical protection. We pray that all the adversity that they have faced will encourage them to stand more and more with truth against death and deceit.

2] We should pray that Chief Justice John Roberts will stand for the truth. We should also pray for the repentance of those expected to stand against this decision – Justices Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor.

3] After the draft decision was leaked there were a number of cases where churches and pro-life pregnancy centers were attacked. Andy Ngô reported at least 15 cases where either churches or pro-life centers were targeted.

We should pray especially against the efforts of a radical, violent group called Jane’s Revenge that has carried out attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers with impunity. On June 15, they released a statement in which they stated the following:

“We have demonstrated in the past month how easy and fun it is to attack. We are versatile, we are mercurial, and we answer to no one but ourselves,” and then they stated their threats.

“We promised to take increasingly drastic measures against oppressive infrastructures. Rest assured that we will, and those measures may not come in the form of something so easily cleaned up as fire and graffiti. Sometimes you will see what we do, and you will know that it is us.

“Sometimes you will think you merely are unlucky, because you cannot see the ways which we interfere in your affairs. But your pointless attempts to control others, and make life more difficult, will not be met passively. Eventually your insurance companies and your financial backers will realize you are a bad investment.”

Jane’s Revenge claims to be responsible for sixteen different attacks.

We know very well that much of our justice system and many elected officials have not taken these attacks seriously. Pray for our government. Pray for your local pregnancy centers. (And perhaps you could help in other ways.) This is a serious time of spiritual warfare spilling over into threats and violence.

4] We pray that many states will take quick action to outlaw legal abortions or at a minimum seek to curtail abortions.

What about states like Illinois that have seen a 25 percent increase in abortions ? We must prayerfully consider how much work remains. We pray and work to see laws changed as well as hearts changed.

5] We pray that the Lord will have mercy on a nation that has been so blessed and yet has so rebelled against God’s truth. One of the most frightening things to consider is what we deserve.

Here are some additional prayer bullet points to petition our God, Yahweh-Nissi, through the name of Jesus in the days ahead:

Thank God

• Praise and thank God for religious and civil liberty that we still enjoy today in the United States. Pray that parents and grandparents teach their children and grandchildren what an amazing gift God has given us in self-government. Pray that future generations would not take these freedoms for granted. May we utilize these freedoms for the spread of the Gospel and for His glory and honor.

• While more and more of our neighbors are choosing to live secular lives, we thank God for Jesus Christ, the Light of the world.

• Thank God for the exceptionalism of our nation.

• Thank God for His countless blessings in our lives, in our families, communities and nation. Thank Him for the trials and challenges that draw us closer to Him. Thank God for the patience, strength and faith to wait out the storm.

• PRAY for revival.

Please Pray

• FOR THOSE IN AUTHORITY: For the next several weeks, please pray for the political leaders listed below. Of course, this includes praying for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and those who serve in their administration.
  • U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico)
  • U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas)
  • U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois)
  • U.S. Representative Veronica Escobar (D-Texas)
  • U.S. Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio)
  • State Senator Meg Loughran Cappel (D-Plainfield)
  • State Senator Chapin Rose (R-Champaign)
  • State Representative Janet Yang Rohr (D-Naperville)
  • State Representative Dan Ugaste (R-St. Charles)
  • YOUR local County Board Members

Pray for the Sanctity of Life:

• PRC’s: Lift up all pregnancy resource centers and those diligently reaching out to vulnerable mothers who feel as if abortion is their only option. Please pray for God’s hand of protection on those who work at these ministries, and that any planned attacks would be thwarted.

• ABORTION: Scripture teaches us that the image of God dwells equally in ALL people [Gen. 9:6], yet far too many in our culture believe that killing pre-born human beings is a legitimate choice. Many so-called “progressives” advocate for this under the banner of “Reproductive Rights” for women. Yet these narratives deny God’s truth about the sanctity of life and when it begins. Moreover, we know that God hates the shedding of innocent blood. (Proverbs 6:16-19)  God forgive us!

• Please pray for God’s forgiveness for our culture’s wickedness and complicity in the destruction of human life. Though God commands, “You Shall Not Murder,” we have instead legalized it and subsidized it with our tax dollars, and have failed to treat all human life as sacred to the Lord. We deserve God’s judgment, but please cry out to God for his MERCY on our state and nation. We are without excuse, yet call upon our loving God to cause the fear of the Lord to fall upon our state and nation so that we would no longer turn a blind eye to our sin or our nation’s sin.

• Pray for a softening of hearts and minds. May God give us opportunities to minister to those who are hurting and may our conversations be filled with His grace and love.

• THE CHURCH:  The Christian Church must step up to teach and defend God’s truth regarding the sanctity of life. We will see an increase in abortion trafficking into our state, as people come to abortion facilities in Illinois. The opportunities to be salt and light at prayer vigils, as sidewalk counselors, as friends and neighbors will certainly increase. Pray that we recognize these opportunities and ask God to work through you to help would be mothers and fathers avoid the sin of abortion. Because of our trust and hope in Jesus, we can boldly approach the throne and beg Him to have mercy upon us and use us to save lives and souls.

Pray for Families:

• PARENTS: Pray that God will give us wisdom and the strength to raise godly children. Help us see the challenges we face as opportunities to train our children toward right thinking and right actions. May God help us to focus on teaching our children the Christian faith, to love the Word of God and to seek to do Thy will. Help us to disciple our children.

• GRANDPARENTS: That God would use grandparents to fearlessly proclaim the Word of God regarding sin and God’s love. Pray for their role in the training of their grandchildren and wisdom on how to instill a Biblical worldview.

• FAMILIES AS SALT AND LIGHT: Pray that God would help your family to be faithful in family worship, foster sweet unity and cooperation, and then use your family to spread the truth and light of the Gospel.

I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him,
bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered;
and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they
are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will aske
what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified...
~Jesus Christ (John 15:5-8)

A Lawless Decision Finally About to Be Overruled

The U.S. Supreme Court appears to be poised, absent dereliction of duty or cowardice, to overrule one of the most wicked, unlawful, and murderous decisions it has ever issued.

In overturning (destroying, really) Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 113), the Court will have done much to restore judicial integrity, but not enough.

In 1820, amid the attempt to end slavery in the United States, a compromise for admitting the State of Missouri to the Union was reached. While imposing some limits to official political support for slavery, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, in effect, continued the U.S. Government’s official endorsement of the systematic enslavement and forced servitude of large numbers of kidnapped Africans.

Likewise, in 1854, this compromise was replaced with another [1]; to let the States decide for themselves whether or not to allow the majority to enslave the minority. Opposition to this replacement (proposed by Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas) was the basis for formation of the Republican Party and the rise in prominence of Abraham Lincoln.

Once again, the unalienable Right to Liberty of these People, was officially alienated from them with the explicit consent of The United States of America!

Today, according to the verified initial draft of Justice Samuel Alito‘s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Center [2] (better described as Jackson Unwanted Children’s Death Center), the Court rightly demolishes both Roe [3], and its descendant Planned Parenthood v. Casey (505 U.S. 833).

In the Dobbs draft though, the Court continues to sanction the States’ unconstitutional denial of certain persons’ Right to Life at the hands of those more powerful. States may not lawfully do so. I call it the Mississippi Compromise of 2022.

According to one list of deaths at the hands of tyrannical dictators, the United States’ denial of the Right to Life of 63,000,000 children unwanted by their mothers since the Roe v. Wade decision—boys and girls whose only crime was being too small to be defended—places post-1973 America in second place (behind only Mao’s Communist China and ahead of Stalin’s Socialist Russia and Hitler’s National Socialist Germany) [4].

Justice Alito’s draft several times vaguely refers “the rule of law.”

The foundation of any American Rule of Law must be what we, the People of the United States, declared to all mankind to be “self-evident” truth, in support of our revolution from England, simply that:

• All mankind is created, equal.
• The Creator has given rights to man (endowed with) which cannot be removed (unalienable).
• Governments, such as that we were about to form, are instituted for the purpose of securing those rights (which include Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness) deriving their power from the consent of the governed.
• The governed have a right to overthrow governments which do not follow the Rule of Law.

The Court’s draft states, that abortion “presents a profound moral question,” but as Justice Alito proves, science has answered that question (i.e., “is there a human in a pregnant mother’s womb?”), in the affirmative.

The question therefore really becomes a profoundly immoral one, “will government permit the stronger Person (parent) to extinguish the life of the weaker (unborn child)?”

The draft purports to “return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.” This is tyranny of the majority.

Neither the U.S. Constitution, nor the Rule of the Law permits such injustice. Neither the People nor their representatives can ever possess such authority:

For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. (Romans 13:3-4)

According to the Rule of Law, every human being has a self-evident, God-given, unalienable Right to Life, which is to be secured by any legitimate government. From the moment of conception, we are now scientifically able to identify precisely, the existence of a human being. Therefore, we (i.e., all branches of government, and the governed, by whose consent they rule) must secure this right to every human being within our authority:

This will of his (mankind’s) Maker is called the law of nature … no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this. (William Blackstone [5])

As the draft indicates, the U.S. Constitution most certainly does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion, as Roe and Casey did. Neither though, does it permit the citizens of each State to deny persons within their borders, their human Right to Life!

The unalienable Right to Life of every human being within the borders of the United States of America must be secured by the equal protection of the laws of all governments within the Union. The court has the duty under the U.S. Constitution (several places) and the American Rule of Law to so rule.

This is only a first draft. Let us continue to pray, more fervently than ever, that the Court will revise this draft and finally affirm the U.S. Constitution and American Rule of Law: that all States must, to the best of their ability, secure the Right to Life for all people within its jurisdiction.

[1] Note that these “compromises” occurred while the nation was still operating under the American Rule of Law, based upon the law of the Creator, and therefore came from Congress. The legal profession soon thereafter adopted positive law (foundation of law is judicial decisions, therefore improperly expanding role of judiciary), so this similar “compromise” is now coming from the Court.

[2] https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21835435/scotus-initial-draft.pdf

[3] As demonstrated by the Court’s draft opinion, lawyers, including those who approve of the result, have always known Roe was a bad decision, but modern law schools leave no concept of a decision being ‘bad’ law, since cases determine the law.

[4] https://about-history.com/list-of-dictatorships-by-death-toll-the-top-10-biggest-killers-in-history/

[5]  Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Law was the third most cited source in the writings of the founders. https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/founding-father-s-library

The Illinois Family Institute is issuing this public statement to urge Governor J.B. Pritzker and Attorney General Kwame Raoul to prepare to ensure the safety of churches and pro-life pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) in Illinois.

David E. Smith, the executive director of the statewide pro-life, pro-family organization, notes that vandalism, arson, threats of violence, and interruption of church services have been escalating since the leak of Justice Samuel Alito‘s draft opinion on abortion.

“We cannot afford to ignore the threats of violence and harassment to achieve political ends,” said Smith. “It is wise to anticipate more violent reactions from fringe pro-abortion activists if and when the U.S. Supreme Court hands down its decision in the Dobbs case.”

The arrest of a California man who was reportedly armed with a gun and knife near Justice Brett Kavanaugh‘s house in Maryland is alarming. Federal law enforcement officials have charged him with attempted murder.

Recently, both CompassCare Pregnancy Services in Buffalo, New York and the headquarters for Wisconsin Family Action were firebombed. In Asheville, North Carolina, a business that provides counseling for pregnant women was vandalized. Earlier this week, in New York City, pro-life advocates participating in a monthly event called “Witness for Life” were mobbed.

Mr. Smith points out that while abortion facilities in Chicago have bubble zones to protect the safety of abortion workers and clients, no such protection exists for pregnancy care centers and churches. During this turbulent time, the state of Illinois must give them equal protection under the law.

“Governor Pritzker and Attorney General Raoul should make it clear that violence and intimidation will not be tolerated in Illinois,” urges Smith. “Moreover, law enforcement agencies across the state must be put on high alert, visibly present in their patrols in an effort to dissuade violence.”

IFI implores Governor Pritzker and Attorney General Raoul to speak out in advance of the ruling to urge peace and calm.

We call every elected official in Illinois, no matter their view on the Dobbs decision, to speak out in opposition to any response that includes violence and intimidation.

Mr. Smith contends that any attack on a church or pregnancy care center should be considered an anti-religious hate crime and the perpetrators should be charged accordingly.

Why has Illinois become a stinking bog of degradation, violence, and fiscal collapse? It’s because we have scores of “leaders,” and activists who are as unable to distinguish right from wrong as they are unable to distinguish men from women. One of those activists is Oren Jacobson, devoted advocate for the slaughter of preborn humans, founder of Men4Choice, board member of pro-human slaughter Personal PAC, self-identifying “thought leader,” and self-promoter extraordinaire who recently said,

Everything we’re doing is focused on getting what are really millions of men—who in theory are pro-choice but are completely passive when it comes to their voice and their energy and their time in the fight for abortion rights and abortion access—to get off the sidelines and step in the fight as allies.

And here I thought men were supposed to shut up about abortion.

In an interview on MSNBC with Zerlina Maxwell after the U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked, Jacobson emoted,

I want to say one thing to … all the women watching, everybody who can get pregnant, how deeply sorry I am that we’re in this moment. I’m feeling very emotional about that.

He had to add that last statement in case everybody who can get pregnant didn’t notice his phony voice-cracking indicating he was about to fake-cry. Jacobson wants everybody who can get pregnant to know he has Deep Feelings about the possibility that pregnant women—and men—may not be legally allowed to slaughter their offspring. Nuttin’ means nuttin’ without Deep Feelings.

And boy, oh, boy does the emotive Jacobson have Deep Feelings—deep feelings and a vivid imagination. The mere thought of women not being free to slaughter their unborn leads Jacobson to imagine a horrific dystopian handmaid’s tale where rapists roam free and women’s very humanity is denied:

If this is, in fact, the ruling that the Court will hand down, that in at least 13 states right away and most likely in 25 0r 26 states pretty quickly, a rapist will have more rights than a woman in those states. And it is beyond horrifying to imagine a future in which your humanity, your dignity, your ability to control your life is valued less than a rapist.

What precisely are the “rights” rapists will have that women will not in states that acknowledge the humanity of unborn humans? And how are the humanity and dignity of women diminished by recognizing the humanity and dignity of their offspring and protecting their right not to be exterminated?

I’m not exactly sure what the self-identifying “thought leader” Jacobson means when he says that restricting or banning human slaughter means women’s humanity, dignity, and ability to control their lives are “valued less than a rapist.” Rape is illegal, and if caught, rapists are arrested and punished.

Maybe he’s referring to opposition to abortion in cases of rape. Many people who believe in the sanctity, humanity, and dignity of all human life believe that humans created through criminal acts should not be punished for the crimes of their fathers. Such a belief does not constitute either a devaluation of women or an elevated valuation of rapists.

Rather than feeling horrified that 64 million humans have been slaughtered since 1973 because they were imperfect, inconvenient, or unwanted by their mothers, Jacobson is horrified that the killings may stop.

Jacobson sidestepped an awkward question from interviewer Maxwell who said the quiet part out loud, tacitly admitting that men and women use human slaughter as a means of contraception:

One of the things I think we need to talk about … is how men benefit from abortion. … There are men who would not be CEOs but for access to contraception. Tell us how men benefit.

Jacobson was politically canny and cunning enough to avoid responding to that question. Instead, he launched into an autonomy answer that—again—ignores the person with the most at stake and no voice whatsoever:

I want every pro-choice male to step into this out of an obligation to stand up for the freedoms to those most directly impacted. … You deserve the right, within the context of a healthy relationship, to make decisions with your partner that are in the best interest of your family. … In my own personal life, when we have had moments in planning our family … at no point did I give a rip what Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump, Mike Pence, or any other of these anti-abortion men with power across the country thought about what my wife and I should do. And that is why, to me … this isn’t just a woman’s issue.

When considering whether the “product” of conception between two humans is a human; whether that “product” has humanity, dignity, and value; whether the “product’s” body is her mother’s body; and whether a more developed human should be able to kill the “product,” I don’t give a rip what Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, J.B. Pritzker, Jared Polis, Jan Schakowsky, Gavin Newsom, Oren Jacobson, or any other pro-human slaughter men and women with power who refuse to recognize that abortion involves two human bodies thinks.

And that’s why this isn’t just a woman’s issue.

Jacobson continues with his dissembling and evasion:

The simple reality is that the men in America who oppose abortion, who are using their privilege and their power, are not shy, and they are not quiet. So, the question isn’t why shouldn’t men get loud. It’s why haven’t we been getting louder sooner.

Surely, Jacobson knows that men who support the legal right of women to off their offspring have been “using their privilege and power” to rob the unborn of their right to live. In fact, it was seven men, six of whom were white, who in a raw exercise of their power and privilege denied the humanity, dignity, and right to life of preborn humans in Roe v. Wade.

And surely, Jacobson knows why men haven’t “been getting louder sooner.” The reason is that feminist harpies have been shrieking for years that men have no right to speak on abortion—despite the fact that the babies killed have fathers too.

But I agree with Jacobson. Men should get involved. Men should donate to pro-life crisis pregnancy centers and advocacy organizations.

Men, who should be the protectors of and providers for women and children, should march shoulder-to-shoulder with women in pro-life marches. Men should listen to the voices of women who were pressured to have their sons and daughters killed, who live with bone-deep grief and regret, and who are angry that their country tolerates the slaughter of thousands of babies every year.

And to quote Jacobson,

Men, your job is to carry the voices of those women to your peers and buddies, to call them, text them, post on social media about this, to start lifting up those voices and owning this conversation amongst your friends.

The very lives of humans depend on the voices of men and women who know truth.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Jacobson-Another-Foolish-Illinois-Activist.mp3

Following the unprecedented leak of the entire U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion on the controversial abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, morally and emotionally unhinged, pro-human slaughter women and their collaborators became apoplectic. Next, U.S. Senate leftists terrified at the possibility that diverse citizens in diverse states will pass diverse laws to protect prenatal humans began clamoring for the elimination of the filibuster, so they—Senate leftists—can codify human slaughter in federal law. So much for diversity and federalism.

The self-identifying Catholic Joe Biden said, “If the Court does overturn Roe, it will fall on our nation’s elected officials at all levels of government to protect a woman’s right to choose [to have her offspring offed]. And it will fall on voters to elect pro-choice [i.e., pro-human slaughter] officials this November.” And yet, Biden is unwilling to wait to see who voters choose or what state levels of government will do. Leftists like Biden don’t care what the great unwashed masses want. Nor do they care what the Constitution says. Leftists want to impose their will, ideology, and desires by any unethical and unconstitutional means they can dream up.

Biden is justified in fearing that states may pass laws to protect incipient lives. In contrast to the leftist claim that most Americans support Roe v. Wade, recent Rasmussen polling shows that most Americans would like to see it overturned:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters would approve of a Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade …. Forty-five percent (45%) would disapprove of overturning Roe v. Wade ….

…

In his draft opinion, Justice Alito declared that the Roe v. Wade decision “was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.” Forty-seven percent (47%) of voters agree with Justice Alito’s statement…. Forty-six percent (46%) disagree with Alito.

Biden and his U.S. Senate co-conspirators want to rob citizens and states of the right to decide whether humans in the womb can be killed by more powerful humans (i.e., oppressors). According to the website “Equal Access to Abortion Everywhere,” the federal law Biden frantically seeks to pass before Dobbs is decided and before Americans can exercise their right to govern themselves would,

eliminate all existing state restrictions including “six-week bans, 20-week bans, mandatory ultrasounds … counseling, waiting periods, and requirements that providers obtain admitting privileges at local hospitals.

Abortion without restrictions would be legal in every state throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy for any or no reason if the Women’s Health Protection Act is passed.

In attempting to rationalize the censorship of conservative ideas, “diversity”- and “tolerance”-loving leftists have claimed society has no obligation to tolerate conservative speech on topics related to sexuality because such speech may lead to violence. This raises a thorny question for leftists: Should society tolerate bloodthirsty banshees shrieking in the streets about their right to destroy the bodies of their offspring and threatening the lives of those who oppose human slaughter? Might such banshee speech lead to violence?

U.S. Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, John Roberts, and Neil Gorsuch have had their homes and lives targeted.

Lacie Wooten-Holway, an unneighborly neighbor of Brett Kavanaugh revealed his home address and organized a protest in front of his home, declaring that “We’re about to get doomsday … so I’m not going to be civil to that man at all.”

A Molotov cocktail set ablaze the office of a conservative public policy organization in Wisconsin and graffitied it with the threat, “If abortions aren’t safe, then neither are you.” Sounds like a threat of violence to me.

A Catholic church in Fort Collins, Colorado was spraypainted with the words “My body my choice” and the symbol for anarchism.

Three churches in Texas were vandalized.

In an interview with Salon magazine, an anonymous representative of the anti-life group Ruth Sent Us said “that some members of the network have privately discussed not just disrupting Mass but burning the Eucharist.” Might that lead to violence?

Clearly banshee speech may lead to violence, and yet as of this writing, neither the Biden administration nor the DOJ has condemned the doxing of six U.S. Supreme Court Justices, the illegal efforts to influence the decision of these justices, the torching of conservative non-profit organizations, or the protests in front of Supreme Court Justices private homes.

Instead (and as usual), Biden finds this a good time to blame the “Maga crowd”:

What are the next things that are going to be attacked? Because this Maga crowd is really the most extreme political organization that exists in American history.

This is about a lot more than abortion… What happens if you have a state change the law, saying that children who are LGBTQ can’t be in classrooms with other children? Is that legit?

Biden’s claim is either a bizarre non sequitur or a wildly fallacious slippery slope argument with no causal or logical link between a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the Dobbs case and an absurd hypothetical state law banning “LGBTQ” students from the classroom.

Is the “Maga crowd” an organization? Who’s in it? Everyone who voted for Trump? Are all the Americans who voted for Trump members of a political organization more extreme than BLM, Antifa, the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, Black Panthers, or eco-terrorist organizations?

Perhaps the cognitively impaired Biden isn’t aware that many liberal legal scholars who support abortion argue that nowhere in the text or history of the Constitution can a right to abortion be found, and hence, Roe v. Wade was an atrocious decision.

U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) made an equally bizarre statement:

This is 50 years of rights in a leaked opinion where Justice Alito is literally not just taking us back to the 1950s, he’s taking us back to 1850s. He actually cites the fact that abortion was criminalized back when the 14th Amendment was adopted.

If Klobuchar thinks 49 years imparts immunity from being overturned to a lousy U.S. Supreme Court decision, then she must still be enraged about the de facto overturning of Plessy v. Ferguson, which stood legally unmolested for 58 years.

Klobuchar’s disdain for Alito “taking us back to the 1850s” is perplexing. One would expect a member of the U.S. Senate to have deep respect for much that was written in the 1800s and even the 1700s.

California Governor Gavin Newsom tripped all over leftist “logic” when talking about the draft opinion:

If men could get pregnant, this wouldn’t even be a conversation.

That’s both embarrassingly cliché and politically un-woke. Surely, the good leftist Newsom has heard the news from the world of pseudo-science: Men can get pregnant. Or maybe he has heard the news, but he’s caught in the sticky, tangled web of ideological mayhem that leftists have woven to deceive.

For decades, unhinged women committed to child sacrifice have tried to claim that humans in the womb were just clumps of cells or tumor-like masses. When that nonsensical claim failed, they admitted that, sure, the product of conception between two humans is a human but it’s not fully developed, or it’s imperfect, or it will suffer, or it’s parasitic, or it’s father is a criminal, or it’s mother is poor, or it’s mother doesn’t want it, or it’s mother is not ready to care for it. If those arguments were applied consistently to all humans, we would have a murderous society unsafe for every human.

So, then came the next lie: Morally unhinged women proclaimed that sure, womb-dwellers are human, but they’re not persons. But why, inquiring minds wanted to know, are these humans with human DNA, many of whose human body parts are sold to scientists to find cures for human diseases, not persons?

Philosopher Francis Beckwith offers a definition of personhood that abortion cheerleaders will definitely not like:

[W]hat is crucial morally is the being of a person, not his or her functioning. A human person does not come into existence when human function arises, but rather, a human person is an entity who has the natural inherent capacity to give rise to human functions, whether or not those functions are ever attained. And since the unborn human being has this natural inherent capacity from the moment it comes into existence, she is a person as long as she exists.

…

A human person who lacks the ability to think rationally (either because she is too young or she suffers from a disability) is still a human person because of her nature. Consequently, it makes sense to speak of a human being’s lack if and only if she is an actual person.

Questions of personhood and unalienable rights are metaphysical questions on which there will never be agreement. Rational, reasonable, compassionate people argue that if we can’t agree on something as momentous as when life begins or when a human becomes a person deserving of the right not to be murdered, the prudent and ethical response would be to err on the side of not killing humans that may, indeed, be persons.

But liberals are not concerned about the injustice of killing human fetuses. Liberal concerns are directed toward the self.

Nathanael Blake, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, illuminates the self-serving political philosophy of the secular left:

The liberal project seeks to provide, to the extent possible, freedom from unchosen constraints, duties, and loyalties in life.

This is why liberalism naturally favors a broad welfare state. The purpose of this welfare state is both to protect those who are dependent, and to protect those who do not want to be depended on.

Thus, liberalism professionalizes care from childhood to old age. The animating vision is a society in which everyone is taken care of, but no one has a private obligation to care for anyone else; no one has to sacrifice ambition, career, or personal freedom to care for children or parents or a sick relative.

But this liberal ideal is unrealizable with children, especially those in utero. …

This is why liberals are complaining about “forced birth” — they really are horrified at the idea of an unchosen obligation to care for another person. … Liberalism cannot tolerate that sort of involuntary duty, and so it requires the opt-out of abortion on demand.

Thus, a political philosophy that begins by claiming to protect the weak and dependent, and to liberate us from the unfairness of the givenness of life, ends by asserting an absolute right to take the lives of the weak and dependent — precisely because they are dependent.

Human life developing in the womb can offer nothing but need; to respond to that need with violence is to assail human dependence in its purest form. This bloodshed lays bare how liberalism has become a revolt against our humanity.

It’s also a revolt against God, which explains why leftists who want the freedom to sacrifice their children target Christianity. Jesus teaches us to deny ourselves and take up our crosses daily. He teaches that “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” He teaches that God is the Author of life who creates the inmost being of children in their mothers’ wombs. And he teaches that every life unjustly snuffed out by fallen humans was fearfully and wonderfully made by God.

Take ACTION: Sponsored by left-wing U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal [D-CT], the Women’s Health Protection Act (S. 4132) would nullify any existing state pro-life laws protecting the life of the unborn, if signed into law. Both U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth are co-sponsors of this radical bill which would also force doctors and healthcare workers to violate their consciences. Click HERE to let them know that this legislation is absolutely unacceptable and offensive to you. Urge them to protect innocent pre-born human life.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Schemes-of-Fallen-Humans-to-Destroy-Life.mp3

Read more:

Fact Sheet by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

Democrats’ National Abortion Bill Replaces Word ‘Woman’ With ‘Person’ (The Daily Signal)

The big news of the week has been confirmed by Chief Justice John Roberts. The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade in the very near future, possibly by the end of June. In a news release from the High Court, however, they were careful to point out that, although the leaked draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito is authentic, “it does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.” In other words, the ruling is not official yet.

If it becomes official, it will be an enormous victory for the sanctity of human life in America. Repealing Roe is what pro-lifers have marched, prayed, worked, and voted for since 1973.

We are relieved to know that many states will restrict or completely outlaw abortion, thereby saving untold number of women and unborn babies from becoming victims. Yet, it’s sobering to realize that states like Illinois, New York, Maryland and California will become abortion destination points for those who are determined to kill their pre-born babies. And seeing women come out in droves screaming about the possibility of losing their right to kill their children is a grave reminder that we are in a spiritual battle.

The work before us continues, especially in Illinois. Our ongoing mission is to educate family members, friends and neighbors on the evils of abortion. We’ll need to continue working to change hearts and minds regarding “bodily autonomy,” the science of when life begins, and, most important, the fact that we are all created in the image and likeness of our Creator.  As such, every human has an intrinsic and inestimable dignity and worth. (Genesis 1:27)

Our culture has drifted away from God and no longer loves or values the things of God. We see proof of that in a birth rate which is disastrously low and abortion rates disastrously high. This disregard for life is also evidenced in the gang violence in our cities and by the skyrocketing suicide and overdose rates plaguing communities throughout the nation.

In response, followers of Jesus Christ must be diligent in praying for the courage, strength, and wisdom to engage the culture forthrightly on the abortion issue. Ironically, this morning, in response to the leaked opinion, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke dishonestly from the chamber floor to decry the pending decision, claiming that tens of millions of women will lose “bodily autonomy.”

Overturning Roe v. Wade does not constitute the loss of women’s “bodily autonomy” because abortions don’t destroy the bodies of mothers. Abortions destroy the bodies of women’s children. Abortion robs the unborn of bodily autonomy, body integrity, and life.

May God forgive us.

PRAYER ALERT

We cannot stress the urgency of your fervent prayers this month as our culture once again descends into a season of acrimony. Add to this the fact that we are in an election cycle in which dozens of federal and state legislative seats are in play. There are a number of God-fearing candidates running for office, and our prayers are vitally important.

Appeal to God for His Mercy

• Pray that God would forgive us for allowing the innocent blood of preborn children to be spilled for decades in America.

• Pray for forgiveness for using tax dollars to pay for abortions in Illinois and to sustain this wicked industry.

• Pray for the courage and strength to expose and refute lies and to offer hope to those who are stumbling towards death.

• Pray for a flood of new volunteers who will commit to prayer and sidewalk counseling at abortion clinics and at pregnancy centers to help turn individual hearts away from the slaughter of the most innocent.

• Pray that church leaders would speak boldly on this issue and offer hope to post-abortive women who need love, care, and assurance of God’s forgiveness. Pray that Christians will share the love of Christ with post-abortive women, and that these women would find healing through a church group and/or Bible study.

Abortion

• Pray that every leader in our nation would come to realize that “fetuses” are real humans in the womb who deserve protection.

• Pray that the agenda of Satan and his wicked disciples to kill pre-born babies in the womb and encourage immoral sexual activities to innocent young children in government schools would be exposed and stopped.

• Pray that Christians of every age would develop a biblical perspective on abortion, on caring for those who face unplanned pregnancies, and on our obligation to respond to sin with grace and compassion in addition to truth.

• Pray that we can be used to communicate effectively how God wants to redeem the lost.

For Those in Authority

For the next several weeks, please pray for the political leaders listed below. Pray that they would seek God’s wisdom when they make decisions that affect the people for whom they work. Pray that God would turn their hearts to Himself. (Proverbs 21:1)

This includes praying for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, J.B. Pritzker, and Julia Stratton and those who serve in these administrations. Pray also for our two U.S. Senators: Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth.

Please pray for the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court: John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. (Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will take her seat on the Court when Justice Breyer steps down in late June or early July.)

In addition, please pray for the following officials:

• • U.S. Senator Mark Kelly (D-Arizona)
  • U.S. Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama)
  • U.S. Representative Robin Kelly (D-Illinois)
  • U.S. Representative John Yarmuth (D-Kentucky)
  • U.S. Representative Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado)
  • State Senator Melinda Bush (D-Grayslake)
  • State Senator John Curran (R-Lemont)
  • State Representative Deb Conroy (D-Villa Park)
  • State Representative Andrew Chesney (R-Freeport)
  • YOUR local City/Village/Township Officials

Written by Frederick W. Claybrook, Jr. 

The significance of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case cannot be overstated. Pro-life citizens across the nation were praying fervently for the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court as they heard oral arguments Wednesday morning.

The law at the center of this case is Mississippi’s late-term abortion ban for pre-born babies 15 weeks gestation and older. Many experts believe that the Court may overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, at least in part, returning the issue of abortion back to the states.

Oral arguments went much as one would expect. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and, to a lesser extent, Elena Kagan, all made clear that they thought stare decisis should rule the day because otherwise it would look like the Court caved to public opinion. There was also some talk about reliance interests built up over 50 years.

Chief Justice John Roberts cast doubt on how a viability rule makes sense in light of the interests supposed to be furthered for women, i.e., making her own decisions and her circumstances. He pointed out more than once that the only issue they granted cert on was whether to continue to adhere to the viability rule and whether a 15-week line could pass constitutional muster, so he might be angling for a middle ground of striking down the viability rule but not totally discarding the undue burden standard of Casey.

Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett didn’t seem to be following suit, though. Instead, Kavanaugh pointed out that in some of what are now considered the Court’s most important decisions, the Court overruled prior precedent. He seemed to stake out a position that the Court should be “scrupulously neutral” on this issue and leave it to state and federal legislatures. He said that the interests of the mother wanting to abort and of the fetus in living were irreconcilable, which makes this matter so hard and counsels for the Court to stay out of it.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Barrett raised some interesting questions about the purported interests of women on which Roe and Casey based their decisions. Barrett pressed on why laws that allow women to hand over their infants shortly after delivery, thereby terminating all parental responsibilities, do not eliminate talk in the decisions about women controlling their lives.

Thomas pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld a state prosecution for abuse of a pregnant mother for ingesting controlled substances and harming her child. He never got a straight answer to why, if the state could do that if the ingestion was post-viability, it could not also do it if it was pre-viability or whether the Roe/Casey viability line would call for a different result because, if a woman can kill her child pre-viability, why can’t she abuse it.

Near the end of the clinic’s counsel’s argument, she said the common law provided a right to abort early in the pregnancy at the time the U.S. Constitution was adopted. The U.S. Solicitor General in her argument made a similar statement. Justice Samuel Alito jumped on appellee’s counsel, saying that the American Historical Association’s brief admitted that many states prohibited abortion at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, so how could it be considered a fundamental right. He didn’t mention Joseph Dellapenna’s brief, which obliterates these claims about the common law allowing abortion, but it seemed as if Alito was up on the common-law issue. (It is shameful, though, that counsel continue to spout these “myths,” also known as lies, about the common law.)

No direct questions were asked about whether an unborn child is covered by the due process and equal protection guarantees for “any person,” but Mississippi’s counsel, especially in his rebuttal, spoke of the many lives killed on account of Roe and Casey, although his overriding argument was that the matter should be left to the states.

The audio recording of the arguments is available HERE, and the transcript is available HERE.

We recently read a great little sermon illustration in which a young boy asked his father, “Dad, I was watching a TV show about marine biologists. Why do scuba-divers jump backwards into the water?” His father wittily responded, “Because if they jumped forward, they’d still be in the boat!”

Scuba divers jump out of boats to investigate marine life in the coastal waters and oceans of the world. It is a way of visiting another ecosystem on our vast planet. Whether it is sunken wreckage, lost treasure or coral reefs, I can see how these diving excursions are great ways to escape the stresses of daily life.

Yet today, there are many people in our culture, in our families and even in our churches who might be tempted to jump out of the boat when things get stressful, depressing or uncomfortable. Those of us who still live in Illinois understand the added frustration of wicked and foolish political leadership. The temptation to move out of this state and into “calmer, peaceful waters” is very real.

Yet we should consider what Scripture has to say about escaping trials and tribulation. Right before He was arrested, Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane. He prayed John 17:14:

“I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.”  

Jesus could have easily prayed that God would deliver us out of the troubled waters of our world, but He didn’t. He prayed that we would remain in the world and that we would be protected from the evil one. Why didn’t He pray for our complete rescue? His prayer continues in John 17:18:

“As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

Our Lord and Savior, the Son of God, prayed that we would remain so we could be on mission in this world for the advancement of the Kingdom of God.

Yes, our state and our culture is in trouble. But these troubles are a reminder that we are called to be salt and light to a dying world.  David Jeremiah once said, “Today is the day to be a light shining in a dark world, fueled by the joy of the Lord.” May we be that salt and light to a dark and decaying world, all to the glory of God.

PRAYER ALERT

We cannot stress the urgency of your fervent prayers this week as our state lawmakers return to the Capitol for the second half of the Veto Session. There are a number of bad proposals pending in Springfield. Prayer and action are vitally important.

Appeal to God for His Help

• Praise God that many pro-life activists and pastors are headed to Springfield to speak out against the efforts to repeal the Parental Notice of Abortion Act and the repeal of the Health Care Right of Conscience Act. Please pray that these activists would be seen and heard by lawmakers. Pray that their presence and dialogue would help them understand the importance of parental rights and conscience rights. (Read more HERE.)

• Pray that our state lawmakers would understand the wisdom in keeping qualified (or limited), immunity for police officers in Illinois. Pray that the anti-police agenda to dismantle, dishearten and make defenseless would fall short.

Abortion

• Pray for the members of the U.S. Supreme Court as they will be hearing arguments regarding significant abortion regulations in Mississippi and Texas. Pray that God would touch the hearts of the nine Justices on the Court. Pray too, as the debate rages, that eyes and ears would be opened to the abortion industry’s murderous barbaric practices.

• Please pray for the last week of this year’s 40 Days for Life campaign, which ends on Saturday, Oct. 30. Pray that many prayer warriors would take advantage of this opportunity to be a silent witness against the murderous practice of “choice.” Pray that workers at these abortuaries would have a change of heart about their work and leave.

• Pray that every leader in our nation would come to realize that these are real human babies in the womb who deserve protection.

• Pray that the agenda of Satan and his wicked disciples to kill pre-born babies in the womb and encourage immoral sexual activities to innocent young children in government schools would be exposed and stopped.

Public School Exit

• Please continue to pray for our Rescuing Our Children initiative to encourage an exodus from government indoctrination centers. Rev. Ceasar LeFlore, our field director for this project, is meeting with pastors throughout the City of Chicago and suburbs and has been getting favorable responses.

• Pray for Illinois Family Institute and our annual banquet which is scheduled for Friday evening. Pray that the event would be a success, and that our keynote speaker, Dr. Erwin Lutzer, would encourage and challenge us to live up to the high calling of our faith in Christ Jesus.

For Those in Authority

For the next several weeks, please pray for the political leaders listed below. Pray that they would seek God’s wisdom when they make decisions that affect the people they work for. Pray that God would turn their hearts to Himself. (Proverbs 21:1)

Of course, this includes praying for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, JB Pritzker and Julia Stratton and those who serve in these administrations. Pray also for our two U.S. Senators, Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth.

Please pray for the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court: John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

In addition, please pray for the following officials:

• • U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal Bennet (D-Connecticut)
  • U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (R-Missouri)
  • U.S. Representative Bobby Rush (D-Illinois)
  • U.S. Representative Peter Aguilar (D-California)
  • U.S. Representative Rick Allen (R-Georgia)
  • State Senator Scott Bennett (D-Champaign)
  • State Senator Terri Bryant (R-Murphysboro)
  • State Representative Lakesia Collins (D-Chicago)
  • State Representative Dan Caulkins (R-Decatur)
  • YOUR local City/Village/Township Officials

Written by Rick Claybrook, Esq.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Hosanna-Tabor (2012) and Our Lady of Guadalupe (2020) embraced what Justice Samuel Alito described as the “so-called ministerial exception,” a doctrine that exempts religious organizations from discrimination laws when dealing with certain employees. Why “so-called”? Because the exemption covers more than just ministers or the top officials of a religious organization. It also covers some teachers in church elementary schools, as the U.S. Supreme Court held in both of those cases. The cutting issues now are how to define other employees who will be covered and who will decide which individuals qualify.

The majority of justices are advancing a loose definition that weighs the employee’s religious duties and functions. But that leads to decisions like the recent one of the highest court in Massachusetts, which, after sifting the evidence, ruled that a social work faculty member of Gordon College, a forthrightly Christian college, was not a “minister.” Yes, the court reasoned, the college required her to integrate a Christian worldview into her teaching and to be a moral exemplar and counselor for her students, but the court could not see what social work had to do with religion.

The problem on the surface is that most state court judges went to secular colleges and “just don’t get it.” The deeper problem is that no secular judge (even U.S. Supreme Court justices) should even be trying to determine whether a faculty member at a Christian college must conform to the college’s statement of faith and practice for the college to best carry out its mission.  That should solely be the decision of the college.

The U.S. Supreme Court in both Hosanna-Tabor and Our Lady of Guadalupe correctly observed that the “ministerial exception” grows out of the larger doctrine of so-called “church autonomy,” so-called because it covers all sincerely religious organizations, not just churches. A key principle of that doctrine is that secular officials have neither the competence nor authority to decide religious questions, and hence, they must keep hands off the internal governance of religious organizations in any way that affects their religious ministry or involves examining religious doctrine.

Since a person employed by an organization is central to its internal governance, it follows that religious organizations must be the ones to decide which of its employees must comply with its faith and conduct principles. This is the position Justice Clarence Thomas took when concurring in both cases, and he was joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch in Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The Massachusetts court worried that if it adopted such a principle, a religious organization could abuse the process by saying that a janitor was protected by the ministerial exception. The implications that motivated the court are all false: religious organizations will not, as a general matter, try to abuse their legal privileges; janitors will not always be outside the proper scope of the exception (they too may offer prayers and provide worship content); and, more broadly, there is a well-accepted check on potential abuse that secular courts can administer.

This check is the requirement that a religious organization’s assertion of who is a “minister” must be “sincere” or “in good faith.” In the case of a janitor, a court could look to see whether the religious organization had consistently imposed faith and practice requirements on those performing the task. Secular courts have applied this limiting principle of good faith for years in cases involving religious claims, and it should be applied in the ministerial exception context as well.

The Illinois Family Institute is filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court requesting that they review the Gordon College case and to adopt that rule.

Between now and Labor Day, you can double the impact of your tax deductible donations to IFI!

A group of donors are working with us to offer a $40,000 dollar-for-dollar matching challenge
to help us raise $80,000 for “Rescuing the Children” initiative here in Illinois!

A nationwide group of state legislators and attorneys have crafted an amicus (friend of the court) legal brief in support of the State of Mississippi in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, seeking to overturn the unlawful Roe v. Wade decision.

The Mississippi law being challenged, with a few exceptions, prohibits abortions within the State, including even the first 15 weeks of pregnancy, when modern medicine is still incapable of supporting life outside the womb.

The U.S. Supreme Court, on May 17^th, granted a hearing on the following question raised by Dobbs: “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”

Of course, we know the truth that no prohibitions on elective abortion are unconstitutional. [1]

This brief contains three great strengths:

• It represents the group who has truly suffered the greatest harm: the States and the People, whose right to justly govern, reserved to them in the 10^th Amendment, has been taken by the Federal Government’s egregious Roe v. Wade decision,

• It represents the opinion of a statistical majority of U.S. citizens and legislators, and

• It affords legislators in the political minority in their own States, such as Illinois, a voice equal to, or possibly greater than, all legislators throughout the nation.

Republican lawmakers in Illinois are severely outnumbered (a “super-minority”) in both the Illinois House (45/118) and Illinois Senate (18/59), and are therefore typically unable to advance (or stop) meaningful (or harmful) legislation.  As friends of the Court, they can now have the same voice as all other legislators.

There are currently 7,383 [2] state legislators in the United States, duly elected by a majority of 168.31 million U.S. voters [3], of whom 3,977 (or 54%) are members of the pro-life, Republican Party, and have been invited to join the brief.

What did Roe really do?  It announced a new right, which removed Legislators’ (and thereby, the People’s) ability to protect unwanted humans from being murdered.

As stated in the brief, “State legislatures exist to protect the health and welfare of their States’ respective citizens.  This includes the creation of standards and regulations that protect the most vulnerable in society.  However, as demonstrated by the Fifth Circuit’s decision below, flawed precedent [4] interferes with this constitutionally delegated duty.”

“Substantive Due Process”: The Court’s Tool of Federal Tyranny Against the States.

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. ~Judges 17:6

Substantive Due Process is the underlying legal concept used in Roe and others to justify the Court’s remaking of the U.S. Constitution to its own liking.

This logically inconsistent concept was invented in law school textbooks in the 1930s and not embraced by the U.S. Supreme Court prior to 1952 [5].

Of course, ordinary citizens and their children, possessing even the most basic grasp of logic, understand by the redundant term “procedural due process,” (Show me a “process” that isn’t “procedural,” and I’ll show you a bridge that is for sale.) that “substantive due process” is merely a cleverly-worded legal oxymoron which enables judges to justify making the law themselves (i.e., Positive Law, or law made by custom or convention, which can be changed as desired by those in power).

Substantive Due Process, as demonstrated by cases such as Roe, opens a wide door for an unelected committee of nine Ivy League lawyers to selectively remove virtually any topic from the political process (i.e., the States and the People) that it, in its great moral wisdom, sees fit.

From the beginning, the Rule of Law in the United States has been “Natural Law,” or existing law that applies consistently to everyone; certain unalienable rights, endowed to all mankind by their Creator (i.e., Jehovah of the Bible).

The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord;
He turns it wherever He will. ~Proverbs 21:1

Please pray fervently that God would:

1. Continue to strengthen the resolve of the two Justices (Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito) who have unwaveringly upheld their oath to support and defend the Constitutional Rule of Law,

2. Give great courage to four Justices (Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and John Roberts) to understand that it is their duty to finally overturn this unlawful decision, and

3. Forcibly turn the hearts of the three Justices (Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor) whose previous positions have contributed to the tyrannous legalized murder of tens of millions.

Footnotes

[1]In the 105 years between the ratification of the 14^th Amendment in 1868 and Roe’s 1973 judicial fiat that it was unconstitutional, 46 states prohibited abortion, either entirely or with exceptions.  Illinois passed the 2^nd such law in 1833.  During the 1866-1868 legislative sessions, several states passed criminal abortion laws while the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was circulating among them.  No one doubted the constitutionality of doing so. “That resolves these cases. When it comes to determining the meaning of a vague constitutional provision—such as ‘due process of law’ or ‘equal protection of the laws’—it is unquestionable that the People who ratified that provision did not understand it to prohibit a practice that remained both universal and uncontroversial in the years after ratification. We have no basis for striking down a practice that is not expressly prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment’s text, and that bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open, widespread, and unchallenged use dating back to the Amendment’s ratification.” – Antonin Scalia, dissenting from Obergefell v. Hodges (2015, creating a right to same-sex “marriage”).

[2]https://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/partisan-composition.aspx

[3]https://www.statista.com/statistics/273743/number-of-registered-voters-in-the-united-states/

[4]I.e., Roe v. Wade.

[5]https://humandefense.com/criminal-abortion-before-the-fourteenth-amendment/

Still reaching for peak absurdity with ever more zeal, elements of the radical left are now smearing an honest interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and those who support it as “racist,” “sexist,” “homophobic,” and more. In fact, those are the exact words used by U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) to describe originalism — the widely accepted judicial doctrine holding that the words in the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted and understood as intended by the authors and ratifiers. The revolutionary view offered by Markey and others like him is a threat to America and every single American, fellow lawmakers warned.

Amid the nasty confirmation fight over U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Sen. Markey unleashed vitriolic and hateful comments against her “originalist” view on interpreting the U.S. Constitution. “Originalism is racist. Originalism is sexist. Originalism is homophobic. Originalism is just a fancy word for discrimination,” Markey claimed in an October 26 Tweet, essentially smearing as racist, sexist, “homophobic,” and discriminatory ACB and the tens or even hundreds of millions of Americans who believe the words in the Constitution mean what they say. Originalism now joins math, objectivity, individualism, milk, lower taxes, babies, Star Wars, and more in being called “racist” by the far left.

In comments made on the U.S. Senate floor, Senator Markey echoed that bizarre view after noting that Amy Coney Barrett proclaimed that her judicial philosophy was the same as the late Justice Antonin Scalia‘s view, originalism. “As Judge Barrett described so-called originalism, it means she is supposed to interpret the U.S. Constitution’s text to have the meaning it had when the U.S. Constitution was ratified,” Markey said, falsely claiming that various categories of people such as women and homosexuals had “no rights” when the U.S. Constitution was ratified, and omitting the fact that the Constitution has been amended repeatedly since then.

Markey’s summary of what originalism means is relatively accurate. The elected representatives who wrote and voted to ratify that governing document delegating “few and defined” powers to the federal government did so with the understanding that the text meant what it said. No sane or sensible person would ever vote to empower a government, with all its dangerous and coercive powers, under a Constitution in which the words had fluid meaning — or no meaning at all. It would be the equivalent of handing that government a blank check with unlimited power over life, liberty, property, and more — something only a fool or a suicidal madman would even consider.

And yet, this is obviously how U.S. Senator Markey and other leftwing extremists seeking control over Americans believe the U.S. Constitution ought to be understood. Common sense and basic decency would dictate that if Sen. Markey and his far-left allies would like to change the U.S. Constitution, they should do so honestly, using the amendment process outlined in the document itself. They could then make their case to the American people. Then, the people, acting through their elected representatives, could decide for themselves whether they wished to change, re-structure, or further empower their federal government with new authorities.

But Markey and others know that Americans would never willingly tolerate many of the changes that “progressives” would like to bring about. And so, like communists and revolutionaries have done for generations, Senator Markey proceeded to accuse originalists of exactly what progressives have been doing for decades. “Originalam — originalism — is just a fancy word for discrimination,” Markey claimed on the U.S. Senate floor. “It has become a hazy smokescreen for judicial activism by so-called conservatives to achieve from the bench what they cannot accomplish through the ballot box.”

Of course, in reality, the exact opposite is true. For instance, much of Markey’s bizarre rant centered on “LGBT” issues and the supposed right to a homosexual so-called “marriage.” And yet, it was only through judicial activism that this mockery of the people’s wishes and God’s design for marriage could be implemented. Indeed, even in California, perhaps the most liberal state in America, voters rejected so-called “gay marriage” when given the opportunity at the ballot box. In states like Alabama, over 8 in 10 voters supported real marriage. Only through the rogue U.S. Supreme Court were “progressives” able to defy the will of the people and impose faux marriage on America. The same is true with legalizing the murder of unborn babies euphemistically referred to as “abortion.”

Fellow U.S. lawmakers expressed outrage and shock over Markey’s words. “Of all the irresponsible and inflammatory statements I’ve heard over the last few weeks, and I’ve heard some doozies, this might well be the worst,” U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), a former clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, said on Fox & Friends in response to his Democrat colleague’s accusations. “I hope, expect, and demand that Senator Markey retract his statement. It is irresponsible; he can’t defend that.” Despite having sworn an oath to the U.S. Constitution, Markey has so far refused to apologize.

Senator Lee, among the most faithful members of the U.S. Congress when it comes to respecting his oath of office, also highlighted the implications of Markey’s dangerous narrative. “If you think about what he is really saying there, Senator Markey has essentially said that our Constitution is racist, and [that] an effort to understand it, understand its words at the time they were written, is itself racist and bigoted,” Lee noted. “I can’t think of a statement that has a greater tendency to undermine the foundation of our constitutional republic.” Perhaps that was the goal.

The reason why Markey and others are so triggered by originalism is clear, too. “They don’t want the courts to be limited to judging institutions; they want them to be institutions of social change, of social policy, they want them to take debatable matters beyond debate and, so, that is why this isn’t satisfying to them,” Lee explained, adding that they want to go far outside the bounds of what the U.S. Constitution allows without having to get the consent of Americans through the amendment process. “Justice Barrett sees the elegant simplicity of the fact that you want judges to interpret the law based on what it says.”

Interestingly, pinned at the top of his Twitter page, Sen. Markey has an article promoting universal dependence on the federal government through monthly payments to every American. The propaganda comes from the fringe leftwing “Jabobin” magazine. That magazine is named after the monstrous revolutionaries known for their “Reign of Terror” during the French Revolution — a murderous orgy of violence that resulted in mass murder, tens of thousands of beheadings, savage persecution of Christians, destruction of civilization, and other bloody horrors from which France never fully recovered.

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In a shocking U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision, Justice Neil Gorsuch voted with the axis of evil—that is, with Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor. In Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, the axis of evil decided that in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the word “sex” includes “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”—both subjectively constituted conditions. As a result, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in employment based on “race, color, religion, sex, and national origin,” now prohibits employers from firing employees who self-identify as homosexual or as the sex they are not and never can be.

The crux of the argument goes something like this: If a company that allows a woman who gets breast implants and wears lipstick, stilettos, and dresses to work fires a man who gets breast implants and wears lipstick, stilettos, and dresses to work, the company has discriminated against him based on his sex and, therefore, violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Not only are “trans”-cultists eradicating all public accommodation of real sex differences, but they’re also eradicating every cultural convention that recognizes, honors, and reinforces sex differences. They’re saying that not only are they permitted to reject cultural conventions regarding hairstyles, jewelry, clothing, and makeup, but everyone else must. Further, even biological reality as a signifier of biological sex must be rejected by everyone. So, as the very liberal author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling, has learned, no one may say that only women menstruate.

The tyrannical Supremacist Court of the United States has declared from on its high horse that no employer with over 15 employees may fire an employee who decides to cross-dress at work. For those who remain blissfully unaware, there are efforts afoot to make such a view apply to companies with fewer than 15 employees too.

What if the owner of an independent toy store with three locations in neighboring towns employs 15 people and one of those employees announces he will henceforth “identify” as a woman. Now he cannot be fired—not even if the store where the cross-dressing man works will be destroyed because parents will no longer bring their toddlers and young children to an establishment that will require them to explain perversion to children who are too young to understand it and may be disturbed by it.

Many obstetrician-gynecologists staff their offices with only women—including only women nurses. Now imagine that one of those nurses announces she will be socially, chemically, and surgically “transitioning” and hopes to look like this biological woman one day (yes, this is a woman):

Is it just for doctors to be prohibited from firing her?

In their dissent, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito issued a stinging rebuke of the hubris of the majority opinion:

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination on any of five specified grounds: “race, color, religion, sex, [and] national origin.” … Neither “sexual orientation” nor “gender identity” appears on that list. For the past 45 years, bills have been introduced in Congress to add “sexual orientation” to the list, and in recent years, bills have included “gender identity” as well. But to date, none has passed both Houses. Last year, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would amend Title VII by defining sex discrimination to include both “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” … This bill remains before a House Subcommittee.

Because no such amendment of Title VII has been enacted in accordance with the requirements in the Constitution … Title VII’s prohibition of discrimination because of “sex” still means what it has always  meant. But the Court is not deterred by these constitutional niceties. Usurping the constitutional authority of the other branches, the Court has essentially taken H. R. 5’s provision on employment discrimination and issued it under the guise of statutory interpretation. A more brazen abuse of our authority to interpret statutes is hard to recall.

The Court tries to convince readers that it is merely enforcing the terms of the statute, but that is preposterous. Even as understood today, the concept of discrimination because of “sex” is different from discrimination because of “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.” And in any event, our duty is to interpret statutory terms to “mean what they conveyed to reasonable people at the time they were written.”

Alito and Thomas preview the deleterious effects this decision will have on American life and liberty:

As the briefing in these cases has warned, the position that the Court now adopts will threaten freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and personal privacy and safety. No one should think that the Court’s decision represents an unalloyed victory for individual liberty.

While churches and other religious organizations, including religious schools, will probably be allowed what is called a “ministerial exception”—at least for a time—for those involved in teaching the tenets of their faith, it is unlikely that exemption will apply to those employed in other positions. For example, a private Christian school will be prohibited from firing any math, science, Spanish, or P.E. teacher, secretary, custodian, cafeteria worker, playground supervisor, or crossing guard who decides to identify as the opposite sex, cross-dress, take cross-sex hormones, and surgically disguise his or her sex.

For those churches, Christian schools, and parachurch organizations that reassure themselves that such events are unlikely, just remember what’s happened to Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker who has been relentlessly sued by “LGBT” persons. Sexual subversives are going to specifically target Christian institutions.

Alito and Thomas warn that this pernicious SCOTUS decision will likely be used force the sexual integration of bathrooms, locker rooms, and women’s shelters; to force people to use “gender” obliterators’ “preferred pronouns”; to force employers to cover “costly sex reassignment surgery”; and to force colleges to assign dorm rooms based on the sex students wish they were rather than the sex they are.

This pernicious decision will be used too as a precedent when challenges to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 appear before the U.S. Supreme Court. How could the Court now conclude any way other than that the word “sex” in Title IX includes “gender identity.” When the axis of evil decides that, women’s sports are destroyed, and eventually all women’s records from high school, college, the Olympics, and professional sports will be broken by men.

Good job feminist supporters of the “trans” cult.

In Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s separate dissent, he emphasizes the violation of the separation of powers that the decision represents:

Under the Constitution’s separation of powers, the responsibility to amend Title VII belongs to Congress and the President in the legislative process, not to this Court. … [W]e are judges, not Members of Congress. And in Alexander Hamilton’s words, federal judges exercise “neither Force nor Will, but merely judgment.”… If judges could rewrite laws based on their own policy views, or based on their own assessments of likely future legislative action, the critical distinction between legislative authority and judicial authority that undergirds the Constitution’s separation of powers would collapse, thereby threatening the impartial rule of law and individual liberty. …

Both common parlance and common legal usage treat sex discrimination and sexual orientation discrimination as two distinct categories of discrimination—back in 1964 and still today. As to common parlance, few in 1964 (or today) would describe a firing because of sexual orientation as a firing because of sex. As commonly understood, sexual orientation discrimination is distinct from, and not a form of, sex discrimination. The majority opinion acknowledges the common understanding, noting that the plaintiffs here probably did not tell their friends that they were fired because of their sex. That observation is clearly correct. In common parlance, Bostock and Zarda were fired because they were gay, not because they were men. …

Who likes this SCOTUS decision? The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), that’s who. GLSEN’s raison d’être, is to use schools to normalize sexual deviance, which, of course, means eradicating theologically orthodox views on sexuality. GLSEN tweeted,

[T]oday’s landmark SCOTUS ruling will help to protect the many LGBTQ educators in K-12 schools who have faced harassment or job loss for simply being who they are. It also underscores the need for Congress to pass the Equality Act.

“Who they are” is a convenient bit of Newspeak to conceal what “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” really are. According to cultural regressives, “sexual orientation” is constituted by subjective, internal romantic and erotic feelings and volitional erotic acts. “Gender identity” is constituted by subjective, internal feelings about one’s maleness and/or femaleness or lack thereof. Now that SCOTUS includes conditions constituted—not by any objective criteria—but by subjective sexual feelings, all that remains is for sexual anarchists allied with other anarchists to expand the definition of “sexual orientation” and the job of sexual wokesters will be done. #CultureDestroyed.

So, in the service of “inclusivity,” they will work like the Devil and for the Devil to include polyamory, Genetic Sexual Attraction (i.e., consensual, adult incest), Minor Attraction (i.e., pedophilia, hebephilia, and ephebophilia), infantilism, zoophilia (i.e., bestiality), and every other sexual philia in the list of sexual orientations.

Then once that is accomplished, laws will protect celebrants of sexual disorder from being fired and schools will teacher kindergartners that love is love. Poly “love” will be called good. “Love” between two adult brothers will be deemed equivalent to interracial love. And teaching that “love” between humans and animals is wrong will be condemned as ignorant bigotry based on the hateful ideology of speciesism.

By the way, those naively depending on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to protect their religious liberty can forget about it. The Equality Act, which eventually will pass, explicitly guts RFRA.

This SCOTUS decision is not a victory for the country or for freedom. It’s another tragic defeat for the constitutional separation of powers, self-government, morality, truth, speech rights, and religious liberty. Conservative Christians, you’ve been warned—again.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Shocking-SCOTUS-Decision-Shockingly-Written-by-Gorsuch.mp3

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Written by Walter E. Williams

Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seeking to represent New York’s 14th Congressional District, has called for the abolition of the Electoral College. Her argument came on the heels of the Senate’s confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. She was lamenting the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, nominated by George W. Bush, and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, nominated by Donald Trump, were court appointments made by presidents who lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College vote.

Hillary Clinton has long been a critic of the Electoral College. Just recently, she wrote in The Atlantic, “You won’t be surprised to hear that I passionately believe it’s time to abolish the Electoral College.”

Subjecting presidential elections to the popular vote sounds eminently fair to Americans who have been miseducated by public schools and universities. Worse yet, the call to eliminate the Electoral College reflects an underlying contempt for our Constitution and its protections for personal liberty. Regarding miseducation, the founder of the Russian Communist Party, Vladimir Lenin, said, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” His immediate successor, Josef Stalin, added, “Education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”

A large part of Americans’ miseducation is the often heard claim that we are a democracy. The word “democracy” appears nowhere in the two most fundamental documents of our nation — the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. In fact, our Constitution — in Article 4, Section 4 — guarantees “to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” The Founding Fathers had utter contempt for democracy. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, said that in a pure democracy, “there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual.”

At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Virginia Gov. Edmund Randolph said that “in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.” John Adams wrote: “Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.” At the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton said: “We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty” is found not in “the extremes of democracy but in moderate governments. … If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy.”

For those too dense to understand these arguments, ask yourselves: Does the Pledge of Allegiance say “to the democracy for which it stands” or “to the republic for which it stands”? Did Julia Ward Howe make a mistake in titling her Civil War song “Battle Hymn of the Republic”? Should she have titled it “Battle Hymn of the Democracy”?

The Founders saw our nation as being composed of sovereign states that voluntarily sought to join a union under the condition that each state admitted would be coequal with every other state. The Electoral College method of choosing the president and vice president guarantees that each state, whether large or small in area or population, has some voice in selecting the nation’s leaders. Were we to choose the president and vice president under a popular vote, the outcome of presidential races would always be decided by a few highly populated states. They would be states such as California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania, which contain 134.3 million people, or 41 percent of our population. Presidential candidates could safely ignore the interests of the citizens of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Delaware. Why? They have only 5.58 million Americans, or 1.7 percent of the U.S. population. We would no longer be a government “of the people”; instead, our government would be put in power by and accountable to the leaders and citizens of a few highly populated states.

Political satirist H.L. Mencken said, “The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.”

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

This article was originally published at  the Creators Syndicate webpage.