The Supreme Court recently declared abortion on demand unconstitutional. What does that mean? Now what? Join us with Bradley Pierce, a Texas attorney, and long-time friend, to consider how Christians should think about laws limiting abortion? Also, his organization, Foundation to Abolish Abortion, is holding a conference for church leaders in Houston on August 19 https://faa.life/church-leaders-conference

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture, and we're here to talk about life. We're here to talk about the protection of life and particularly going forward in the abortion resistance movement which we've been involved with well for me since 1973 I was a self-conscious adult in 1973, and remember these things and how we in our churches were dealing with this matter from a long, long time ago. And so it's really a joy here, Jason, to have Bradley Pierce with us. Bradley.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Good to be with you. Yeah, Bradley is a Texas attorney, longtime friend, goes to a sister church, appreciated friend.

I knew Bradley before he had his 10 children. And recently twins. Yes, that's right. We're going exponential here, aren't we? So Bradley has been speaking and writing and voting regarding this whole abortion problem for many, many years.

And of course, the Supreme Court recently changed their position about abortion. We're really grateful for that. It's really interesting. The news is full of this issue, even just today, today on on one of the major news outlets. I counted six articles in a row on this online news source, a dredge report, words like extremists, heartbeat, health of women, privacy, criminalizing an Idaho law, criminalizing abortion pills.

Anyway, all the lots of the different angles of this are being pushed in the media. You know, all of them really to say how tragic it is that the Supreme Court did what they did. And there are just remarkable things going on in the culture. From the New York Times, an article about a comedian who's going around the country helping women laugh over their abortions. Please laugh about my abortion with me is sort of the promo line for her comedy show.

You know, women seemingly, you know, there's an escalation of sterilization. Women are rushing to sterilization. Well, whether It's true that there really is a ramp up, I don't know, but if you look at the liberal press at Huffington Post and Salon, they're saying that women are rushing to sterilization because they're so afraid. So they're just really remarkable things that are happening. When the decision went down, my heart actually got heavier over the whole matter.

Personhood wasn't protected. The Fourteenth Amendment protections of innocent life weren't honored. The Supreme Court kicked the can to the states. And the moral climate of America is so concerning. Man will do everything what's right in his own eyes.

So those were my big concerns. I was really grateful for the Supreme Court, but it was also a very, very sobering moment. So Bradley, what's your view from the bridge? Yeah, well, we're certainly, you know, grateful that Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade.

I had had the honor of writing a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court and submitting it on behalf of 21 organizations and 20 state legislators as well. And filing that with the court, we were one of 81 briefs on the anti-abortion side. And so to see, you know, our number one argument in our brief was arguing, you know, asking, urging the court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

And so we're grateful to God that they did that. You know, we were urging them to do their duty under the constitution and their duty before God and to help restore legitimacy to the court. And, so we're grateful that they did that. But we were also arguing for them to go further, because under the 14th amendment says no state shall deny to any person within his jurisdiction, the equal protection of the laws, we believe that, you know, a baby is a person from the moment of fertilization, that from the moment of conception, a child is made in the image of God and is worthy of equal protection, it's equally valuable as any of the rest of us. And we were asking the court to find that a fetus is a person under the Constitution.

The court did not do that, even though, again, the Constitution seems very, very clear on that. Instead, the court said, you know, basically, I kind of put it like, they're kind of like pilots in a lot of ways, they kind of wash their hands of this. When they had the authority to stop the murder of innocent children, like Pilate had the authority to stop the murder of an innocent man, Jesus Christ, nevertheless they washed their hands of it and said, essentially, let it be on you, and let it be on you, states, and let it be on the, not just the states, but as the court put it, the people's representatives, which could also include Congress. And so that's where things are now. So we're grateful that the overturned row, they should have done it a long time ago.

The state should have never gone along with it, which is something else. You know, that I really mourn that no state ever actually stood up to Roe versus Wade and said, hey, it's unconstitutional. It's evil. It's not the law of the land. So we don't have to follow it.

No state ever, you know, was willing to do that. So I'm sad, but I'm glad that the court did their duty, at least up to that point. There are definitely things to be thankful for, like Bradley just said. At the same time, I think we should all be resisting any temptation to breathe a sigh of relief as if the work is done at all. Especially in our state, Scott, we're being considered an abortion haven, meaning that we have three adjacent states, and two of them actually have gotten much more restrictive about their policy on abortion.

And so there will be people flowing from Tennessee to North Carolina, from South Carolina to North Carolina. Our abortion clinics here in our state will actually be more full, more busy because people will be coming from other states. Yeah, it created a new industry, abortion tourism. How tragic is that? The abortion clinics here locally, the people that we know that are going and from our church are saying they're busier than ever because people are coming from other states to do that.

Bradley, what's, could you sort of give us your perspective on the kinds of things that are happening in the States? Yeah. So there's a number of states, you know, kind of there's some there's some states that had, you know, either pre row laws that were still on the books. Even some states that are surprised even you stay like Michigan actually had a pre road law that was still on the books that had never been repealed that makes abortion illegal there. Texas had a bill like that.

And then a number of states had, they've passed basically trigger bills that would trigger and make abortion illegal when Roe was overturned. Some of those are still waiting, you know, for so many days after the court overturned it before the trigger is actually pulled to make abortion illegal in those states. So there's some of that, but even in those states, what many people are not aware of is that abortion, even in those states, will not be illegal for everyone, or and to protect every child and really not any children. Because mothers, there's not a single state that outlaws a mother from performing her own abortion. You know, and many people conjure up images of coat hangers and things like that.

But today, because of medication that's been approved by the FDA, there's do it, do it yourself at home abortions that are available from others that even after Texas passed the heartbeat bill exploded in popularity. They can be gotten not just illicitly from across, you know, from, from Mexico or things like that, but they can be gotten even with the approval of the federal government. So the federal government started a website here recently reproductive rights.gov, where after the DOPS decision overturn row, where they're even encouraging women to, to do these at home medication abortions, where they do a telehealth visit with a doctor from a state that allows abortion or a doctor from another country, and then they get the abortion medication shipped or mailed in to them. And the Biden administration says that they're going to allow that through our mail. And so mothers are doing these at home.

They can be done under the label up till 12 weeks gestation and it can't even be done after that. It's just off label at that point. And so children are still in every single state, there's still that kind of abortion that's still allowed, that's still outlawed, I'm sorry, that's still not outlawed and can be done even up until birth as long as it's a do-it-yourself abortion, you know, medication abortion. And so that's why we need, that's why we really need equal protection of the laws. We need, you know, we already have homicide laws in every state protecting my life and your life and every born life and What all we need to do we don't need create new laws We just need to take those same laws that already protect our lives and make abortion illegal for everyone protect all of our lives equally Now my impression, maybe you can clear this up, is that in the states where it's been reported that abortion is now illegal, the way I read most of the, maybe all of them, is that abortion is illegal only after six weeks or 16 or 18 weeks is that correct or are there any states where abortion is illegal There are states where abortion at an abortion clinic is illegal.

Just at the clinic. Right. From conception. There are some of those. And then there are others where, like you said, that are six or 12 or 15 weeks like that.

How should, in your view, Christians be thinking about laws limiting abortion? You know, I think what we should be looking at is, you know, what does Scripture say? It's, you know, God says that he hates partiality and judgment. He said we should do justice to the fatherless. I think in our country from a legal perspective, pre-born children are the most fatherless among us.

Their fathers have no legal right to stop their mothers from killing them, And they are the fatherless in our land. And so we need to do justice for the fatherless, like God tells us. We need to not show partiality in judgment. God says, not only don't show partiality, says He even hates unequal weights and measures. They're an abomination to him.

He hates that. And so when we judge one person's life and we say that it's valuable of this kind of protection, but this person's life, because they're not yet born, is not valuable, not deserving of that same kind of protection, then we're showing partiality. You know, when God says, when Christ said, what's the second greatest commandment? James calls it royal law. Love your neighbor.

How? As yourself. What are the laws that protect your life? Those should be the same laws if you truly love your preborn neighbor There should be the same laws that we want to be protecting our preborn neighbor The golden rule do it to others as we would have done under us Well again, what laws protect our lives? Homicide laws, where no one has a license to kill us once we're born, not our mothers, not anybody else.

But that's not the case for preborn children, because we've created these exceptions that do allow mothers and in many, many states still today, or even after Dobbs, right, allow even abortion doctors to continue to kill children. And so I believe the consistent Christian position is that from the moment of conception, every single child is made in the image of God and is worthy of equal protection by the same law, the same homicide laws that protect all the rest of us. So I think that's how we should be thinking as a church. You know, I remember the game really began to change when Bernard Nathanson came out with his film The Silent Scream, and we were showing it in our churches and things like that in Southern California. But when women began to see what was really going on, at least in my view, watching this movement along the trend line, that was really a turning point.

And that's why when pregnancy life centers began to get ultrasound machines, almost every woman who would look at an ultrasound machine would not get an abortion because she understood what that really was. Because the left used to say, well, it's not a baby, it's a fetus. That's really changed. Now, now they're saying, yeah, it's a baby, I can kill it. It's real, I mean, the moral climate has shifted so dramatically.

That's what worries me so much about pushing this to the states, because the moral climate has shifted so dramatically in the wrong direction. What is gonna happen now? Well, that's what in California, you can abort a baby up to the time of birth. Pretty much any time, right? Almost any time.

It's absolutely astonishing. So, it's very interesting, the development of the ultrasound was by a Christian who tried over and over and over again, really for the glory of God to try to get this technology, and he finally got it. But he was doing it for the glory of God. And look what's happened as a result. Yeah, and that's driving an astonishing amount of truth from the opposition.

In other words, they have dropped the pretense and are just saying it, it's fine to kill babies before they exit the womb. Yeah. You know, I've lived this logical contradiction over the years. While on the one hand, I've always believed it was a murder from time of conception. Never not believed that, even in the early days.

Of course, Francis Schaeffer helped everybody understand that like no one else, you know, creating, you know, whatever happened to the human race, his film, How Should We Then Live, where he really forecasted what's happening today. He forecasted infanticide. He forecasted all these things. But, so on the one hand, I've always believed that. At the same time, I found myself at least somewhat encouraged that we were passing laws that limited abortion.

I was glad that it was being limited, but at the same time there's a tremendous contradiction. If it's murder, it's murder. We're passing laws allowing murder at a certain point. And so this is causing division in the pro-life movement, and even in churches, and you have, you know, those who would appreciate an incremental solution and then those that would declare it to be evil. And there's this divide that's taking place because of this logical syllogism.

So what are your thoughts about that? You know, I usually talk about Francis Schaefer and it makes me think of the phrase where he talks about, you know, our one of our modern religions is personal peace and affluence And it's it's infected the church A lot of us are you have been very comfortable with abortion although we've maybe you know, we've a many of us have opposed it. We didn't haven't liked it. But we haven't actually liked it. We haven't actually acted like there are 2300 plus children.

Just that's just what's being reported, you know, being murdered every single day in our country. And we haven't been willing to disturb our own personal peace in order to deal with that. You know, there's before Roe vs. Wade, or before Dobbs came out, or returning Roe vs. Wade, You know, as an abolitionist, we were supporting states ignoring Roe vs.

Wade, and not ignoring the court, it's a constitutional institution ordained by God and has legitimate authority. But Roe vs. Wade itself was not legitimate. It wasn't constitutional. It wasn't the law of the land as under the Constitution's own terms.

So we believe that it was the duty of states to disregard it. It wasn't authority and to obey God rather than men. Whenever men tell you to do something that violates God's law, you have to go with what God says. Otherwise, you're treating the Supreme Court like they're God. And you know, some of the responses that we would get to that would be well, if we do that, I mean, that could start that could be very disruptive, that could even start a war.

And of course, that's not none of our desire to start a war. But what always hit me when people would say that was there's a war going on right now. And there are casualty, thousands of casualties every single day. It's not affecting us our personal peace. But there is that we say peace, peace, but there is no peace for the children in the womb.

You know, some estimated that a third since Roe vs. Wade have been destroyed in the womb. And you know, there hasn't been peace for them. And I saw the other day a clip of someone testifying before Congress about abortion. And they were saying it was the greatest thing they've ever done.

It was an act of self-love. It was an act of self-love. Certainly was. And it reminded me of the passage that says, in the latter days, men will be lovers of self. And this is really what it comes down to.

Like you said, A lot of the pretense has been thrown out. Yes, we know it's a baby, but the mom's opinion, her position, her convenience, that trumps the baby's right to life. And that's become the position of the pro-abortion movement. And, you know, if you don't have a Christian ethic, if you don't have a biblical ethic, you know, if you don't have a foundation, then everyone does what's right in their own eyes. And that's what this has led to.

And that's really what the, you know, even the Dobbs decision, you know, essentially says, you know, you know, every state does what's right in their own eyes. It just, it just leaves it to the states. And in some ways, you know, when we compare this perhaps to the abolition of slavery, you know, the, the, the battle has just begun. We've really just maybe with them overturning road, we've really reached the end of the beginning perhaps. Because when you think about ending slavery, right?

We had every state did what's right in its own eyes at that point, right? There was no federal government telling states you have to allow slavery. States just did whatever they wanted to. And that's where we are today. So the movement to abolish abortion is still very, very early.

You think about William Wilberforce, Amazing Grace, movie book many people have read and seen. We're at the very beginning of that. We still have abortion that's allowed. At that time slavery wasn't allowed in England, but it was in the colonies. And today we have abortion may not be allowed for some in some states, but it's allowed in many other states.

And really, we're really in a worse position because at that time there really were states that outlawed slavery completely. Whereas today there's not a single state that has completely outlawed abortion Like I said mothers can still have do-it-yourself abortion. So we're still a very very long way And if anything, I know this may be a time when people are tempted to rest on their laurels and celebrate and go to sleep, but instead this is not, this is the time to wake up. And you know, rose out of the way, we praise God for that, a barrier has been removed. We are so grateful for that aspect of it.

But that just means there's even more work to do than there ever has been before. And we have even more freedom to do that work. So if anything, the church needs to be more active now than it ever has been. Bradley, it seems like there's already a need for the abolitionist side of the pro-life movement to be coalescing around a core group of principles and maybe even core language of legislation rather than having disparate legislation and principles that are guiding state by state. Who are the voices out there who could kind of lead us in that effort?

You know there's a lot of people that are speaking up on this. We with the organization I work with, the Foundation to Abolish Abortion. We've been helping draft legislation for states. We've helped. There's been 13 states that have filed bills to abolish abortion by providing equal protection.

And so we've been trying to serve that. There's lots of other organizations that are doing that as well, that we've been helping with. And we're actually, really the church needs to be, becoming more familiar with what needs to take place here. I think for a long time people just thought, well, that's the Supreme Court, so there's nothing we can do anyway, so we don't really need to have an opinion. Well, now that's out of the way, and I think churches and pastors need to be speaking up not just about abortion, but about how we should be responding from a civil government perspective.

Yeah, that's my position personally, meaning not a position as in my thoughts, actually where I'm standing. We felt like the legislative thing was sort of in other hands and where we needed to be was just out on the curb of the clinic appealing to women as they go in, but now as a pastor of a local church it's striking me that this really changes what we need to be doing as a church and to also engage at the state legislative, because now it's not going to be overturned by a Supreme Court based on Roe v. Wade. Amen. So, Radley, you're having a conference up here coming up in August.

I hope a lot of people can go to this conference or live stream it or whatever you're going to do. Could you tell us about your conference? Yes. So we're hosting a, the Foundation to Abolish Abortionists hosting a church leaders conference in Houston where we're inviting, you know, pastors, deacons, church leaders to come and to just learn about what the church can and should be doing. We believe, you know, judgment begins at the house of God, but that's where blessing begins.

That's where revival begins. That's where reformation begins as well. And that's what we're praying for and hoping for in this country. And so we're having a conference about that on the subject of abortion, about what churches can be doing and what pastors can be doing to help lead their churches, pastors, and elders. And we have Virgil Walker with G3 is going to be one of our speakers and Bill Askell with Founders Ministries is going to be one of our speakers as well on several other brothers that are pastors that we're going to be having there.

So we'd love for church leaders from across the country to come to Houston on August the Friday. We're trying to make it where pastors can get back on Saturday to their church families. So it's on a Friday, August 19th in Houston, Texas. And we're gonna be talking about everything, it kind of reflecting on 49 years of what the church has and has not done on this issue. And then talking about what we need to be doing moving forward, how pastors can be preaching on abortion, not just from a political perspective or government perspective, but also from a personal perspective and counseling, you know, post-abortive mothers and parents.

And, I'm very, very excited about it. And, I mean, ultimately, again, re judge the answer to judgment is repentance and Repentance and preaching repentance. That's that's the heart of the gospel That's the very first part of the gospel and that's the mission of the church. And you know, I don't think it's trite to say that, you know, what God says that if if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, turn from their wicked ways, seek my face, then I will heal from heaven, hear from heaven and heal their land." And I believe that. I think that's a promise.

And we're going to lay hold of that. And I believe that we're calling the people of God to do that and for pastors to shepherd their flocks to do that. Amen. Well, I hope a lot of people can go. Where do people go to find the information?

They can go to our website for the Foundation to Abolish Abortion. It's just FAA.life, FAA.life, and then in the menu there, just click Church Leaders Conference. Great. Bradley, thank you so much. I can't wait to hear the reports from your conference.

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I Appreciate it. And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast to talk about going forward in the abortion resistance movement. It's one of the most important things that Christians can be involved in.

Francis Schaefer blamed the church for silence, for what had happened with the abortion movement and the church has its finest hour in the abortion resistance movement now. So I pray that God would really bless all these efforts, particularly the things that Bradley's doing. And so thank you so much for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. And we hope to see you next Monday when we launch the next one. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast.

We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us. Go to churchandfamilylife.com. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.