The Coming Political Earthquake – Part 1/Program 3

By: Dr. Frank Wright, Janet Parshall, Craig Parshall; ©2008

When it comes to issues like abortion, candidates often hold views that do not match yours. How can the Bible help you decide how you should vote in that situation?

Introduction

Announcer: Today on the John Ankerberg Show, The Coming Political Earthquake: How the November elections could impact America in very drastic ways.

My guests will explain: Why the coming elections are not just about the next four years, but about the Supreme Court Judges who could affect our laws for the next 30 years.

Mr. Craig Parshall: Those Supreme Court Justices will not only govern during that administration, but if history tells us anything on that, it will be a law in effect for at least two to three decades. So American citizens will reap the benefits or the unfortunate bad law of a Supreme Court Justice for the next 30-40 years.

Announcer: Then, how the definition of traditional marriage and family is at stake.

Mrs. Janet Parshall: I think a lot of people out there never thought in a million years we would have to stand in the marketplace of ideas and give a defense for what constitutes a marriage as one man and one woman. It was one of those universal truths. It’s been there since time immemorial. Cultures that have lasted have been built on that cornerstone institution. Cultures that have fallen began to dabble with that.

Announcer: How the November elections could decide whether America will uphold the right to life of unborn children in the womb.

Dr. Frank Wright: If you won’t defend the life of a baby in the womb what will you defend? What kind of people are we if we will not stand up for the weakest among us?

Announcer: How newly elected officials could drastically change our religious liberties.

Mr. Craig Parshall: The problem with hate crimes is that it has very little to do with preventing crime and a lot to do with labeling Christians with hate, saying we are hate-mongers when we simply preach what the Bible has to say.

Announcer: I will not tell you which political candidate to vote for or which political party to join. Rather, our purpose will be to inform you of crucial issues based on biblical values and explain why basing your choices on those biblical values is crucial.

My special guests today are: Dr. Frank Wright, President of the NRB, the national religious broadcasters, an association of more than 1,500 Christian television and radio broadcasters, representing millions of viewers, and listeners.

Second Janet Parshall, host of a daily three-hour nationally syndicated radio program originating from Washington, DC, entitled Janet Parshall’s America. In February, 2005, she was selected by President Bush to represent the White House in the capacity of public delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. As a radio and television commentator, she has appeared on almost every political network television program.

And third, Craig Parshall is the Senior Vice President and General Counsel for the National Religious Broadcasters. Prior to coming to NRB, he represented clients before the US Supreme Court, the Federal District Courts and Courts of Appeal in Washington, DC, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Denver, Dallas and Richmond, and has argued before the state Supreme Courts of Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Maryland.

Join us today for this special broadcast of the John Ankerberg Show to hear how the November elections could impact Christians in very drastic ways.

---

Ankerberg: Welcome to our program, we have got a great one for you today and we are going to talk about what is the first thing that Barack Obama says he is going to do if elected President. What are the first things that John McCain says that he is going to do if he is elected President? Why are we talking about this? We’re not saying vote for one candidate or the other, we’re saying look at the issues, and Christians, if you’re reading your Bible you take your values that you find from the Bible and you’re applying them to the issues today and your vote does count. Now, Janet, there is a statistic that I just saw on the web site again on terms of the statistics on abortion since 1973, and the figure is staggering: it is 48,589,993 unborn innocent children in the womb have been taken.

J. Parshall: That’s right.

Ankerberg: Now, this impacts our society in a vast way, and this issue of abortion and the sanctity of human life is on center stage. And there’s actually a struggle going on in both parties as to how they are going to define their platform. And political candidates, Republican, Democratic, Independent, they’re all struggling with how to say this, and to fudge the lines or to walk the chalk line. And we as Christians we’re saying look, we’ve got a position on this and it’s important for a tremendous amount of reasons that should be appealing to secular people as well. We can come together on this. So start me off on this thing in terms of the right to life for unborn children in the womb. We’ve taken almost 50 million since we started this, and what’s the fight all about right now?

J. Parshall: Well, it’s the same fight since 1973, and that is, it really boils down to two mutually exclusive worldviews on this. The Democratic platform talks about having a woman’s so called right to choose and they veil it with the so called right to privacy. The Republican Party, even though they’ll have some infighting and did have some fighting at the convention, really and truly believe, ultimately, in the sanctity of human life, the personhood of the pre-born. And therein lies the distinction between the two parties. But if you wanted to argue it biblically it’s very easy to do. There is no ambiguity in God’s position on this, we are fearfully and wonderfully made, knit together in our mother’s womb, before we drew our first breath outside of our mother all of our days had been foreordained for us. So there is no gray in God’s word on this particular subject.

But if you go and you drop it in the context of the culture, the way in which this was sold as a bill of goods, quite honestly to the public was, well, a woman is in a crisis situation and she has ultimate authority over her own body. She can do anything she wants to. The flip side of that argument was, wait a minute there are two distinct and unique persons here, you can be a mother and you can be carrying a son, you might have brown eyes, your son has blue eyes. You might have A-positive blood, your baby might have O-positive blood. From the get go every physician in America understands, you are dealing with two separate and unique individuals here.

When we talk about the cultural ramifications, you can take a look at Social Security. How many people are pulling out now versus paying in? When this Social Security trust fund first started we had more people who were paying into it than were pulling out. You take away 50 million potential payees to the so called Social Security Trust Fund and guess what, you have a solvency problem. You’re not going to be able to give out the kinds of benefits that people think that they have been paying into, because you simply don’t have the population base to pay into the Social Security Trust Fund that you planned on all along.

One quick point, you took a look at China, everybody was watching China during the Olympics, their forced one child only policy, a policy paradoxically that’s in place until 2010 and then they are going to review the policy. Why? Well, with the advent of the earthquake, how many babies were lost? All of a sudden now we are seeing a disparaging difference between the numbers of baby boys, favored in the Asian culture, over baby girls. We see an up rise and uptick in kidnapping baby girls by wealthy families so that a son can have a child bride and make sure that his future is secured. And now all of a sudden they are saying, we have thrown the entire demographic out of balance here, maybe we have to go back and review. If the communist Chinese now are beginning to realize how they’ve thrown the demographic off, when will we have that same wake up call here?

Ankerberg: Yeah, let’s slow it down for the secular person. The fact is, let’s start with the fact of science. Medical science says life begins at conception. You got your favorite author on that one? I mean, I’ve got people that testified in Congress on this. I will give you one of them, okay? Dr. Micheline M. Matthew-Roth of Harvard University testified before Congress that life begins at conception. She said, “In biology and in medicine it is an accepted fact that the life of an individual organism produced by sexual reproduction begins at conception or fertilization.”

World famous French geneticist Jerome Lejeune stated, “To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being, is no longer a matter of taste or opinion. The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence.” And there’s a lot of other folks that I’ve got here that we could also put on the board. But life begins at conception, that is, human life. Now, the thing is, are we going to protect that or not? If we don’t, what are the consequences for the rest of life?

J. Parshall: You know, that’s great point because people for a long period of time failed to see the interconnectedness between all these issues. The minute we decided that abortion on demand was legal for all nine months of pregnancy and that’s exactly where we are at right now, the next thing we saw was that we were going to start practicing infanticide. That’s what partial birth abortion really is; it is taking the life of a baby that’s been separated from the mother, it’s infanticide. Then we start dealing with embryonic stem cell research where we really say, well, you’re just a blob of tissues, the same argument we used in 1973. We begin to destroy that matter. That one’s easy, by the way, John, to unpack: anybody watching this broadcast today who didn’t start out as an embryo please raise their hand. There’s the ethical dilemma in a nutshell. Then we begin to see going after passive and active euthanasia. So you start with the first of situational ethics, and that’s really what this is, and you see a domino effect where all of these other sanctity of human life issues are utterly impacted by one decision handed down in 1973.

Ankerberg: Alright, what is the first thing that Barack Obama says he will do when he’s elected President? I was surprised at this. He said in a speech to Planned Parenthood that the first thing he would do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. What is the Freedom of Choice Act?

J. Parshall: The Freedom of Choice Act is one of the most pernicious ideas that has come along probably since 1973. With once swipe of a pen this legislation would overturn every single pro-life law in the country at both the state and the federal level, including the hard fought victory to ban partial birth abortion. It is so broad, it is so overwhelming, it is so sweeping, one can hardly imagine its consequences. And yet the proclamation from this candidate is, this is the first thing I would do? And yet all along, how long have we been told that abortion is a wedge issue. If it’s such a wedge issue why would this be your first order of business the day that you take the office of President of the United States?

Ankerberg: What is the position of John McCain? People have worried about his position, and are debating his position, but what is his position in terms of how you see it?

C. Parshall: Well, John, if you look at his straight voting record, and that’s one of the advantages of a person who has been in the Senate for as long as John McCain has, is you can’t deny his voting record. He has one of the highest ratings you can possibly get from groups like National Right to Life. So he is, at least according to them, thoroughly pro-life. But I want to go back to something that Janet said, because she mentioned this malicious and pernicious grotesque procedure called partial birth abortion. There’s a lot of talk in this election about change. Well, I want to talk about one change that some of the commentators might not talk about. We’ve had two decisions from the Supreme Court of the United States on partial birth abortion. In both cases the laws were similar in prohibiting partial birth abortion. In the first decision the Supreme Court by a very narrow margin struck down the law prohibiting partial birth abortion. By the way, Janet is absolutely right, if you look at the book of Exodus, God’s position on partial birth abortion is very clear when….

Ankerberg: Exodus 21:22-25.

C. Parshall: Right, but when Pharaoh told the midwives to take the pre-born boys on the birthing stool, that is partial birth abortion, to kill them. It’s equivalent of what we have today. The Supreme Court by a very narrow margin struck down the laws prohibiting that. Then suddenly a few years later, recently the Supreme Court took up another review, a very similar law. This time they upheld the ban on partial birth abortion. What’s the difference? What was the change that took place? The change was Samuel Alito coming in and Sandra Day O’Conner going out. One Supreme Court Justice made the difference. What’s the difference in terms of the election? The President has the power to nominate the Supreme Court Justices of the future.

Ankerberg: Now, there’s a fight going on inside the Democratic Platform Committee and you have actually got two folks who are Christians who are advocating that it needs to be changed, but you have got some real strong opposition. Kate Michelman, former President of NARAL, a pro-choice American; Frances Kissling, a longtime advocate of abortion rights wrote a column for Salon.com arguing for their position, “It is no more moral to have a baby then to abort a baby.” Alright? And I found it interesting that in a Gallup poll, when 90% of the American people did not know the answer to this question, “When did Roe vs. Wade give us permission to actually abort a child?” Is it the end of the first trimester, is it six months, seven months, eight months, ten months, 18 months? Where did it come? They did not know that answer to that. What is the answer to that, by the way?

J. Parshall: Nine months.

Ankerberg: Nine months.

J. Parshall: And, you know, what was amazing about the debate on partial birth abortion, and all three of us were there when it happened, is that C-SPAN’s cameras were situated on the floor of the Senate and some graphics were put up to explain exactly what this horrific form of infanticide was all about. And the feminists tried desperately to go in and try to get the C-SPAN cameras shut off, because they didn’t want the American public to know what this procedure was. And that’s because, John, it tapped into this sort of patent ignorance that said, “Well, we don’t really do that in this country. I mean, when it is just a blob of tissue in those first three months, that is really the only time we do this, right?”

And when they began to understand that viability was absolutely substantiated, that these were living human beings, who were, by the way, feeling pain. One of the most powerful hearings we ever heard on the Hill was to have neonatologists come up and tell us what it was like in an intrauterine experience with the baby. When the baby, still under momma’s heart, still inside of her uterus, how these babies recoil when they feel pain. And they were talking about the spike in their blood pressure, and how much they were feeling pain. So when the average American person began to understand the uniqueness and the personhood, to make a statement like Kissling did, to say that there is no moral difference between killing a child and allowing a child to live, that is ignorance par excellence.

Ankerberg: Yeah, in the early ‘80s I actually did a series, 12 series with people that did abortions. And you remember, Bernard Nathanson at that time was just coming out of, he had performed like 40,000 abortions or something, and then one day it just hit him, this is a human being. And he switched completely. Well, I did an interview with him in his home in New York. And the fact is, it was just fascinating to hear how he was thinking. And he gave me footage of actual abortions. I put them on the air, Frank, and nobody said boo about that. Eight years later, I couldn’t put that footage on the air. Now, we’re going to take a break, and when we come back we have got the best talker in talk radio right here. I am going to ask you to describe the different abortion techniques that take place in this country that are going on right now every day. Stick with us, we’ll be right back.

---

Ankerberg: We’re back. We’re talking with Frank Wright, President of NRB, we’re talking with Janet Parshall, who’s got her own radio program three hours a day, Janet Parshall’s America, and Craig Parshall, who is our attorney for the National Religious Broadcasters. And, Janet, I want to come to this thing. I’ve had folks actually that have worked with me, and I have loved them and one day some of these folks have come privately to me and have said, “I’ve had an abortion, and it was many years ago, and I can’t get over it.” This post abortion syndrome, the guilt that they feel and all of the questions. What would he be feeling? And if I go to heaven and he’s there, what am I going to say to him or her, okay? Say a word first about the folks that have had abortions and are living with this tremendous guilt.

J. Parshall: Well, John, I’m glad you brought that up, because it wasn’t just people that you’ve worked with. If you look at the church in America, capital C, universal church, one of four women on any Sunday morning sitting in the pews is post-abortive. And she has probably not told somebody 5, 10, 15, 20 years after the experience, because the father of lies has told her that somehow this is beyond the grace of Calvary. That somehow she cannot gain back His favor and His love because of what she did. And the reality of what she did is so profound in her life. You know, the father of lies, this whole industry, and that’s what it is, this is about money this is about filling coffers. You know, they will take $250 at most of these abortion mills, and they’ll allow you to put it on your credit card. They do 15-20 an hour on most Saturday mornings. It is just an assembly line doing abortion on demand. But for the woman who is listening today who had that experience, she needs to understand that it was the completed work of Calvary; that He loves her with an everlasting love, that He will separate sin as far as the east is from the west from His loving heart. And she needs to understand that she can go to Him for restoration and healing and hope.

And here’s what she knows, what she knows is something that a lot of people in America don’t know, and that is what these procedures are like. So that people’s eyes won’t glaze over, John, with a lot of medical terms, let me describe it in real just common street language. In the first trimester predominately it’s about vacuuming out the uterus, literally going in and suctioning out the uterus, pulling out exactly what the contents of the uterus are. I interviewed a pro-life nurse once who told me that she had no idea what it is like, and by law they’re required to make sure that they do some sort of pathological assessment after the procedure. And so they look to see that there is two arms, two legs, a head, a torso. And this nurse’s job to clean up the procedure room when it was done. And she decided to hold up a jar, and she looked and bobbing in a jar were the limbs of this baby. And she thought, “I thought this was a blob of tissues. I had no idea that this is what this is all about.”

You have these horrible chemical abortions, Methotrexate and RU-486, that just go in and suffocate the life out of the baby. We have seen in some of the expulsions, which is the word the medical community uses after the baby has left momma’s body, they have burns like they’ve had napalm on their body after it’s over.

And then, of course, the horrific procedure of partial birth abortion, where just by legal mandate their feet are turned in a breech position so they are delivered feet first. And as the body comes out, but the head is still inside the mother, a scissors is plunged into the base of the neck, the brain tissue is suctioned out, and then the head is crushed so that they deliver a dead baby. Now that baby was alive 30 seconds before that procedure was done. So I have to tell you, John, it’s absolutely barbaric and overwhelming.

And that’s why, by the way, the pro abortion crowd doesn’t like it when pro lifers hold up pictures. Or when they are standing in the well of the Senate and they want to put up the graphics to explain what this is about. As long as you promote the lie that it’s just a blob of tissue, then there’s no humanity subscribed to the pre-born. There is a parallel here between what we did when the years of slavery were rampant in this country and what’s going on now. That entire horrific sin known as slavery was built on the idea that people were chattel to be bought and sold and had not the mark of the Creator on them. This is the identical person, this is the identical debate.

And here is where I stand stymied, I really…and I have debated every major feminist in this country. What I can’t understand is, first of all, why do you not see the personhood in this debate? You would be the first people to say we marched for civil rights in this country, we understood how pernicious slavery was.” How can you not see the parallel in this particular debate as well? But then I realized something; with these feminists that I debated, I look, and I remember being on a stage once with five of the key women feminists in this country, and I went right down the aisle: she’s had an abortion, she’s had an abortion, she’s had an abortion. So much of that movement, John, was built on anger and rage on the outside, but on the inside it was looking for some kind of societal justification for a decision that they made that is irreversible. And they themselves, without coming to the healing power of the cross, can’t quite understand how they silence the pain that walks with them every day of their life.

Ankerberg: I know that both of you have something to say on this thing, and we are getting short on time, we are going to have to go into the next week. Frank, tell me a little bit about how the laws are being shaped right now that we might have to decide on up ahead.

Wright: John, I think the biggest issue is really an electoral one rather than a legislative one. It’s the politics of this. We are going to see in the coming days, your viewers are going to see in the coming days, candidates stand up and claim to be pro-life who support the destruction of innocent unborn lives. They are going to establish a criteria of what it means to be pro-life: you’re in favor of a healthy clean environment; you want to irradiate poverty; you want to do all of these good things that make the world a good place to live – and it makes you pro-life. And yet they are still in favor of the destruction of unborn babies. The risk in the days ahead is that people who aren’t paying attention are going to fall for that lie, because it is a lie. If you will not stand for the protection and the defense of those that are absolutely defenseless before those who are about to take their life; if you won’t defend the life of a baby in the womb, what will you defend? What kind of people are we if we will not stand up for the weakest among us? And some are going to say, I am pro-life, but they are not willing to stand for those who are weakest among us.

Ankerberg: The Declaration of Independence is our founding document, okay? And it has a lot to say on this issue and yet people say we can’t legislate our morality, especially in this issue.

C. Parshall: The founding fathers were extremely clear by saying that, number one, we get our rights not from government, not from man, but from God. The second thing they said that was very important in the Declaration of Independence when it comes to the sanctity of life issue, is they said they appeal to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe for the rectitude of our intentions, they said. In 21^st century language that would mean God will be the judge of our hearts, our decisions and our actions. When it comes to abortion and the 48 million plus innocent lives that have been shed in this nations, the voters of this nation, the church, the people of this country will have to be judged by God for the way we vote and the way we understand this issue, and the way we take democracy and say, “We will pull the levers of freedom in this country to make sure that the sanctity of life is protected.”

Ankerberg: I love you guys, I tell you, I love it because it’s true. We hold these truths to be self evident. And the people that take a stand against it don’t believe that these truths are self evident, okay: “that all men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator [by God] with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life,” okay? You can talk about all the other rights, but if you’re not alive you don’t have access to any of those. You don’t have to worry about that if you aren’t permitted to live. Now, our Founding Fathers put this into print and it’s…you know Newt Gingrich just gave a speech at the Washington Press Club where he said, America in this election, we’re walking away from our whole foundation and our traditions that establish this country, that made us a great nation. What else did he say in that speech, Janet?

J. Parshall: Well, he is doing a wonderful job of reminding America that if we turn our back on God we’re going to have destruction in this country, which is very interesting, because you don’t necessary think of him as an apologist, but he’s actually written a book about Rediscovering God in America, and in Washington, DC. And he will tell you that if you come to our town and walk around you will see inscribed in marble all of the acknowledgments of God the Creator, His provision, His sovereignty, His mercy, His grace on our country. If we turn to do what is right in our own eyes, and that’s certainly where we are at right now, what we are going to have is real destruction on our country.

Ankerberg: Alright, we have got so much more to go on this. I want to talk about the arguments of those who say you’re all wrong, okay? In light of that evidence, you’re still all wrong. We’re going to go the opposite direction. But wrap it up this week. Where are we at so far, what do you want the folks to walk away with, Janet?

J. Parshall: I want them to understand that abortion is not a wedge issue; it defines the soul of the nation. If we don’t get this issue right all other issues pale in comparison. And if the average person watching this program would have thought back in 1973 that we would be sitting here in the 21^st century talking about 50 million lives, an utterly incomprehensible number, what would we have done 10, 15, 20 years ago to stop this genocide in the United States of America? So what we have to do is say, look, it is not a wedge issue it is a defining issue. It’s the soul of a candidate, and ultimately it becomes the soul of a country. So what we have to do is ask ourselves, do we really recognize this for the sin sick issue that it is? Ultimately in the final analysis this is a spiritual war. Hath God said? It’s the same old lie of Genesis 3, but the absolute truth of God is still the absolute truth of God. Fearfully, wonderfully made, knit together, numbers of our hairs known to Him and to Him alone. He alone is God, He alone is the creator and author of life. How dare we be silent on this issue?

Ankerberg: Alright next week we are going to talk about the arguments of those who want to take that life in the womb. I also want to talk about this is why this election in terms of who’s going to be choosing our Supreme Court judges, they’re going to have a say on this thing. And so, folks, this is going to be a very important program. It is something that you need to understand, that you’ve got to be able to ask the questions to dig a little deeper when you’re listening to candidates. And so I hope that you’ll join us then.

Read Part 4