She looked at the pictures and exclaimed, "You came to my school! You sure changed my mind."

I’m in the Jacksonville Airport, headed back to Knoxville, wrapping up my 4th week on the road.  We’re getting ready for our campus outreach (GAP) at the U of North Florida (UNF) and Florida State U (FSU) later this month.  Lots of enthusiasm for our Pro Life Training Academy on February 19.

Thanks to God for all the families in Jacksonville and Tallahassee who will house and feed our traveling team of 26 missionaries, including 14 Canadian students who will be learning how to win hearts, change minds, and save lives.

After I landed in Jacksonville, Kenyana fixed me up with a rental car.  As she filled out the paperwork, she asked, “What brings you to Jacksonville?”

I told her, “I’m a radical right-wing lunatic troublemaker.”  I gave her my card.

She looked at it, “Pro-life.”  Then I showed her the photo of our GAP project on the back of my card.  She got excited, “You came to my school!”

“Where did you go to school?” I asked.

“UNF!”

“Yes, we were there about 3 years ago.”

Without any coaxing at all, Kenyana offered, “Well, you sure changed my mind.  I didn’t have any idea what abortion is.  None of us did.”

It has been widely reported that the Susan G. Komen Foundation caved to pressure from Planned Parenthood (PP).  I said so myself in an e-mail to CBR friends and supporters.  But it might be too early to tell.  At any rate, Komen will not be getting the personal donation that my wife and I had planned.

Here is Komen’s statement.  Three points about it:

1. Komen has said that they will continue to fund existing grants.  We already knew that.  It’s called “keeping your commitments.”
2. Komen clarified that they would disqualify grantees who were under investigations that are “criminal and conclusive in nature and not political.”  Again, no surprise there.  Planned Parenthood is certainly guilty of criminal misconduct, and the video evidence is conclusive.  (Note:  This is true if you consider PP to be one organization, as we certainly do.  But if Komen intends to only disqualify PP affiliates who are currently under criminal investigation, then this is a big loophole.)
3. Komen said that PP would be eligible to apply for future grants.  I suppose anybody can apply; that’s no guarantee they will get anything.  We can’t assume anything, except that Komen is keeping their options open.  We shall have to wait and see.
4. Komen also said that they would maintain “the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.”  Hiding behind affiliate autonomy is a common tactic to disavow responsibility for bad behavior.  That ruse won’t work with us.  Komen would never allow any affiliate to give a grant to the KKK.  If we see that Komen affiliates are giving new grants to PP, we will know that Komen has caved.

So where does that leave us?  One Komen board member said this is not a reversal.  I think we’ll just have to wait and see.

Interesting commentary:

• Planned Parenthood: Vicious Not Victorious, by Micheal New
• Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer Press Release.  (They will be getting that donation from my wife and myself.)
• Media genuflects before Church of Planned Parenthood.

One reader told me there are better places to give our money than the Susan B. Komen Foundation.  I agreed, but I pointed out that few of us decide how to spend our money that way.  If we did, there would be plenty of money for pro-life work and Comcast would be trying to figure out how to get Christians to support cable TV every month.  (Full disclosure: we have cable TV at our house, but we give more every month to pro-life work than we give to the cable TV company.)

The pro-life world is abuzz this week about the great news that the Susan G. Komen Foundation (SGK) has cut off funding to Planned Parenthood (PP), the nation’s largest chain of abortion facilities. This is great news, no matter how you look at it.

SGK had planned no public announcement; they were content to allow their existing commitments to PP expire quietly and say nothing about it. It was PP who made it all public. Jill Stanek has the story.

After PP forced their hand, SGK didn’t just stick PP with the proverbial knife; they twisted it a couple of times. They stated publicly that PP would no longer receive grants because they are under investigation by local, state, or federal authorities. Ouch!

This is a huge blow to PP. The loss of half a million dollars will hardly affect the number of children PP is able to kill, but the loss of prestige is huge. This public and very dramatic rebuke will further stigmatize PP in the eyes of school systems, governmental agencies, and corporate donors across the country.

More good news: SGK is cutting all funding to embryonic stem cell research. Story here.

The left is in a rage, because abortion matters more to them than fighting breast cancer. Howard Dean and other leftists are encouraging corporate sponsors to punish SGK. Several links here.

Please send an e-mail to news@komen.org with the subject line: “Thank You for Defunding Planned Parenthood!” Last we heard, pro-life responses are outnumbering pro-abortion complaints by 2 to 1, at last count. We need to improve that response.

Also, please register your approval at www.istandwithkomen.com.

My wife and I are making a personal donation to both SGK and their local affiliate. Some pro-lifers are concerned that we can’t support SGK until it stops working against its own mission, i.e. misrepresenting the abortion-breast cancer (ABC) studies and downplaying the pill-breast cancer link. But this is a disagreement over science, not principle. Now that it is decoupled from PP’s abortion agenda, perhaps SGK will be in a better position to evaluate the ABC data more objectively.

Of course we are convinced that the ABC connection is real, but that’s really beside the point. It’s bad strategy to punish people who did exactly what we asked them to do, just because they haven’t done something else. It tells other potential allies and converts that you are petty and unreasonable.

In general, we must reject the all-or-nothing mentality that seems to prevail among some pro-lifers. If we demand 100% fidelity to everything we believe, we’ll have few allies and accomplish very little. We can and should set aside differences to form alliances and friendships based on mutual goals. Like my Aunt Jane used to say, “Don’t major in the minors.”

What SGK has done is quite remarkable and they are taking a vicious hit for it from their former allies. They have de-funded the abortion giant. We must thank them for this.

Withholding our support because of smaller disagreements will not make SGK listen to us, it will make us look petty and small. SGK needs to realize they have good friends in pro-lifers, allies in the battle for women’s health. Furthermore, we must also send a strong message to other corporations that if they sever ties with PP, we will welcome them with open arms.

We’ve been trying to make sense of the controversy over a Canadian doctor’s proposal that doctors be prohibited from telling parents the gender of their children until 30 weeks into a pregnancy.  Editorial by Dr. Rajendra Kale here.  Coverage from here and here.  Favorable commentary in the Calgary Herald here; opposition in the Ottawa Citizen here.

According to Dr. Kale, who is from India, “Female feticide happens in India and China by the millions, but it also happens in North America in numbers large enough to distort the male-to-female ratio in some ethnic groups.”

Reaction has been mixed, but a narrative is beginning to emerge:

1. It’s a perfectly acceptable choice to abort your baby if the child might be poor, might delay the attainment of educational goals, is incompatible with the parent’s chosen lifestyles,  might be handicapped, etc.  In fact, for any reason or for no reason at all.
2. Abortion to kill a baby because the parents wanted a different gender is “abhorrent” and “deplorable” and “repugnant.”
3. Abortion should be an absolute right, except when it shouldn’t.  Articulated here.  Supported by polling here.

They hypocrisy of this narrative is so obvious, we struggle to see how it can be advanced, outside a Saturday Night Live (SNL) parody or an MSNBC editorial.  (Note: SNL, no doubt, would be offended by our grouping them with MSNBC, so let us stop to reassure SNL that we recognize the difference between comedy and folly.)

Anyway, this all has to make sense.  One might have to stand on his head to see all the pieces line up, but they do line up.  But how?

Under the Judeo/Christian/Western (JCW) ethic, each of us is a created being, endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights.  In this hemisphere, we created a collective (i.e., the good ole US of A) for the primary purpose of protecting the rights of each and every human person.

We are held accountable by our Creator to protect the rights of others.  Not because of any good that might accrue to the collective or to ourselves, but because each person is created with value equal to our own.  Hence, depending on whose rights are in jeopardy at the moment, white people are required to advocate for black slaves, men to advocate for women, born people to advocate for the preborn, etc.  To the JCW like us, abortion is wrong because each abortion destroys an individual person.

But under the Darwinist/Marxist/Leftist (DML) worldview, we are not created.  We are evolved.  We are simply a reformulated extention of primordial organic soup.  We have no claims to individual liberty, any more than dogs or rocks.  As individuals, our only identity is our membership the collective (e.g., the “human race” or perhaps the “life energy of the cosmos” or whatever).  We get more rights than dogs only because we can.

However, what we do have is an instinct for survival.  (We can’t justify why our survival is important, only that our instinct for it must have evolved into existence and therefore must be accommodated.)  So we make laws that protect ourselves and other members of our collective.  But these laws are an expression of our instinct for personal protection; they are not based on the notion that every human being has intrinsic valuable.

For the DML, abortion is OK because, first of all, it does not threaten the DML himself.  He is already born.  Unlike other forms of murder, he isn’t threatened by it, even if it is conducted on a large scale.  Nor does he believe it to threaten his collective.  It only threatens other individuals (who have no intrinsic value).

If that were all there was to it, the DML would remain neutral about whether abortion should be legal or not.  But there is more.  He is selfish.  He likes sex and he demands to have it without responsibility.  (We know about selfishness, because our sin problem is just as big as his.)  Therefore, in his mind, unlimited abortion must be a “right.”

But wait a minute, the good Canadian doctor has alerted us to a form of abortion that threatens our own society.  When we imagine a culture in which young men outnumber young women by 10 to 20%, we reel in horror.  “Historically, societies in which men substantially outnumber women are not nice places to live,” Mara Hvistendahl wrote in her book, Unnatural Selection.  “Often they are unstable. Sometimes they are violent.”

The DMLs don’t want to live in such a place, so their instinct for self-preservation kicks in.  The abortions that lead to this horror are, unlike every other kind of abortion they can imagine, “deplorable” and must be prohibited.

But the DMLs won’t want to think about this for very long.  They won’t want to defend the hypocrisy that some children may be killed and some may not.  Or that the “reproductive rights” of some women are inviolate, but the rights of others women (i.e., Indian, Korean, and Chinese minorities living in Canada) must be trampled upon.

When they see how big and ugly this hypocrisy truly is, they will quit talking about it.  They will reason that sex-selective abortions threaten somebody else’s collective, not their own, so they will let this dog go back to sleep.

What do you think?

GAP at the University of Michigan Diag.

Great article written by a pro-chioce student who saw GAP at the University of Michigan (UM) Diag and decided to attend a Students for Life meeting.  Full story here.  Excerpts:

At the time it seemed like the pro-lifers were seriously screwing themselves over.

But I do remember seeing one young woman, a student, standing nervously behind the display, pro-life pamphlets in hand.  I wish I had talked to her instead of openly laughing at what I perceived at the time to be really poor activism.  (emphasis added)

***

The Genocide Awareness Project] got us angry, but it also got us talking (albeit in raised voices) about a topic that for a lot of people is just another item on the political agenda.  The abortion issue periodically garners national attention, like when pro-lifers attempted to defund Planned Parenthoods across the country last year.

But in an era when people are constantly bemoaning the lack of student activism, look no further than the intense, ongoing pro-life/pro-choice debate, which is less about politics and more about deciding what we value as a society.

***

It’s pretty easy to be pro-choice at the University. …

It’s easy to get trapped in an echo chamber when you think the Truth belongs to your side.  But even if we can’t agree, we can occasionally step across the protest line, stop the chanting, and listen.

Several points to be gleaned from this article:

1. Even angry pro-aborts can be softened, if not converted.  The anger wears away; the education does not.
2. There is a sink-in factor at work here.  After seeing GAP, it was weeks later before Balfour was ready to attend a pro-life meeting.  She isn’t pro-life yet, but Balfour has an open mind and this isn’t over yet.
3. The pictures work in many different ways.  They neutralize our opposition, they convert the neutral, they activate the converted, and they energize the active.
4. The key elements here are (a) the truth, as presented by abortion photos, (b) abundant courage and the love of Messiah Jesus, as demonstrated by the UM Students for Life, and (c) an open mind, which Balfour provided herself.
5. We pro-life activists probably have more in common with pro-aborts who don’t know the truth than we have with pro-life Christian leaders who do know the truth and cover it up.

From LifeSiteNews.com:

Although he was always against abortion, Pierre told LifeSiteNews.com that the song arose in his heart after a guest at his high school showed his class images of children killed in abortion. His sentiments deepened after a visit to the former Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, where he said it was not the horrors of the slaughter itself, but the indifference of the surrounding communities, that shocked him most.

Full story here.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igD4MyuWfjU

We convert more students at the March for Life than at any other event.

Do pro-lifers need to see abortion photos?  We got a message just today from a 16-year-old student who lives in Washington DC.  He came to the
AbortionNo.org website and wrote:

I saw these pictures at the March for Life in 2010.  I saw the graphic pictures on the “Abortion No” posters, and my friends and I just stopped and stared, aghast.  Later I came onto the website and watched the videos, and I have never been more passionate for change.  I am only 16, but I hope I can do something to make this injustice known.  I went back to the March for Life in 2011 and I am returning again this year in 2012.  I resolve to go every year for the rest of my life until this injustice is eradicated, until this holocaust is over.

Pictures

• neutralize the opposition,
• convert the neutral,
• activate the converted, and
• energize the active.

In Holland, I’m told that senior citizens often refuse to go to a hospital from fear that their doctors might kill them, without request or consent.  Sound far-fetched?  Such murders happen 550 times/year.   Also, 8% of all infant deaths are from lethal injections.  In Holland.  More here.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipVF-lTAwoA

This just in from the Catholic League:

In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that churches are entitled to make employment decisions without interference by the government.  In doing so, the high court affirmed what is known as the doctrine of “ministerial exception,” the long-standing right of churches to be shielded from discrimination lawsuits brought by employees.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue spoke to this issue today:

This is a great victory for religious liberty and a huge defeat for the Obama administration.  Last October, when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in this case, the Obama administration’s lawyer proved to be such a secular zealot that she stunned even the more liberal members of the high court.  Leondra R. Kruger made such an extremist argument that she even got Justice Elena Kagan to agree wholeheartedly with Justice Antonin Scalia.

Had the Obama administration won, the government would have been able to order the Catholic Church to accept women priests.  Looks like the old guard, entrenched in the 1960s, has lost again.

More coverage:  FoxNews, GlobalPost

The following question was asked by DezyVol on one of the VolQuest fan forums:

Please don’t turn this into a religion bashing thread …

I’m a Christian and have always left God out of sports other than praying for player safety and humility.  I’ve never thought the Almighty would have any interest in sports or their outcome.

That said, it almost hard to not at least somewhere in the back of your mind think Tebow might occasionally receive Divine assistance with sports.  I know determination, motivation, preservation and all that has a lot to do with it, but does anyone think its possible that God rewards/answers Tebow’s prayers concerning sports?

I think its great that he sticks to his beliefs unflinchingly at a time when it is politically incorrect and unpopular to do so.  Could the Almighty being throwing Tim a bone during games so as to better utilize him as a tool to spread the Good Word?

Just curious on your thoughts.

10sevol answered:

Throughout the Bible, God used murderers, harlots, and despots to carry His great message.  Using a Gator would seem like the next logical choice.

Here’s a photo of Jonathan Darnel displaying one of CBR’s GAP signs in the DC metro area.  This was at the Ballston Metro stop.  Your gift of $200 will purchase another sign!

Jonathan Darnel at Ballston metro stop in DC area.

Jane Bullington

Each December, CBR’s Jane Bullington takes a week of “vacation” and works as a missionary in Germany.  Here’s her report:

In December, for the 10^th year, I went to Germany as part of a mission team to assist Southern Baptist missionaries Steve and Susan Jett of Knoxville.   Steve and Susan have lived in various towns in Germany for 17 years.   They have devoted their lives to sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the German people.  Germans believe Baptists are part of a cult, so successful witnessing has to begin with relationship building.

Direct evangelism is not often successful, so the Jetts have devised several ways to get the Word into the marketplace and gain respectability in the community.  That is where the December teams come in.  Every German town, no matter how large or small, has a month-long Christmas Market in the heart of the town.  A few blocks are set aside for vendors to sell Christmas wares, all kinds of German fast foods, and German hot spirits.  They sell “kinderpunch” for children and tee-totalers!

The marketplace is full of festivities every evening, and parents love to bring their children out to enjoy the Christmas season.   Booth owners have to rent space, but because of their reputation and the draw they have on families, the Jetts have been given 3 spaces, at no cost!  One space is used for the very popular Living Nativity, one is for a kinder-pavilion (activities for children inside a warm tent), and one is for a marionette show that tells the Christmas story straight from the Gospel of Luke (in German, of course).

The team rotates among all 3 activities, 6 nights in a row, to reach as many adults and children as possible with the Gospel.  My favorite place to be is the Living Nativity.  In it, we place a Mary, a Joseph, an angel, and a shepherd.  We also have two sheep (a mom and a baby) plus a young donkey.  These living characters are a magnet for children.

A photographer draws poeple into the Nativity scene and takes a photo of  the children with the shepherd and donkey.  A team member prints the photo, on site, and places it in a packet of “Jesus” materials for the children and the parents.  In that way, the Gospel gets into the hands of folks who would not listen to an overt presentation of the Gospel.

It is so fun to see the absolute delight of children as they pet that donkey, get a hug from the shepherd, and then see themselves in a Nativity photo.  Parents are also delighted with the way we love on their children, and are amazed that we come to Germany at our own expense to share the Christmas story with strangers.

Germans think everything has a price tag, so this gift of a photo and sacks of games and tracts, at no charge, is hard for them to believe.  Our answer:  “We come because Christ loves us and we want to share His love with you here in Bruhl.  Merry Christmas!”  What a wonderful to begin preparing ourselves for the Day of Celebration when God sent His only Son into the world to save us from our sins.  Thank you, Jesus.

Nativity on display in Bruhl, Germany

Top 5 Christmas videos on FAB:

1. Hallelujah Chorus at the Mall Food Court
2. Hail, Favored One! the Lord is With You
3. If Mary and Joseph Used Facebook
4. Where’s the Line to See Jesus?
5. Santa and reindeer sing “White Chistmas”

Please suggest videos that you like!

.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5icadzuoLyo

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reMq5fM874k

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OExXItDyWEY

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ooc5eJc5SHA

Back by popular demand, this is too funny!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ooc5eJc5SHA