Equipping Eve: Making Abortion Convenient

Is the Church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus? Well, it's true there's no shortage of candy-coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies, but beyond Sunday morning, are Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed Eve in the garden?

In an attempt to address the need for trustworthy, biblical resources for women, No Compromise Radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies-only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.

My name is Mike Ebendroth, and I'm pleased to introduce your host, Erin Benzinger, a friend of No Compromise Radio and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's Word.

The Authority of God's Word and the Gospel

Well, hello, ladies, and welcome to Equipping Eve. I'm your host, Erin Benzinger. Thanks for tuning in today. This is the show, as our tagline says, that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth from God's Word.

We are surrounded by deception, by lies, and that is just the nature of the fallen world in which we live, but God has been good and gracious to us, ladies, and he has given us his Word, the Bible, 66 books, inspired, inerrant, infallible, pure, precious, perfect, and that Word is the plumb line.

That Word is that by which we measure everything that we hear. That is the ultimate authoritative truth. Why? Because it's God's Word. It was breathed out by God. Men inspired by the Holy Spirit wrote down what God would have us to know, and it contains all that we need in order to live lives of godliness in pursuit of righteousness.

It contains all we need to know in order to be saved. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ. We must know that Word, we must live in that Word, we must pray that God would enable us to live by that Word, and we must proclaim the Gospel to others, the Gospel that is contained in that Word, the Gospel being that we are sinners, all men are born at enmity with God, but Jesus Christ, the God-man, lived the perfect life that we would need to live in order to save ourselves, but we cannot because we are fallen.

He died as a substitutionary sacrifice and atoning sacrifice for the sins of all His people, and He rose again three days later demonstrating that God the Father accepted that perfect sacrifice, and because Jesus Christ lives, we can know that we can be saved and may have eternal life in Him alone.

He alone is the way, the truth, and the life. There is no other name under heaven by which men must be saved, and we are so, so thankful to know these things as they are found in God's Word, aren't we ladies?

And we're so thankful to our Lord Jesus Christ for what He has done for us and for saving us if indeed we have been saved. If you are not a Christian listening today, I pray, I pray that you would pick up God's Word and be convicted of your sin and that you would come to Christ, trust in His work alone, trust in Him alone for your salvation because nothing you do can earn your way to heaven.

No amount of money that you pay to your church or charity, no amount of candles you light, no amount of prayers you pray in order to be saved unless that prayer is, Lord be merciful to me, the sinner.

No amount of saints you venerate, no amount of asceticism, no amount of works by your own hands can get you to heaven. That's why we need the work of Jesus Christ. We need the perfect spotless Lamb of God to purge us of our sins.

Amen? Amen. I feel like I should just end the show now. I mean, you talk about Christ and what He's done for us and what's the point in talking about anything else. And really, now I feel really uneasy about doing what I'm just about to do.

Here, before we jump into what I want to talk about for the broader show today, ladies, I was flipping through my copy of the Daily Readings from Every Day of Friday by Joel Osteen. So this is a devotional book from Joel Osteen's Every Day of Friday book.

And the thought of every day being a Friday kind of depresses me. You know, I don't know about you ladies, but oftentimes Friday rolls around and you think, finally, it's Friday, the weekend's coming, and then you get to work.

Those of you who have an office job might be able to identify, and everything explodes. You know, this just happened to me yesterday. You know, you open your email and there's 14 more problems than there were when you left work on Thursday night, and you have to fix them all before 5 o 'clock on Friday afternoon.

And sometimes that just happens, so the thought of every day being a Friday is depressing to me. But anyway, Joel Osteen here, in his book, I found an entry titled, Be Your Best, Let God Do the Rest. Joel Osteen writes, I could do no wrong as a boy in my grandmother's eyes.

Once when someone ate her homemade chocolate chip cookies before dinner, I was not even a suspect. Who was it? Not my darling Joel, she said. It may have been one of his sisters, but I know Joel would never do that.

My three sisters would be so aggravated, they'd say, Grandmama thinks Joel is a saint. I can't help it, says Osteen. I had favor even back then. Ladies, I can't make this up. This is what the book actually says.

I should take a picture of this and put it on the Equip Aneive website because it's astonishing. Osteen continues, that's the kind of people God wants to bring you. People who believe the best of you.

Take on this attitude, he says, I have something great to offer. I am one of a kind. I have a great personality. I have the right looks. And I will, I'm sorry, I'm laughing, and I will not waste time trying to make people love me.

I will let that go and trust God to bring me divine connections. People who celebrate me just as I am. This is so Stuart Smalley, you know, I'm a good person. I'm good looking and doggone it, people like me.

Oh Joel, oh Joel. He goes on and quotes Bill Cosby, which now seems really unwise. He says, when God puts a dream in your heart, well, let me back up. He talks about Nehemiah and Tobiah and Sanballat, the men who were his biggest critics, as Joel Osteen calls them.

And he says, when God puts a dream in your heart, there will always be the Sanballats and Tobiahs trying to engage you in battles that don't matter. Yeah, you have a destiny to fulfill, he says. Yeah, so, there you go.

Joel Osteen had the favor even as a child, and if you read his book, you can too. If you read Joel Osteen's book, you can eat all the cookies you want before dinner and no one will think it was you. That's the message I get from that.

So there you go. Wonkiness, isn't it? You know, that's the only word sometimes, it's just wonky. Someone reads that, really? I don't understand. So anyway, we've kind of a hodgepodge here today, so I'm going to jump from Joel Osteen into a completely unrelated topic.

Telemedicine and the Push for More Convenient Abortion

But when I saw that, I simply had to share it because it's so ridiculous. And I thought it might be good to start a little light because I'd like to jump into a little bit of a heavier topic, kind of a current events type thing that's constantly a current event, and that is that of abortion.

And it's only because a certain article kind of sparked my interest, and I just wanted to address not necessarily the article per se, but just take a look at what scripture says about conception, abortion, etc., etc.

Now, there are many, many Christians who have adopted abortion as kind of their pet project. And I don't say that in a derogatory way. You know, it's just their thing. And maybe they go to the abortion clinics and try to share the gospel.

I hope they're not protesting, I hope they are just sincerely sharing the gospel with the men and women who they meet. Abortion activism or whatnot is not my thing. But when I say that, that doesn't mean I condone it.

So I just want to be really clear, you won't see a lot of material from me on social media or anything kind of jumping into the abortion debates and conversations. And that's not because I condone it.

I certainly do not. I believe abortion is murder. So I want to be really, really clear about that. It's just not something that I commonly talk about because it's just not my soapbox. We all have our soapboxes and it's not mine.

And that's okay. However, when I saw this article, I kind of climbed up mentally onto a soapbox because it was a little disturbing. So let me back up. I don't know how many of you might be familiar with kind of a new thing that's starting to emerge and that's called telemedicine.

And the idea is basically you don't have to go in and see a doctor. You can talk to a doctor on the phone, you can talk to a doctor online over video or email or whatever and kind of be treated that way.

And I didn't really realize that this was becoming a thing until I received cards in the mail from my own health insurance that said, hey, now you can participate in this thing with teledoctors or I don't know exactly what it's called.

But you know, it's essentially if you're sick, you can talk to this doctor and get a prescription called in or whatever, share your symptoms, which the sad thing is those doctors would be more available to me than my own doctor.

Because when I try to call her, I can't talk to her. I talk to a receptionist and the message is garbled and then nothing happens. You can't get in to see your doctor until three weeks from when you call, well, then you're not sick anymore.

And so it would not surprise me if this really kind of takes over. So interestingly, those cards arrived in the mail and it showed up on the same day that I had just seen a particular article from the Journal of the American Medical Association.

So that is abbreviated JAMA. I don't know if anyone actually calls it that, but I do. So I happened to see this article come in from this journal and the article is titled Increasing Access to Abortion with Telemedicine.

It's authored by Elizabeth Raymond, Erica Chong, and Paul Hyland. So this is a medical journal. This is a scholarly, academic type journal. So this is not an article necessarily that you'll see in perhaps websites or blogs that you frequent.

However, other websites and news media outlets have picked this up and I saw a recap of the article on Reuters and some other places as well. And it was really fascinating. I just didn't realize that this type of thing was happening.

So the article Increasing Access to Abortion with Telemedicine reads, For many women in the United States, obtaining an abortion is unduly difficult. In 2008, a national survey found that 31 of patients in rural, I can never say that word, rural areas traveled more than 100 miles for abortion services.

Subsequently, states have enacted hundreds of new restrictions on abortion, including limits on the construction of facilities, the qualifications for clinicians, and the procedures that are used for abortion.

At present, Mississippi, Missouri, South Dakota, and North Dakota each have only one operational outpatient abortion clinic, and Wyoming has none. Good for those states. Once a woman reaches an abortion facility, she may encounter additional barriers, including verbal harassment by protesters and physical blocking of the clinic entry.

Now, Christian, please hear me on this. This is something that you do. If you visit abortion clinics, thank God for you. That is wonderful that you do that. Please don't be contentious. Please be there to share the gospel with these people, please.

Please demonstrate Christ in that way. Moving on. This harassment is sometimes violent. In November 2015, three people were killed at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Now, I'm sure there's a backstory there, but anyway, moving on.

The health consequences of impeding access to abortion may be serious. Women may delay the procedure, which increases risk, or resort to unsafe abortion methods. Ultimately, some women may be unable to obtain an abortion at all, resulting in unwanted births.

Because, oh, the humanity, they might have to have a baby instead of murdering it. Moving on. Assuring women's access to legal abortion is essential. One emerging approach leverages telemedicine to obviate the need for a patient to visit an abortion clinic.

Although surgical abortion requires an in-person visit with a physician or advanced practice clinician, medical abortion, which in 2011 accounted for 23 of abortions in the United States, is an ideal fit for telemedicine.

Medical abortion with mifepristone and misoprostol has few contraindications within the first 10 weeks of gestation. So those are two drugs that are used for drug-induced abortion. The contraindications, all of which can be assessed using interview, laboratory testing, and ultrasonography.

Physical examination is not routinely required. The abortifacient medications are self-administered. The abortion itself occurs at home. Treatment outcome is evaluated one to two weeks later by ultrasonography or by serum or urine HCG tests.

That would be a pregnancy test. Increasingly, this follow-up occurs remotely. The efficacy and safety of early medical abortion is high. Surgical uterine evacuation is needed for less than 5 of patients, and major complications such as hemorrhage or infection requiring hospitalization occur in less than 0 .4%.

They do reference, offer references for their numbers, and I've not looked at those original sources, but moving on. I will link this article to the Equipping Eve's website. If you go to equippingeve .com and click on the blog, you'll be able to go there and get a link to any of the articles that we talk about today.

It may or may not be available at that time. This is one of those websites where you have to be a subscriber sometimes to get access to certain articles, so fair warning on that. The article goes on. It says, in 2008, a Planned Parenthood affiliate in Iowa initiated the first formal telemedicine abortion program in the United States.

Program is designed to enable provision of medical abortion at collaborating clinics that stock the abortifacient drugs but do not have physicians on site. To use this program, a woman has screening lab tests and an ultrasound at the clinic.

That clinic sends the results to a physician someplace else, and then the physician reviews the results, speaks to the woman by video conference, apparently, and then authorizes that clinic to issue the drugs.

And then it says, an alternate telemedicine model uses a direct-to-patient approach in which the abortifacient drugs are provided directly to eligible patients by mail or by prescription. The advantage of this approach is that the patient is not required to visit a clinic that has Mifepristone in stock.

Instead, she obtains the screening test locally and can speak with the clinician from her home. This feature enhances privacy and autonomy, as well as access. The dispersion of care also helps to avoid harassment of both patients and clinicians.

Direct-to-patient telemedicine is being used in settings outside the United States. It says there's a program for women in countries without access to safe abortion services. Which, it seems like such an oxymoron to say safe abortion, doesn't it?

I don't, I mean, safe for who? I mean, the baby's being killed. That's not safe. Anyway, direct-to-patient telemedicine abortion is unavailable in the United States, and the primary reason is that the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, or REMS, for Mifepristone, established by the FDA, mandates that Mifepristone be dispensed to patients in clinics, medical offices, and hospitals.

It's not a bad thing. So the drug's not available in pharmacies and cannot be prescribed, and therefore could not be mailed, is the idea. This article says that these restrictions are medically unjustified.

Mifepristone, which is dispensed in single doses, has no immediate clinical effects. Long-term, maybe? And thus, the location where a patient receives it, or even where she swallows it, is irrelevant to its efficacy or safety.

Notably, the prescribing limitations impede not only telemedicine, but also in-person provision of medical abortion by clinicians who do not maintain inventories in their office. Yada, yada. Basically, we should allow this to happen.

And the article concludes, the challenges and barriers notwithstanding, work is underway to increase access to telemedicine abortion services in the United States. The Iowa model is being expanded to other states where it's legally permitted.

And later in 2016, a pilot study of direct-to-patient telemedicine abortion is expected to begin in several settings around the country, and that will be conducted under an investigational new drug application filed with the FDA because of the restrictions that are currently on the drug, Mifepristone.

Legal challenges to telemedicine abortion bans have been filed in Iowa and Idaho, and in July 2015, the Iowa Supreme Court overturned the ban in that state. Our hope is that such efforts will help to improve access to abortion, especially in circumstances in which obtaining this basic health care is otherwise inconvenient, intimidating, or entirely infeasible.

Okay, so here's, I could have summed this up for you, but I want, I read this to you directly from the article because I want you to hear what has been written rather than just my interpretation of it.

But basically what we're saying here is what these people are advocating is this model that you can do a video conference with a doctor who you've never seen before in your life from your home, from your home office, your bedroom, your kitchen, whatever, and have some lab work done at a local lab.

The doctor reviews that, talks to you on the phone, apparently decides that you're stable enough to kill your baby at home, and then sends you this drug that you take and it kills your child while you're sitting in your kitchen.

There are multiple problems with this. I mean, we're just increasing this access, you know? I mean, children today have so much access to the internet, et cetera, et cetera. You know, how might this increase young girls being able to have access to abortion drugs and their parents don't even know?

You know, both parents work, child gets home from school, before the parents get home, they can pull the medicine out of the mailbox and go upstairs and take a drug that kills their child. And how is that going to work long-term for the mental state of that young mother?

There are so many things that are not taken into consideration here, and of course, this is one article, it does not present pros and cons and enough statistics to make an informed decision, but this is something that is being pursued.

But that's terrifying. That is terrifying. And so for all of the protesting and gospel-sharing outside the abortion clinics, how do we get to these people? That's terrifying. But the mindset that says that, hey, we need this because, oh, these poor women, they're harassed, this mindset, that's even more terrifying, I think, isn't it?

You know, here's another example of the mindset that advocates abortion. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists on their website says, the college supports women's right to decide whether to have children, the number and spacing of their children, and to have the information, education, and access to health services to make these choices.

In the United States, where one-half of all pregnancies are unintended, almost one-third of women will seek an abortion by age 45. The most effective way to reduce abortion rates, says the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, is to prevent unintended pregnancy by improving access to consistent, effective, and affordable contraception.

No, the most effective way to reduce abortion rates, if you don't want to have a baby, then you should not do the act which creates babies, right? Why is that so complicated? I don't understand why we don't understand.

Conception, the Sanctity of Life, and God's Sovereignty

What does scripture say? What does scripture say, ladies, about children? What does scripture say about abortion? Well, to begin with, conception is not an accident, okay? Psalm 127, verse 3, Behold, children are a gift of the Lord.

The fruit of the womb is a reward. They are a gift from the Lord. Psalm 139, verse 13, David writes, For you, God, you formed my inward parts. You wove me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works, and my soul knows it very well. God creates. There are, the pregnancy may be unintended by you, as a human, but it was not unintended by God. He has sovereign control over every single pregnancy.

Think of Genesis 16, Genesis 17, you know, where Sarah and Abraham, they could not have children. And yet, God comes to Abraham, and he says, in Genesis 17, 6, I will make you exceedingly fruitful. I will make nations of you, and kings will come forth from you.

In verse 16, God says to Abraham, I will bless her, Sarah, and I indeed will give you a son by her. Then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations. Kings and peoples will come from her. Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, Will a child be born to a man 100 years old?

And will Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child? Verse 19, God said, No, Sarah, your wife will bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac, and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.

In Genesis 25, we see God again being sovereign over conception, with Isaac and Rebekah. 25, 21, Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren. And the Lord answered him, and Rebekah, his wife, conceived.

God is sovereign over every single child that is conceived. God alone gives us life. God even has sovereignty over those children with disabilities. You know, it breaks my heart when I hear today parents get an ultrasound and the baby is going to have Down syndrome or whatnot, and do you want to abort?

God is sovereign over even this. Exodus 4, 11, let's go back, 4, 10, Moses said to the Lord, Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time past, nor since you have spoken to your servant, for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.

The Lord said to him, Who has made man's mouth? Again, God's sovereign creator. Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? In John 9, where Jesus heals the blind man, 9, 1, As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth, and his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?

Jesus answered, It was neither that, this man sinned, nor his parents, but so the works of God might be displayed in him. Well, God is sovereign then over this man's blindness. And so God is the sovereign creator of all babies.

And so when you kill that baby in the womb, no matter the gestation age, you are killing a human life. And to make it so easy and to speak about like, oh, we need to make this more convenient for women.

What? It just demonstrates the depravity of our day. And it doesn't surprise us, but it should grieve us. And it should keep us on the alert for the way that the world around us is spiraling downward.

And we expect this to happen, ladies. Don't be surprised. God's not surprised. He ordained all things from before the beginning of time. He's not surprised by this. It just makes us turn more and more to him to look more and more forward to our heavenly home.

We expect this from the world. Remember that, ladies. We expect the world to see that abortion should be not only legal, but should be extremely convenient. So you can go out and sin however you like and have no consequences.

But there are consequences. There will be consequences. You see, God not only creates every single child, he cares for that little baby, even while it's in the womb. You remember how David said, I'm fearfully and wonderfully made.

We saw that in Psalm 139. But if you think back, ladies, to Exodus 21, where God is giving the law to Moses, you may or may not have caught this in your yearly Bible reading as you read through the Bible.

But in Exodus 21, verse 22, the Lord says, If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide.

But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. So the Lord addresses even children in the womb there in Scripture when he gave the law.

God cares for children before they are born. But ladies, what we have to remember is not only is God sovereign over the creation, the creation of every single child, but God is even in sovereign control of these deaths.

He is not surprised by them. Most assuredly, he is grieved by them. But he is sovereign. Again, he has ordained all things. And so don't forget that. And more importantly, not to forget is that there is forgiveness.

Remember the gospel that we gave at the start of the show? There is forgiveness even for the sin of abortion. So if you pursued an abortion, you can be forgiven. If you perform abortions, you can be forgiven.

If you seek forgiveness for this sin, there can be forgiveness found in Jesus Christ alone. Just as there is forgiveness for all sin available to us in Jesus Christ alone, but we must repent of our sin and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ alone and put our faith in him.

We can be forgiven. John MacArthur writes,. There is forgiveness for mothers who have had an abortion. While they may face daily reminders of their sin, they can be washed of its guilt and spared its just punishment through the atoning work of Jesus Christ.

Likewise, the abortion doctors who are responsible for taking these precious lives can be rescued from the punishment of their sins and forgiven through repentance and faith. And so there is forgiveness.

This is not hopeless if the deed's already been done. And so turn to Christ. Trust in the only Savior who shed his own blood to save sinners. Okay, ladies, we are out of time again. So until the next time, get in your bibles, get on your knees, and get equipped.

Thanks for listening.

You've been listening to Equipping Eve, a No Compromise radio production. If you'd like to get a hold of Erin, you can reach her at equippingeve at gmail .com. Or you can check out one of our two websites, do notbesurprised .com or equippingeve .org.

Thanks for listening.