The ERLC Stumbles on Abortion

ERLC Opposition to Louisiana HB813

Welcome to Conversations That Matter Podcast, I'm your host John Harris. I am getting ready actually to leave in about an hour to go to the airport to fly to another state where I'm doing, for lack of a better term, a consultation with a church.

And I've never actually really done that. I've presented at churches and I'm doing that as well, but this is the impression I get more of a question that the church has about whether or not they should stay in a particular denomination and so I just appreciate all of you who make this kind of thing possible and it is going to help a church.

And those are the only details that I think I can give at this point. But I wanted to give you a quick word for the weekend. I wasn't going to do a podcast today just because I have so much going on, but I saw someone sent me a link that there's this whole thing developing, blowing up really on social media about the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention.

If you remember, that's what Russell Moore used to head up before he left for Christianity today. And of course it is funded by, if you're in the Southern Baptist Convention, this is funded by your offering.

And there's a whole blow up over the fact that they signed a letter opposing a bill in Louisiana to ban abortion. And I have a friend actually in Louisiana who is a Southern Baptist and he's involved in this and I asked him about it and he told me essentially that on the, and I'm not going to get into this, but he said that on the ground level there in Louisiana, on the local level, that there are a number of Southern Baptists, including prominent Southern Baptists in the state who are opposing this bill.

And it's left him a little bit shocked that people that even he respected, that he thought clearly ethically would do this. And his words to me were that the same lies that the Democrats were promoting about this bill while it was in committee are now being picked up by the Right to Life and also even Southern Baptists that he respected and they're being used to disparage this bill.

So I can't give you all the details in the short amount of time I have, but let me show you kind of the gist of what's going on and what I think the root issue is. And then I have another point I'd like to make that I think is rarely made and I think people are afraid to make it, but I'm going to make it.

What Louisiana House Bill 813 Is Trying to Do

So let's start here with the bill. The bill is Louisiana House Bill 813. And I don't even know, I think today might be the day it's supposed to be voted on. I'm not exactly sure what the schedule is with all this, but I know that this is being debated right now.

And so I went through the bill and really the gist of it seems to be that it's an act to define the fetus, the baby. OK, that's the correct word here. It's the baby, the unborn child as a person, and that the same protections that anyone would have outside the womb if they were murdered apply to the baby in the womb.

And that's pretty much the gist of this bill. In fact, if you search for like the term mother, right, it doesn't come up at all. You're not I don't see language here that's specifically going out of its way to let's punish women or anything like that.

But the debate seems to be if you just make that simple switch, then you are endangering mothers. And so I want to address that. But I also wanted to highlight something and I think I lost it. It's one of the provisions in this where it basically says now I can't find it, but there is a whole provision that it edges close to nullification, says if there's any federal laws that would contradict this, these protections, then basically we're not going to listen, which I thought was great to have some guts.

But I think because let's just be honest, because of the climate we're in, because Roe v. Wade is potentially going to be overturned, they can it is more likely that bills like this in conservative states will get some traction.

That's really the only reason in my mind that something like this can can get any traction at this point, which is sad, because I think before even Roe v. Wade, the possibility of it being overturned, I think there should have been states willing to do this kind of thing.

But but we thank God that we're in the climate in which we're in on this particular issue, at least for now, we hope and pray Roe v. Wade is going to be overturned and that bills like this that protect the lives of actual people from murder are passed.

Why Pro-Life Groups Say Women Are Victims of Abortion

So that being said, the Daily Wire put out a piece yesterday, pro-life lobbying groups issue letter against charging women with crimes for seeking abortions. And I'm just going to read part of this. It says the National Right to Life and other pro-life groups sent an open letter to lawmakers on Thursday opposing bills that charge mothers with crimes for procuring abortions.

The letter addressed to all state legislators in the United States of America cited elite Supreme Court opinion that we know about. However, Right to Life was joined by other pro-life lobbying groups in taking a hard line stance against passing legislation that imposes criminal penalties upon mothers who seek abortions.

Quote, women are victims of abortion. I just want you to listen to this. OK, this is a quote from it and I have it pulled up, but let me just read this to you because this is significant. Women are victims of abortion and require our compassion and support as well as ready access to counseling and social services in the days, weeks, months and years following an abortion.

The letter said, as national and state pro-life organizations representing tens of millions of pro-life men, women and children across the country, let us be clear, we state unequivocally that any measure seeking to criminalize or punish women is not pro-life.

That's pretty strong and we stand firmly opposed to such efforts. OK, so what's the deal here? Well, the deal is this. If you if you just make that that switch that now inside the womb, we count those individuals as persons and if they are murdered, then the person who does the murdering is responsible and can receive a penalty as a result of that.

Then who is possibly at risk here if they choose to murder their child? Well, the mother would be at risk. The mother of the child who's choosing to kill that child is at risk. Now, think about it just outside the womb for a moment.

If you have a one year old and the mother says, you know, I'm sick of taking care of this one year old. This is a hamper on my life. I want to go back to the things I like to do. And I had a career I wanted to pursue.

Let's kill this one year old. And then let's say took the one year old to a place that was, you know, we have to use our imagination here because we don't have anything like this, but a place where they just killed one year olds.

And and then the law, of course, gets changed and says you can no longer kill one year olds. Would pro-life organizations, you think, be freaking out that, oh, my goodness, these mothers who take their children in to get killed are victims of that particular situation.

And therefore, we can't have this legislation because a mother who would purpose to take a child to be killed should be protected. Now, to some extent, I understand the sympathy for people who are deceived when you have a 16 year old who is deceived.

Let's say and I know this is a very, very small percentage. I know this is a very small percentage of the abortions, but let's just say it is an abortion that is resulting from the rape of an individual.

And you have a mother come in, she's been raped and she's 16 years old and just hasn't really thought through things as much as someone who's older or just hasn't received good direction in life in general.

And this is what all the authorities in her life are telling her. I have some sympathy there because I realize that in one sense, that mother is doing something that I would think violates her conscience.

I would think that all the reinforcement from those outside voices is actually necessary to overturn what's screaming with inside of her because we all have a conscience. We all have that's informed by, in some ways, the law of God.

That's I mean, we know God, we know some of his attributes. We choose to suppress that truth as humans who are apart from Jesus Christ. Those who are who are in Christ, of course, seek to follow his law.

But those who want to live in their sin suppress that truth. But that truth is screaming at them. It's around them and they have a conscience. And so I don't even think that's an excuse. But I have sympathy when you have so much effort being put into overturning the conscience, corrupting the conscience, trying to convince a 16 year old that what they're doing is actually perfectly fine.

And and I think the people who are involved in that kind of thing directly need to be prosecuted as well. But and we can talk about, you know, what punishments ought to be. But if you this this law specifically says this isn't going to go they're not going to go after past abortions.

This is only when the law takes effect and then after the law takes effect. The abortions that take place after this law is implemented will be subject to prosecution. It's not it's not like someone who had this happen.

Well, so so once the law changes that to be to be honest with you, that excuse kind of evaporates in my mind, because even if all the authorities in your life are a bunch of criminals all telling you to do something against the law, then it doesn't get you off the hook because you are a criminal.

It doesn't mean that you're just guiltless in this because, well, the people around I just had a lot of criminals around me and I listened to their voice and I did something criminal. So we again, we wouldn't apply this logic to a one year old or a ten year old.

We wouldn't we would never say that. Well, hey, all the advisors in my life told me to kill the one year old. So, you know, I we we could have compassion on someone to some extent that's deceived. But we know that there's still a crime here.

There's still an evil here. There's still a violation of the image of God directly here, as opposed to, you know, with the social justice warriors say that, oh, my goodness, there's a disparity somewhere.

That, you know, certain group doesn't have access to health care like another group. Therefore, that's an affront to the image of God. Or we don't let certain people across our border without a vetting process.

That's an affront to the image of God. No, it's not. That's not an affront to the image of God. Guess what? Killing a life. That is the image of God taking. I mean, I don't want to get graphic, but what happens in an abortion is absolutely disgusting and evil.

And so chemically. You know, wasting away a child, taking forceps, cutting a child up, these kinds of things. That is an attack on the image of God. So what about the baby? That's the question here. You know, there's so much concern here for the mother.

And they're literally calling this saying that it is not a pro-life bill. It's not this isn't pro-life legislation because mothers could be punished who. Yeah. Who choose to have to kill their children.

That's that's the argument here. Do you remember? I remember this vaguely now. Donald Trump, when he was running in 2016, I don't know when he said it was at 2015 or 16. But he said something along the lines of he thought that women who get an abortion should be punished.

And people freaked out. The pro-life, a lot of pro-life people freaked out. You can't say that. In fact, I have a recent memory of someone, a private conversation, of course, in but someone in the conservative side, very conservative side of evangelicalism, wanting to fight social justice and all of that, who basically said the same kind of thing to me, like you can't craft legislation that would in any way punish a mother for seeking an abortion.

And I think there's a strategic element to this. Well, we just lose if we do that. We just have to punish the doctors. And I thought about this to some extent. And I'm kind of I'm kind of OK with what I think Doug Wilson calls it, the smash mouth incrementalism.

I'm kind of like, would I introduce a bill to incrementally get rid of abortion? No, I don't think so. I think I would just want to go for the jugular. Let's abolish this. This is evil. This is wrong.

But if I was in a legislature and a bill like that came up and it was a move in the right direction, would I vote for it? I probably would. And then immediately talk about the defects of it and how we need to get this bill through.

Right. So I'm I'm kind of like I understand the strategy that some on the pro-life side, not the abolitionist side, but the pro-life side want to use to try to overturn abortion. I get that. But to me, strategy aside, there's a moral question here that's more important.

And the moral question is, is murder actually wrong? Is murder sinful and should it be punishable? And that is not only a biblical question, but it's also a question of thousands of years of Western jurisprudence.

And the answer has traditionally been yes for murder. It's a life for a life. So anyway, that's that's the issue that's confronting us. And the Anthony, let's see here. The letter was signed by National Right to Life, March for Life Action, Susan B. Anthony List, Democrats for Life and the Southern Baptist Conventions, Ethics and Religious Liberty Council, among others.

So that is what's going on and that's what's causing a lot of the hubbub. And I should note that Abby Johnson, I guess, declined to sign this and went after the Louisiana right to life, which is good for her.

The ERLC, Brent Leatherwood, and the Charge of Protecting Mothers

So that's the Daily Wire article. And let's go to this is a letter itself, just so you can see here, an open letter to state lawmakers from America's leading pro-life organizations. And and so and if we type in there, it is actually right there.

Brent Leatherwood, the acting president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention, signed it. And you can see the list here. I mean, these are supposedly all pro-life people who are saying this is this isn't pro-life.

And it just makes you wonder, like, OK, well, how pro-life are you? How to what extent? I'm just curious, is the pro-life movement co-opted by people who really aren't that interested in actually treating the unborn as we treat the born?

Who really? What is this? Is this a strategic thing? What is this? So that brings me to this. Here's Brent Leatherwood, who took over for Russell Moore at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and was asked by an individual named Becca McCleary.

Is it true that your name is on the list that opposes the HB 813 bill to abolish abortion? And Brent Leatherwood says, Good evening, Becca. I joined a pro-life letter along with more than 70 other leaders in the pro-life movement to all state legislators across the country, not just one state.

Here's the gist, ban abortion, save lives, protect mothers, go after the abortionists. Yeah, it's just political talking points. Doesn't ban abortion. OK, that's what the bill does. Save lives. That's what the bill does.

Protect mothers. That's what. OK, so the bill is going to protect future mothers who have yet to be born. The bill is also going to protect mothers by criminalizing the people who encourage her to break the law.

But because the bill doesn't specifically create an exception for mothers to avoid prosecution for murdering their children or paying someone to murder their children or taking their children in to be murdered, I guess it doesn't protect mothers.

That's the only assumption I can draw and go after the abortionists. So Travis McNeely, who's a pastor down in Louisiana, said protect mothers who knowingly murder their babies. Come on, man. You are the acting president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

So you can't make it up. Now, Tom Askell actually said something. I was really happy that he said this. He said that the SBC has a rogue entity in the ERLC. Now, I think at this point, I'm doing some research this week on the Southern Baptist Convention.

I would kind of argue that like just about every entity in the SBC is a rogue entity at this point. The SBC is a rogue entity. But the ERLC, you know, I think what maybe the strategy possibly is or the thinking is that kind of the ERLCs out here separate them from the rest of the convention.

I don't know if that's what it is or what. But the SBC has a rogue entity in the ERLC. The messengers spoke loudly and clearly about their commitment to abolish abortion, which is very true. They did.

Black Voting Patterns, Abortion, and Moral Consistency

And then we have what I wanted to say, which is what you're not supposed to say. But why blacks vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, pastor of historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, Reverend Raphael Warnock explains.

John, how does this connect? Let me explain in just a moment here. I was looking up stats on this. So this is an article that was written November 3rd, 2014. OK, this is before Raphael Warnock got elected.

And he goes through all the reasons why, you know, basically the history of racism, etc. That's why black people are voting for the Democrats. You've heard this line so many times, but this is in the mainstream.

It's not just in evangelicalism. Now, here's something interesting to me. This is from the Pew Research Center, and it just talks about exit polls during the 2012 general election. Now, I didn't. There probably are more recent stats.

I don't know. And I doubt that they've changed that much. But here it is. Ninety five percent. Ninety five percent of black Protestants said they voted for Barack Obama. Ninety five percent. Now, this is the point that I wanted to make.

Oh, and there's one other. I forgot to mention this. Yeah, Al Mohler. Al Mohler made the argument, I guess, a few years ago. People are pulling this back up where he said, let me just before I get to that point, let me just read this because it's the same kind of argument the URLC is making, because this is when Trump made the argument about punishing women who choose to get abortions.

He said, who is the guilty party in abortion? Is it the person who brings about the death of the child? The woman seeking abortion is not without moral responsibility, but she is not herself bringing about the death of the unborn human baby.

That's the crucial issue. And that's why the pro-life movement has consistently sought to criminalize abortion at the level of the person performing the abortion. That is unlike what. All right. So that's anything that would seek to criminalize a woman for choosing to get an abortion, paying someone else to abort a child, taking advantage of resources that the state provides to abort a child.

But making that choice because the woman is responsible here to some extent. And he even admits that she's responsible. But any legal mechanism for applying that responsibility, that's not good. That's not good.

The Legacy of the Black Church on Abortion

All right. So anyway, back to the point I was making. So here's the deal. I hear so much about this, about evangelicalism. I'm dealing with this all the time. In fact, the last episode, we talked about this woke church debate that the gospel coalition had.

And the idea here is that the white people, white evangelicals, are so guilty because they didn't do enough to forward civil rights legislation and march in the streets and all of that back in the 1950s.

They just didn't do enough. And so they should be continually reaping the guilt of that and sitting in the guilt of it to lament their evil parents and grandparents. Right. We all know this. We talked about it.

Now, here's the thing. And I don't hear people saying this. I think people are reluctant to probably say it. I'm not afraid to say it, though. What is the legacy of black churches when it comes to the abortion issue?

Now, if your moral conscience says that, well, not doing enough to oppose segregation is far worse than promoting politicians who supported abortion, then I would want to say your moral conscience is probably broken.

Your moral conscience is probably broken. Murdering a child is a direct affront to God's law. It's not indirect. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. It just is evil. And so what we have with people who vote for Democrat candidates are people who have in the mind of David Platt and Mark Dever, they made a moral calculation and they've come out the other side thinking, well, it's permissible to vote for the Democrat candidate because, you know what?

Like, there's not much will probably be done to end abortion anyway. And so I think that these issues of disparities in between races, et cetera, are more important. And so I'll vote for the Democrat.

We've seen that's not true. It's the direct result of the election of Donald Trump that you even have the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned. So that logic doesn't fly anyway. But let's just grant that for a second, that it's morally permissible to vote for someone who is in favor of murdering against someone who is not in favor of murdering.

OK, these are your options. And it's because we take into account all these other moral issues. There's 1 ,500 pro-life issues, apparently. Now, one of the manipulative techniques, and I'm purposely calling it that, for promoting this idea is, and David Platt does it in his book on voting, is look at the black church.

Look at how the black church has voted for Democrats. How can you say that the black church is wrong? Are you a racist? That's the insinuation. Are you racist for questioning the wisdom of the black church?

I do question the wisdom of black Protestants who voted for Obama, apparently, according to an exit poll, upwards of 95 percent. Now, maybe that's inaccurate. Maybe it's lower. Let's say it's 80 percent.

Yeah, I question it still. I don't care if it's 55 percent. I question this. This is morally deficient thinking at best and evil at worst. This is the kind of logic that has led to the murder of millions of children.

Think about it this way. What if, from 1973, we'll say onward, black Protestants did not vote for candidates? I'm not saying they voted for Republicans. They just chose not to vote. We're not going to vote for a third party.

We're not voting for candidates who believe that it's okay to murder our children in the womb. What kind of a difference would be made in this country? How many lives would be saved? This doesn't even compare.

Even if you want to draw the narrative that segregation is the worst possible thing that could ever have happened, not even close. You want to run even the most liberal numbers on racially motivated lynchings?

Not even close. There's no contest. Even if you want to compare numbers of people who were enslaved up until the time of abolition in the United States, doesn't compare. All the wars that we have fought in the history of this country doesn't compare to the amount of children who have died from 1973 onward.

I think it's fair to say that if Black Protestants and you had Black pastors who were against this kind of thing and giving their people morally upright direction from the word of God, and they were voting accordingly and refusing to vote for candidates who supported abortion, I think we can honestly say it would probably look a lot different.

Roe v. Wade would have probably been overturned a lot sooner, and we still have yet to see if it will be. But what is that kind of a legacy? I would submit to you that is a much worse legacy than anything that is being attributed to the white evangelicals as a result of the color of compromise and all these Phil Vishers video and all these other things that are being put out there for vilifying white evangelicals.

I will submit to you that if you want to take the worst possible character of white evangelicals and compare it to that, there's no contest. The morally deficient thinking that has led to the election of pro-murder candidates is evil.

And I am kind of sick of this narrative of like, well, we have to look to the wisdom of the Black church, and the Black church has the gospel better because they care about injustice. Don't give me that.

You care about injustice and you're okay with murdering. That doesn't make any sense. So I realize it's not every Black church. I know that. I'm just, I'm, I'm putting the shoe on the other foot and I'm just applying equal weights and measures here.

If on the one hand, you want to say the white church is so bad because look, they're, they're watching Fox News and voting for Republicans. Then let's, let's, if you want to run the numbers, because not every white evangelical does that either, really.

They're not, not, I don't watch Fox News, but that, you know, let's, let's use that stereotype. Let's, let's paint with a broad brush here. Then, okay, let's paint with a broad brush over here. I'm just saying.

So I think whenever that narrative is brought up or, you know, with a legacy of the white church, I think that it's fair to ask, well, what's the legacy of the Black church on abortion and, and see what the response is.

And if they call you racist, I mean, that's just stupid. They're just not engaging in logic. You know, they've already lost at that point, the, the argument and whether or not they have a Twitter mob behind them doesn't matter.

They're morally inept. But I think it's a fair question. So I hope that encourages you somewhat and at least, you know, maybe helps you think through things in a way that you wouldn't have before this podcast, maybe.

And if you're in the Southern Baptist Convention, remember this, think about this. This is what your money's going to, the URLC and their logic in this. So anyway, God bless. Please pray for me as I travel and more coming next week.