By L.A. Williams, Correspondent
Christian Action League
Pro-life advocates in North Carolina will no doubt greet this weekend’s Sanctity of Human Life Sunday with a mixture of emotions — thankful that the state’s General Assembly took some positive action this session to protect the unborn, but also heartbroken for the thousands of babies still being aborted each year.
“Since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 more than 50 million abortions have been recorded in the U.S.,” said the Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League. “It’s not easy to picture the bodies of more than 50 million babies. So let me put it to you this way. In the years since the Supreme Court legalized abortion, we have snuffed out a population approximately the size of Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming combined.”
This year’s Sanctity of Human Life Sunday falls on the exact day of the Roe v. Wade anniversary and will kick off Sanctity of Human Life Week. The annual March for Life in the nation’s capital is set for Monday, Jan. 23. Churches are urged to observe the commemoration not only during Sunday worship, but to help educate their congregations on issues such as abortion, stem cell research and assisted suicide. Established via a proclamation from President Ronald Reagan in 1983, the day is set aside to honor the value of human life from conception to natural death.
Lawmakers this session put into place three new laws to help protect the unborn: the Woman’s Right to Know Act (H-854), Ethen’s Law (H-215), and H-289, which authorizes a Choose Life Specialty Plate.
The Woman’s Right to Know Act, which ensures that women seeking an abortion get a chance to view an ultrasound and have a 24-hour waiting period to carefully weigh all of their options, is expected to save hundreds of lives every year. Abortion forces feverishly fought this measure, as lawmakers voted to approve it and then voted again to override the Governor’s veto.
“A judge enjoined the ultrasound provision of the bill, which simply requires that a woman be availed of an opportunity to see her unborn child and hear its heart beat, but we are optimistic that the court will reestablish that provision in the appeals process,” said Dr. Creech.
Another legislative victory, Ethen’s Law established that when a pregnant woman is murdered or injured seriously enough to lose her baby, there are two victims and not just one. The bill was modeled after the federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act.
Further, a bill that would authorize the production of a “Choose Life” specialty license plate to benefit crisis pregnancy centers was also passed.
“That bill too is currently tied up in the courts, but once again we feel confident it will likely survive the appeals process,” Dr. Creech said, adding that it is God’s laws that matter most.
“Abortion would virtually disappear tomorrow if it were not for the willful violation of God’s charter for marriage, sexual purity, and the family. In our day, we have tried to our own demise to separate God’s trinity of human sexuality – marriage – sex – and procreation. Whenever we willfully separate one of these from one or both of the other two, we desecrate God’s order,” he said.
“Part of the harvest of this sin is the tragic and bloody death of tens of millions of tiny babies. Although we have made abortion legal, although we have made it accessible, respectable, commonplace, and politically correct; the fact remains it is a heinous sin that God will not tolerate indefinitely. God will certainly right this wrong, if we will not!”
The Christian Action League encourages churches across the state to take advantage of resources provided by the Family Research Council as well as Focus on the Family. Those are available at the following links: http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=BC07J02&f=LH07A04, http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WM12A03, and http://www.heartlink.org/beavoice/.