The Center for Medical Progress’s undercover video expose of Planned Parenthood has handed the prolife movement an unprecedented show-and-tell opportunity. If you haven’t seen the videos, or have missed one or two, Julie Roys’s Guide to the Planned Parenthood Videos post is the place to go. The videos have reignited a volatile, long-standing social debate and breathed new life into an apathetic America. The videos have also shaken Washington and proved, in no uncertain terms, that the Democrat party is the party of abortion and the Republican party, with few exceptions, is completely unprepared to defend life. It’s time to come to terms with what the prolife movement faces time and time again, yet always seems to forget.
The end of abortion in America will not come through passage of laws. It will not come from defunding Planned Parenthood or exposing, once again, the fetal organ trade. But don’t misunderstand. Shining light in the deep darkness is good and necessary. Stopping the flow of taxpayer money to an organization that killed over 330,000 children last year is critical. However, these things require our politicians to act. And no matter how much they act, or don’t for that matter, these things won’t stop abortion. To stop something of this magnitude, with this much history, power, money, and political entanglement, We the People must be the ones to act. And we must act according to God’s will and timing.
What will you do when the last Planned Parenthood video is played?
Will you reluctantly resume your normal life, feeling disenfranchised and defeated? Will you become increasingly frustrated with your representatives, but feel otherwise powerless? Or will you fall in step with the media’s message, slide into apathy, and see the videos as an opportunity lost until, maybe, the next presidential election?
The answer lies in whether you see this unprecedented opportunity as one to change laws or one to change hearts. One requires slow, painstakingly frustrating political activism, with an outcome that is incremental and shakable. The other can be just as slow, just as painstakingly frustrating, but the outcome is eternal and the results here on Earth, lasting. My dear friend Rev. Brian Walker, Minnesota Director of the National Black Pro-Life Coalition puts it another way: “We should always be working to make abortion unthinkable.”
Think about this.
God used the courage, creativity, and tenacity of a 26-year-old videographer to strike a devastating blow against the abortion giant – a modern-day David and Goliath story. This victory, just like the one in the Bible, is part of a much, much bigger plan. It is one link in a long series of events that could be at the beginning, the middle, or the end. We’ll likely never see how God pieced together everything so perfectly for a time such as this. But we can see and experience a very tangible effect right now. And that is this: The Planned Parenthood videos caused pro-choice people, many for the first time, to see the truth about abortion and make a conscious decision to support it or not. Some denounced Planned Parenthood and walked into the light. Others doubled down. But God also laid out a crucial decision path for the pro-life movement.
Now is the time for us to decide whether this is the beginning, the middle, or the end. If it is the end, then by all means, let’s rally behind a pro-life presidential candidate and ramp this up again in 2016. Maybe then the 3,000 preborn children that die every day will see justice. But if it’s the beginning, or the middle, then we should all be on our knees right now asking God how He wants us to participate. It’s time to open our eyes and ears to the bigger plan and our part in it. It’s time to discover how our unique gifts and talents can be used by God to save lives and change hearts. It’s time to see this as a relational issue, not a transactional one.
It’s time to be the Church.
~ Sarah Quale, president of SpeakLife, Inc.
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