Taking on Ark Times Bloggers on various issues Part X “Somebody has to stand up to Planned Parenthood and their plans to get more government money!”(includes the film TRUTH AND HISTORY and editorial cartoon)

I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control  and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline Republican.

Somebody has to stand up to Planned Parenthood and their plans to get more government money!!!!

Lindsey Miller of the Arkansas Times Blog staff wrote on 3-6-13:

After the House voted today to override the governor’s veto…of the 12-week abortion ban, Sen. Jason Rapert celebrated by filing yet another bill aimed at curbing women’s access to care. It’s cookie-cutter legislation from Americans United for Life aimed at crippling Planned Parenthood. It would create a subchapter in Arkansas law called the “Defunding the Abortion Industry and Advancing Women’s Health Act of 2012”… that would prohibit any public money from going to any organization that directly or indirectly subsidizes an abortion provider.

The person using the username “OzarkTroutBum” posted on the Arkansas Times Blog on 3-6-13:

The Arkansas Tea-Taliban is wasting no time in taking us back in time.

The person using the username “arhogfan501” responded:

Yeah right! You’re a freaking idiot if you believe not one penny goes to fund or subsidize abortions.

The person using the username “baker” commented:

From the PPA latest 10/11 report seems they have assets of $1.2 billion and excess revenues of $87 million and received 45% of revenues from taxpayer funds so they’re not running short for their 97% “free and affordable access to breast exams, contraceptives and sexual education” services. That remaining 3% add up to 333,964 abortions for the year, a record number. Now they did make 2,300 adoption referrals but provided less than 30,000 prenatal services and some 40% of the “contraceptive services” were 1.4 million emergency contraception kits. This year all affiliates will begin pushing abortion services. PPA does not nor cannot provide mammograms, indeed no affiliate has the necessary license. PPA is an abortion provider and at some 900 plus killings a day rather prolific.

The person using the username “tautara” commented:

“War on Women”? Nice play on words by the media. More an attempt to cut costs. “Planned parenthood” is a waste of money… our money… tax payers money. A man pays for a condom, as it should be. A woman, who I consider a complete equal, is more than capable of taking responsibility of her own sex life, no different than a man. Apparently “equality” ends when it doesn’t suit. Now politicians attempting to correct a situation are made out to be evil doing hate mongers. It is a skewed society in which we live….To add to my last comment, I also add a man pays for all of his medical bills. We pay for prostate exams, as well as other personal medical conditions. It is up to both men and women to be responsible regarding sexual activity. It is not a requirement of the tax payer to cover the blatant disregard of responsibility of anyone! Being ignorant of the law has never been a valid excuse, nor has being drunk been a valid excuse for our mistakes. We take exception to this when it comes to sexual behavior while we certainly don’t give a tax break to the drunk driver, or the person “ignorant’ to any given law. Our society is removing accountability. It is as simple as that.

I also got a chance to put my say:

Some people wonder why Jason Rapert is doing what he is doing and the answer can be found here last week in this story about Dr.Koop.

Diana Chandler of Baptist Press wrote:
Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, widely credited with energizing evangelicals against abortion, died peacefully Feb. 25 at his home in Hanover, N.H., at age 96….In the 1979 book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” Koop and the late Frances Schaeffer made a case for the importance of mankind’s intrinsic God-given value in the preservation of humanity.

“If man is not made in the image of God, nothing then stands in the way of inhumanity. There is no good reason why mankind should be perceived as special. Human life is cheapened,” the two wrote. “We can see this in many of the major issues being debated in our society today: abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, the increase of child abuse and violence of all kinds, pornography (and its particular kinds of violence as evidenced in sadomasochism), the routine torture of political prisoners in many parts of the world, the crime explosion, and the random violence which surrounds us.”

Koop and Schaeffer endeavored to “awaken the evangelical world — and anyone else who would listen — to the Christian imperative to do something to reverse the perilous realignment of American values on these life-and-death issues” including abortion and infanticide, Koop reflected in his 1991 autobiography, “Koop: The Memoirs of America’s Family Doctor.”

Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land has written that “it is difficult to overestimate the incredible impact” Koop and Schaeffer had on evangelicals in the 20th century.

“Everyone devoted to the pro-life cause owes an incalculable debt of gratitude to Francis Schaeffer and to Dr. C. Everett Koop,” Land wrote for National Right to Life in 2003. “First Schaeffer, and then Dr. Koop, helped inform and energize a whole generation of evangelical Christians to engagement with a culture that had veered dangerously off course from its Judeo-Christian foundations. The pro-life movement owes them an enormous debt.”

C. Ben Mitchell, professor of moral philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn., hailed Koop’s legacy.

“We have lost the nation’s doctor,” Mitchell told Baptist Press. “As a gifted physician and faithful Christian, he taught us how to heal both body and soul. As a public servant he helped us navigate some tumultuous waves, even causing a few of his own. As a protector of human dignity and the sanctity of human life he cared for the tiniest and most vulnerable among us.”
________________
Before Dr. C. Everett Koop arrived in 1981 as Surgeon General could anybody ever name who the Surgeon General was? Koop also caused lots of editorial cartoons to be drawn about him because of his positions he took on health issues. This cartoon below sums up the issues he tackled.
https://thedailyhatch.org/2013/03/07/rememb…

In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented  against abortion (Episode 1),  infanticide (Episode 2),   euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close look at the truth claims of the Bible.

I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.  Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.

___________

Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 5) TRUTH AND HISTORY

Published on Oct 7, 2012 by

________________

Schaeffer’s works prepared him for the coming battle on abortion. He was truly a prophet that knew what was coming down the pike. In 1969 my former pastor Bill Elliff was a college student and someone told him about Francis Schaeffer speaking at Wheaton college in Chicago. He drove up  there and heard him speak. He spoke about abortion and assisted suicide and many of the social changes that would be happening in the next few decades. Schaeffer really did see where humanism would take our society and he was right.

Compassionate Engagement, Part 4: A Few of Schaeffer’s Most Significant Works

By Derek Brown on January 11, 2012

Part 1     Part 2     Part 3

The subject matter of Schaeffer’s speaking tours would eventually become the content of three important books, The God who is There, Escape from Reason, He is There and He is Not Silent, published in 1968, 1969, and 1972 respectively.  In these books Schaeffer sought to demonstrate, from a sweeping account of Western intellectual history, how the paradigm for the understanding of truth had changed dramatically over the last seven-hundred years and how Christianity, which requires an antithetical framework in order to maintain coherence, had become exceptionally difficult to communicate in the contemporary setting which did not believe in a unified answer to knowledge and life (Bryan Follis, Truth with Love: The Apologetics of Francis Schaeffer).

Schaeffer tackled this communication problem by not only making his readers aware of the epistemological shift, but also by encouraging them to consider how denial of Christian presuppositions leads to a denial of reality.  Christians not only need to understand where men and women had come from (in regards to the influence of Western thought upon their own presuppositions), but also how to “push [them] towards the logic of [their] own positions…” in order to help them see the inadequacy of their presuppositions (Schaeffer, Trilogy: The God who is There, 139).

As a result of his many talks at colleges and universities throughout the United States and the subsequent publishing his first two books, The God who is There and Escape from Reason, Schaeffer’s popularity steadily grew.  He would publish another book shortly after Escape from Reason entitled Death in the City, which called Christians to reclaim pure doctrine amidst growing liberalism and to renew their commitment to a biblical lifestyle.

Schaeffer expressed the concern that, as the culture drifted from absolutes maintained by a biblical world-view, people lost what it meant to be human and made in the image of God.  This devastating trend needed a strong counter, and Schaeffer argued the answer to this impending crisis would come from Christians as they demonstrated that the Christian life was meant to fulfill the entire person and return man to what he was always meant to be (Hankins, 112).  Materialistic philosophy—which denied the supernatural—led to meaninglessness and despair; Christianity rightly understood would lead to joy and purposeful living—to being fully human.

In 1970, Schaeffer began to expend efforts in applying Christian truth to other important but heretofore neglected areas.  In Pollution and the Death of Man, Schaeffer would argue for a Christian understanding of ecology.  Schaeffer would argue that pantheism, while attempting to save the natural environment, actually removed the grounds for human preservation and protection of the environment—if there is no difference between a man and a plant, then on what basis can we appeal to unique human responsibility?  He would also establish the truth that only a biblical world-view provides the framework within which to develop a proper environmentalism (Hankins, 119).  Nature, because it has its origin from God, has value in itself (Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man, 48).

Thus, although Christians were to exercise dominion over the creation, they were also morally obligated to avoid exploitation of the creation—they are to “[exercise] dominion without being destructive:” trees should be plundered and animals should be killed for the purpose of providing shelter and food, not for mere sport (Schaeffer, Pollution, 72).  Proper care for the environment flowing from a Christian world-view would, Schaeffer believed, diminish current ecological problems.  Schaeffer would also voice what he perceived as a biblical position in the area of economics in his book, No Little People.

Throughout No Little People and throughout other writings related to the issue of economics, Schaeffer would admonish Christians to a “compassionate use of accumulated wealth” and exhort Christian employers to take less profit so their employees could make considerably more than the going wage rate (Hankins, 133).  Schaeffer believed the world would wake up and listen to the church as she spoke and lived counter to the treasured American principle of undisturbed personal peace and prosperity.  Another major work—one by which Schaeffer would become especially known—was his film, How Shall We Then Live.

In 1973, Schaeffer embarked on a filmmaking project that would trace the history of western thought, beginning with the Greeks and Romans, demonstrating that when a society drifts from presuppositions that provide a basis for transcendent morality (like Rome), that society eventually self-destructs.  Schaeffer would further argue that the church, through the middle ages, had been guilty of imbibing Greek and Roman ideas which eventually led to a distortion of biblical Christianity.  The Reformation, while not perfect, reclaimed much of biblical Christianity and had profound and positive affects on Western culture.  The Enlightenment, however, led to a strong affirmation of human autonomy and had devastating affects on human society.  According to Schaeffer, Hankins writes, “The message was clear: The Reformation, with its Christian base, leads to democracy; the Enlightenment, with its humanistic and secular base, leads to dictatorship and communism” (Hankins, 165-171; George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 245).

How Shall We Then Live, which three years after the release of the film became a popular book, finally was a call to culture war.  Schaeffer held out two options to Christians: they could either compromise and accept the culture’s prevailing humanistic notions, or they could go to battle with the culture (Hankins, 175). The issue that pervaded this call to action was the volatile matter of abortion; this would lead Schaeffer personally into the fray alongside others in the pro-life movement.

Next: Compassionate Engagement, Part 5: Political Activism

I was sad to read about Susan G. Komen’s organization supporting Planned Parenthood who is the largest abortion provider in the country. Here is an editorial cartoon that addresses that issue:

Related posts:

By Everette Hatcher III, on May 23, 2013 at 1:11 am, under Francis Schaeffer, Prolife. No Comments
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