I have never read such a great overview of the pro-life movement as the one below. I learned a lot from it and wanted to pass it on to you.

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.

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

Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis

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Past Failures and Future Resolves 
in the Battle for Human Life

By Wesley Strackbein

America’s holocaust continues.

Today more than 3,000 children will be murdered in the womb through surgical abortion. These dead children will be heaped on the more than 54 million others who have preceded them since the darkest day in American legal history which occurred when the Roe v. Wade decision was rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court. Forty years ago today, our nation’s highest court legally sanctioned the killing of the unborn.

As we consider this bloody slaughter, it behooves us to ask three key questions: How did Roe v. Wade come about? What has been the Church’s response over the last forty years? And, where do we go from here?

The Legal Backdrop for Roe: 
The Abandonment of Original Intent

In examining America’s legal history, it is clear that Roe v. Wade did not arise out of a vacuum. The decision flowed from a legal trend that had been in motion for more a hundred years in which the meaning of the U.S. Constitution was being increasingly redefined based on the view that it was an “evolving document.” Rather than defending its original intent as envisioned by the drafters of the Constitution, the black robed judges who presided over our nation’s courts were interpreting it to suit their own personal notions of what they deemed best for society.

This trend is pointedly illustrated in a seminal case that the Supreme Court handed down in 1965, eight years before Roe was decided — Griswold v. Connecticut.

Doug Phillips, a constitutional attorney and the founder of Vision Forum Ministries, notes the significance of this earlier landmark decision: “You cannot understand Roe unless you understand Griswold, and you cannot understand Griswold unless you understand the changing nature of judicial interpretation.”

In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court struck down a law which forbade contraception use on the basis of “the right to privacy,” a doctrine found nowhere in the Constitution, yet one the justices derived from the “penumbras” and “emanations” of the document.

Phillips explains the Court’s strategy in invoking these terms in Griswold:

[The court] is speaking of little glowing halos around the broad-sweeping principles that are somehow emitted from the Constitution. In point of fact, they are telling us there is nothing in the Constitution that grants ‘the right to privacy,’ but it sure seems like it should be there. . . . What happened in Griswold laid the groundwork for Roe and the murder of unborn children.

The Hammer Falls: 
“Unborn Children are Not Persons”

The case of Roe v. Wade involved a suit made on behalf of Norma McCorvey (under the alias of “Jane Roe ”) who was unable to secure an abortion in Texas based on the state’s law at the time. While she had already given birth to her child by the time the case was heard, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of McCorvey on appeal in a 7-2 decision, invoking the “right of privacy” rationale that had been invented in Griswold.

While the Court was less than confident in defending the “right of privacy” doctrine from the Constitution itself, it nonetheless expanded it to include the right of a mother to murder her unborn child. In writing the majority opinion for the court, Justice Harry Blackmun stated:

[The] right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or . . . in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

Even as the justices in the majority invoked the Fourteenth Amendment as a purported “source” for the so-called “right to privacy,” the Supreme Court did an in-run around the Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause — which stipulates that “no state shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws” — by denying the personhood of children in the womb.

Blackmun wrote: “the word ‘person,’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.”

Justice Byron White and William Rehnquist — the two judges who opposed the decision — took the majority’s reasoning to task in their dissent:

I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court’s judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant women and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes.

The Cultural Landscape: 
A Weak and Abdicated Church

Though the legal trends that lead to Roe v. Wade are important to examine, even more important is where the Church was during this time.

Dan Becker, President of Georgia Right to Life and Field Director of Personhood USA, puts the matter bluntly: “How did [Roe] come about? It came about because of the absence of the Church.”

Doug Phillips agrees:

The Church completely abdicated from speaking to the legal, ethical, and biblical principles that apply to culture and to law. When Roe was ultimately declared by the Court, many Evangelical Christians had nothing to say to it, because they didn’t have a biblical worldview. For more than a century, the Church had increasingly resorted to a form of religious pietism which had no practical application to life and important cultural issues. The result was lamentable — the withdraw of the Church from every area of society meant the demise of our culture and our law system.

Dr. George Grant, a pro-life advocate who has written prolifically in defense of the unborn, offers a similar view.

As the Church, Grant states, “we were not preaching the Word of God, we were not training and equipping disciples, we were not reinforcing and strengthening the family and the other spheres.”

This led, argues Grant, to “a Church that had so marginalized itself intellectually and culturally that it was constitutionally incapable of speaking to the problems [of the day] articulately. That set up Roe v. Wade.”

Delving deeper, Phillips points to the blights of social Darwinism, utilitarianism, and radical feminism as key cultural forces that paved the way for Roe.

While the Church, for example, has historically embraced the sanctity of life from conception to death and welcomed children as a blessing, American Evangelicals in the twentieth century forsook these roots for a selfish course rooted in humanistic, evolutionary theory. Phillips observes:

The Church embraced the basic tenets of Margaret Sanger’s vision for the eugenic age which said that some people life is not worth living; that men can lawfully manipulate their reproduction; and that some babies shouldn’t be brought into this world.

One result attending this shift was that, by the middle decades of the twentieth century, mainline evangelical churches had embraced contraceptive use as a legitimate practice. In 1960, the Church accepted use of the Pill, which is known to act as an abortifacient. This occurred despite the fact that, prior to the last century, the orthodox Church has universally condemned contraceptive use as a selfish perversion of God’s design for human intimacy between husband and wife.

To paraphrase Hosea’s indictment: We sowed the wind — and when Roe was handed down on January 22, 1973 — we reaped the worldwind.

The Church Awakes: 
Whatever Happened to the Human Race?

Though the pall of death loomed over America’s unborn with the Roedecision, the Evangelical Church was not quick to wake from its slumber. While Roman Catholics were faster on point in the battle over the sanctity of human life, Protestants throughout the ’70s largely stayed on the sidelines.

Many longstanding leaders in the pro-life movement who are still active today credit Francis Schaeffer as a key prod who prompted Protestants to enter the fight. Dr. George Grant notes the significance of Schaeffer’s 1979 book and accompanying video, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, which confronted the issues of abortion, euthanasia, and infanticide; as well as Schaeffer’s best-selling book, A Christian Manifesto, released in 1981, as works that spurred many Evangelicals to engage the arena in defense of life.

Dan Becker of Georgia Right to Life offers these comments:

“Francis Schaeffer was the one who brought most of the evangelical church to the pro-life movement itself back in the early ’80s. It was totally absent from the culture completely, prior to anything having to do with the sanctity of life. It wasn’t on the radar of [most] churches” until Schaeffer brought it to their attention.

Jim Zes, a Reformed Baptist who has been fighting for the sanctity of life for many years in the St. Louis area, remembers a billboard Schaeffer took out in a major Florida city that said, in essence, “Abortions clinics are open with permission by the Church of Jesus Christ.”

Schaeffer’s salvo on the Church’s lethargy is a theme that has motivated Zes to remain engaged in this battle for the long haul.

The Roaring ’80s: 
Progress and Compromise

As the ’80s progressed, pro-life Evangelicals gained more traction, notoriety, and influence. 1988 was a particularly noteworthy year for the movement on several fronts. On the fifteenth anniversary of Roe, Dr. George Grant published Grand Illusions, an earth-shattering expose of the legacy of Planned Parenthood that became a best-seller which has since been reissued in numerous languages and editions.

Also that year, Operation Rescue, under Randall Terry’s leadership, staged a series of controversial abortion clinic blockades in Atlanta, Georgia, surrounding the Democratic National Convention which resulting in more than 1,200 arrests.

Yet while the pro-life movement gained remarkable ascendancy and public awareness at this time, it was during this same general period that the movement on the whole took a turn for the worse, in terms of its core commitments.

The derailment occurred in conjunction with proposed changes to the Hyde Amendment, which since 1976 had banned federal Medicaid funding for abortion. In 1981, pro-lifers strenuously fought for rape, incest, and health of the mother exceptions of the mother to be dropped from the Hyde Amendment and won. Throughout the ’80s, the advocacy of such exceptions was deemed unacceptable by the major pro-life organizations, both Catholic and Protestant.

However, as the ’80s were coming to a close, the debate over the Hyde Amendment was reopened on Capitol Hill, and the exceptions of rape and incest came to the fore of the discussion.

“This led to a debate within the [pro-life] movement about whether or not it would damage the underlying presupposition that all life is sacred and should be protected as an inalienable right,” notes Dan Becker.

In a radical departure, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Right to Life Committee, and other leading pro-life organizations signed off on the changes and created a “new normal” of what it means to be pro-life — that a politician or other operative in the political arena can support the murder of one category of children and still be deemed “pro-life.”

Looking back on this titanic sea-change, Becker notes the fall-out that resulted: “By abandoning the basic Christian premise of imago Dei, we invited a pragmatism based on natural law. We compromised and capitulated to the point in the pro-life movement where it became ineffectual—both politically and as a preservative agent as salt.”

Becker explains the folly of the rape and incest exception according to God’s law, a principle long recognized in English common law:

Deuteronomy 24:16 says that a child shall not be put to death for the crimes of its father. That means that if a rapist commits an act of violence against a woman, and she conceives, we [must] protect that child, and we [must] advocate that that child should not pay the penalty for its father’s sin.

In assenting to the Hyde Amendment exceptions, a Pandora’s box of compromise was opened. From it came a broader unbiblical strategy that included support of parental notification laws, 24-hour waiting periods, and various other legislation that conceded the premise of the debate.

Pro-lifers were now supporting bills which said in so many words, “You can kill your child, so long as your parents approve; you can kill your child, so long as you wait 24 hours before the knife falls.”

Incrementalism: The Good and the Bad

Many critical of such compromises don’t suggest that incrementalism in the fight for of life is wrong in all cases, but that incrementalism should only be pursued when the core principles of the sanctity of all human life are maintained, not undermined.

Doug Phillips remarks: “If we can pass pro-life laws that don’t ratify the foundation of abortion’s ‘lawfulness,’ or reinforce the wickedness of abortion as a practice, this is something worth pursuing.”

Dan Becker notes that creating tension over competing legal precedents has warrant when done on the right terms: “You can identify a class of human life that you can protect, as long as you don’t name a physical class that you won’t protect, and therefore become complicit.”

In considering positive examples of incrementalism, Dr. Grant commends William Wilberforce for consideration: “When you look at the incrementalism strategies of someone like a Wilberforce . . . the incrementalism reforms were never couched in such a way as to concede the original premise.”

Grant also highlights the wrong approach to incrementalism that officials in Amsterdam took in response to prostitution, “They said we are not going to be able to ban prostitution, so we’ll isolate it and stigmatize it. So what happens then is that it becomes a tourist attraction. You can’t concede the premise of an opponent’s argument.”

Phillips warns of the danger of so-called “victories” that concede the foundation:

The idea that we are accomplishing a victory by ratifying the execution of children on the condition that the mother or father of the baby have sort of warning of the emotional or psychological effect that may occur if they murder their child, or that a cancerous effect may result — that it’s okay to kill as long as we “notify” — is simply horrific. It’s an ethical nightmare which reinforces the very thing we are fighting against.

Score-Card Gamesmanship: 
Pro-Death is the New Pro-Life

A prominent feature of the compromised political strategy employed by Evangelical pro-life groups is how they have score-carded candidates on the issues.

The National Right to Life Committee has been particularly notorious in this regard. The NRLC, for example, endorsed Republican presidential candidates Sen. John McCain and Gov. Mitt Romney as “pro-life” when their past track records as well as contemporary statements provided no defensible basis for such recognition. Both McCain and Romney have consistently supported the murder of children conceived by rape and incest, and have vocally advocated weakening the Republican Party Platform on abortion, among other troubling actions on their part that have threatened the sanctity of life.

But it’s not just presidential races where National Right to Life has gone askew. Last year, the NRLC got well-deserved blowback from the Boston Globe when they spent $45,000 sending out mailers in support of Sen. Scott Brown, who openly supports legalized abortion.

Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham leveled the boom on NRLC: “Even though Brown has been loudly proclaiming that he favors abortion rights, the antiabortion group gave him a 100 percent rating in his first year as a senator, and an 80 percent rating in his second. And it continues to shower him with paper roses.”^[1]

The flier that the NRLC mailed in support of Sen. Brown showed a picture of a fetus, a little baby, and an older woman. The flier’s headline was hardly subtle: “It’s time to take America back. . . for LIFE!”^[2]

When confronted on this hypocrisy, David O’Steen, executive director of the National Right to Life, admitted that the NRLC sometime supports candidates who favor legalized abortion.

“He is pro-choice,” O’Steen stated. But “if you look at the two candidates, Elizabeth Warren’s position is very extreme. She can only be characterized as pro-abortion.”^[3]

Dr. George Grant comments on this trend which he has observed for more than two decades.

The reality is that Al Gore was never pro-life. When he was a [U.S.] rep and then a Senator [from Tennessee], he was never the pro-life, southern Conservative he was made out to be,” who then “converted” to become pro-choice when he was tagged to run as Bill Clinton’s running mate in 1992.

“It was the silly scorecards that took such a shallow representations of [Gore’s] voting record and declared him to be pro-life,” remarks Grant. “But he was always . . . rooted in Bismarkian, Nietzschean, real politick.”

The way a policy group scores candidates reveals their priorities, Grant maintains.

“Most scorecards emerge from institutions that have agendas, and the scorecards usually say more about the agenda of the organization than the candidates themselves,” he notes. “The onus is on pastors to inform their congregations that this is the case.”

This said, Grant does see some value in scorecards, but encourages them to be used only as a first to step getting an education about a particular candidate or candidates, as they have inherent limitations.“There are always hazards to any kind of shorthand, any kind of abbreviated declaration.”

Doug Phillips argues that policy groups should stop misleading others about candidates’ positions when life is at stake and simply tell the truth. “What we need to be saying is not, ‘This candidate is pro-life with exceptions; but this candidate is pro-death with exceptions. This person believes that it’s okay to kill some babies, but not all of them.’”

Appealing to the fundamentals, Phillips offers this as the benchmark in endorsing candidates for public office:

We should never support a candidate who supports the murder of any children through abortion. And until our candidates know that, they are going to keep saying and doing only as much as they have to in order to appease us.

Back on Track: 
Saving the 100, Not Just the 99

Despite negative trends among various leading pro-life groups, the leadership of a number of state organizations has openly repented of past compromise and purposed to return to biblical foundations and definitions in the battle for human life.

Among them is Georgia Right to Life who, in the year 2000, jettisoned the “rape and incest exception” as an acceptable “pro-life” position and has self-consciously sought to return the national debate back to the foundational argument of “personhood” that was a main focus of the pro-life movement prior to the Hyde Amendment compromise.

Tennessee and Alabama’s pro-life groups have followed suit in rejecting “rape and incest exception” in their candidate endorsement policy.

Dan Becker, who is the current president of Georgia Right to Life, notes the blessing that has occurred since GRL made this change twelve years ago.

“Georgia is the only state in the nation where all nine statewide offices that are elected by the voters statewide are pro-life without exception,” he observes. “We have gone from the 50th most protected state in the nation to the 9th.”

Becker adds this salvo: “No longer do we say, ‘We’re going to save the 99 and pray for the 1.’ We’re going to save all 100.”

While GRL’s position is not without major detractors in the movement, Becker is positive about the opportunities that their stand for principle has opened up for them.

“We are impacting the movement in ways that are exciting, new, and effective,” he remarks. “I’ve [now] been tasked to implement the Georgia model in other states. The [fight for personhood] is the new paradigm of pro-life activity for the 21st Century.”

Personhood Is the Battle: 
The Challenges that Lie Ahead

Becker’s insistence that “personhood” return to the center of the debate is based squarely on principle — yet it also anticipates the future horrors on the horizon that will come if this standard is not thoroughly defended and upheld. And the battleground, Becker maintains, is far broader than simply abortion.

“Because we’ve only been anti-abortion — instead of thoroughly defending the doctrine of imago Dei [in all that it entails] — we are only operating on one cylinder, while the culture is running on twelve cylinders,” Becker notes.

He then explains the implications:

We have ceded a lot of battleground in the emerging technologies and on the issue of personhood for the elderly. Because of the burgeoning [aging Baby Boomers], we will see the fight for personhood become increasing important for the elderly, as their personhood is denied through rationed healthcare decisions that define who is protected under the law and who is not.

Great challenges already exist in the field of genetics, as arguments for trans-humanism are being advanced by medical practitioners and ethicists who deny that man is created in God’s image with certain inherent limitations that he, as a creature, is not free to manipulate.

“’When are we human?’ is being debated — what is a human being? — the definition is up for grabs right now,” remarks Becker. “What if we’re okay with trans-genic animal/human hybrids, and we start tinkering with that in our law to allow for it?”

He also comments on the popularity of Spiderman, the Hulk, Ironman, etc. and states that the genetic-manipulation and “enhancements” of these Comic Book icons so popular on the big screen reflect part of a real, raging debate in academia that is hardly fiction.

As complicated and thorny as all of this is, Becker argues that the answer at its core is really quite simple.

“It’s the doctrine of imago Dei,” he says. “As a culture and as a political system . . . [we must call on all] to recognize what God has already granted — an inalienable right to life based on the doctrinal teaching we have understood that has shaped Western history two or three times over the last two thousand years.”

A Blueprint for Victory: 
Humble Repentance for Our Sins

The last forty years have been one of horror and bloodshed for the unborn.

The question now is: Where do we go from here?

Dr. George Grant asserts that the Evangelical Church must begin by getting its priorities straight.

Commenting on the recent Newtown massacre, he laments, “More Christians are concerned that their Second Amendment gun rights are being taken away than seeing the inconsistencies in this rhetoric, given the murder today of 3,300 children, and tomorrow of 3,300 children, and the next day of 3,300 children.”

Jim Zes emphasizes the need for the Church to not only focus on missions of mercy, such as crisis pregnancies centers and adoption — both of which play an important role in Christian outreach — but for the Church to reclaim its prophetic voice and, once again, call good, “good” and evil “evil” and to confront the culture courageously.

Zes says we must affirm God’s law as the standard as part of a clear Gospel message of repentance and hope.

Dr. Grant agrees with this assessment, but says our voice of confrontation to the culture should only sound once we as the Church confess our own sins and repent. “The need in our day is to not so much practice Jeremiads, but Nehemiads.”

He then explains the quandary. “There’s much to lament; there’s much to critique in our culture,” he confesses. “[Y]et the Church is in no position to give our culture Jeremiads because we are so compromised. We can’t give Jeremiads of substance because we are guilty of virtually anything we might lament.”

Our first step, Grant asserts, is for Christians “to come to the ruin and cry out to Almighty God in all humility, as Nehemiah does in Nehemiah 1, and get busy with the hard work of cleaning up the rubble.”

Grant’s main point is this: We can’t take our axe to the culture’s idols until we’ve cleaned up our own house.

Doug Phillips offers these sobering words in closing the discussion: “How can we possibly expect to win the battle for life when we are killing our own children in the womb through abortifacient contraception-when we’re refusing to take an uncompromising stand for all of life?”

Hosea’s pointed words are timely for today’s wayward Church:

Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. . . . Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.” (Hosea 6:1-3)

As we battle for the sanctity of all human life, we as the Church must forsake our wickedness, fall on our face in humility, and repent.

Only then should we expect God’s favor on our land.

[1] Yvonne Abraham, “Senator Brown trying to have it both ways,” Boston Globe, October 28, 2012.
[2] Noah Bierman, “Antiabortion group sends out mailers for Scott Brown, who favors legalized abortion,” Boston Globe, October 25, 2012.
[3] Ibid.

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Dr. Koop

Memorial Tribute Former Surgeon General C.Everett Koop © A Genuine G-Shot.wmv

On 2-25-13 we lost a great man when we lost Dr. C. Everett Koop. I have written over and over the last few years quoting Dr. C. Everett Koop and his good friend Francis Schaeffer. They both came together for the first time in 1973 when Dr. Koop operated on Schaeffer’s daughter and as a result they became close friends. That led to their involvement together in the book and film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” in 1979.

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. 

In this 1979 film series they dealt with the big social issues and predicted what social problems we have in the future because of humanism. For instance, they knew that the Jack Kevorkians of the world would be coming down the pike. They predicted that there was a slippery slope from abortion to infanticide to youth euthanasia brought on by the materialistic worldview.

Dr. C. Everett Koop: RIP

By Dave Andrusko

Dr. C. Everett Koop

I had already left the office Monday when pro-life former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop died at 96 years of age. Yesterday I was called away on other business, so it was not until today that I have an opportunity to address Dr. Koop’s passing.

Over the years we’ve talked a lot about Dr. Koop in conjunction with the agenda-changing impact of “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” I will again, briefly, in a moment. But first I’d like to look back at one of THE great National Right to Life Conventions—1985–which took place right here in Washington, DC.

The cover photo for the NRL News devoted to that historic gathering was of Mother Teresa holding a baby, her face positively radiant. During the three-day convention, she was joined at the podium by John Cardinal O’Connor and Dr. Kopp, who was by then President Reagan’s Surgeon General.

Think about that: three pro-life titans. If you were there, believe me, you could never forget any of the speeches, but especially those of Mother Teresa, Cardinal O’Connor, and Surgeon General Koop. (If that weren’t enough, the late Dr. Bernard Nathanson, one of the half-dozen most famous pro-life converts ever, spoke, as did Steven Mosher, who was the earliest—if not the first—to talk about China’s One-Child Policy backed up by forced abortion.)

Dr. Koop never shied away from a controversy nor a controversial issue, which meant he was the recipient of enormous praise and harsh, harsh criticism. At the 1985 NRLC Convention, he talked briefly about abortion and infanticide before turning to euthanasia. I happened to run across a copy of his prepared remarks, and they are—as they say—prophetic.

He alluded briefly to “Infant Doe,” which when used generically refers to babies born with problems who are not treated. Used specifically “Infant Doe” is an allusion to the 1982 case in Indiana. The child was born with a relatively minor eating difficulty(esophageal atresia –his esophagus was blocked) and with surgery he could eat.  Tragically his parents chose otherwise, and he starved to death. But his real “problem” was not a blocked esophagus. It was that he was born with Down syndrome.

One of the grim but illustrative comparisons in a very powerful speech was between “Infant Doe” and what Koop called “Granny Doe.” His point was that as heart-wrenching and cruel and inhumane it was not to treat babies born with disabilities, for every Infant Doe “there could be 15,000-20,000 Granny Does” in the next century.

“You have to arouse the family obligation toward the elderly in families,” Koop aid. If the elderly are not going to be abandoned we will have to look to extend families in many instances, And finally, churches, civic groups, and community effort can all work individually or together to provide resources for the elderly that will lift them out of those areas where decisions are likely to be made against them.” He added, “We have to find the people….we have to find the forces…and we have to find ways to fight disease, disability, and distress, And we have to keep on fighting until we win.”

To come full circle, as I mentioned at the top Dr. Koop and theologian Francis Schaeffer wrote a book together, along with a film series, that rocked the evangelical world out of its complacency. “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?”

As Dr. Jean Garton explained, in a review for NRL News (see http://nrlc.cc/XiQJS2),

“The text and narration of the five-episode seminar were by Francis Schaeffer, an internationally acclaimed theologian, philosopher, and author, and C. Everett Koop, then surgeon-in-chief at Philadelphia’s Children’s Hospital. They combined their individual expertise and experience to expose the subtle but rapid loss of human rights in America.

“They elaborated on those concerns in a textbook of the same name in which they explored in documented detail the growing acceptance of the once-unthinkable practices of abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia.”

If you’re of a certain age (mine) and an evangelical ( me), you remember like it was yesterday sitting down to watch the film series. You came away knowing you could no longer sit on the sidelines. The impact of Schaeffer and Koop on a generation of pro-lifers is impossible to exaggerate.

Our prayers go out to Dr. Koop’s family.

Here is another great pro-life editorial cartoon:

Dr. C. Everett Koop is pictured above.

Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE

Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis

 

Dr. Koop.

C. Everett Koop

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January 10, 2013 – 1:27 pm

Dr. C. Everett Koop was appointed to the Reagan administration but was held up in the Senate in his confirmation hearings by Ted Kennedy because of his work in pro-life causes. I was thinking about the March for Life that is coming up on Jan 20, 2013  and that is why I posted this today […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Cato Institute, Economist Dan Mitchell, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Tagged Elwood Ark Times Blogger | Edit | Comments (0)

Ronald Wilson Reagan pictured with Dr. C. Everett Koop

November 24, 2012 – 1:29 am

High resolution version (11,426,583 Bytes) Description: The photograph is signed by President Ronald Reagan with the inscription “To Chick Koop, With Best Wishes.” Chick, from chicken coop, was the nickname Koop gained will attending Dartmouth College in the mid-1930s. Koop maintained a cordial relationship with President Reagan, despite his disappointment over Reagan’s refusal to address […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Ronald Reagan | Edit | Comments (0)

Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop were prophetic (jh29)

September 22, 2011 – 3:31 pm

Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop were prophetic (jh29) What Ever Happened to the Human Race? I recently heard this Breakpoint Commentary by Chuck Colson and it just reminded me of how prophetic Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop were in the late 1970′s with their book and film series “Whatever happened to the human […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Tagged carrying twins, chuck colson, richard john neuhaus, sanctity of life, vitro fertilization | Edit | Comments (0)

Should Michele Bachmann be punished for taking pro-life views from Schaeffer and Koop? (March for Life January 20, 2013)

January 15, 2013 – 12:34 am

  Dr. C. Everett Koop I was thinking about the March for Life that is coming up on Jan 20, 2013  and that is why I posted this today Secular leaps of faith 39 Comments Written by Janie B. Cheaney August 15, 2011, 2:17 PM I’m willing to cut Ryan Lizza some slack. His profile […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)

“Schaeffer Sundays” Francis Schaeffer’s own words concerning humanism and its bad results

February 24, 2013 – 1:23 am

Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” (Episode 2) SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book  really helped develop my political views concerning […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)

“Sanctity of Life Saturday”:Derek Melleby’s review of the book “Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life” (includes film THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY)

February 23, 2013 – 1:59 am

  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 […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)

Taking on Ark Times bloggers about abortion on the 40th anniversary date of Roe v. Wade (Part 5) “Slavery issue compared to rights of unborn child”

January 25, 2013 – 1:35 pm

The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” Over the years I have taken on the Ark Times liberal bloggers over and over and over concerning the issue of abortion. I asked over and over again for one liberal blogger […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Current Events, Francis Schaeffer, Max Brantley, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)

Taking on Ark Times bloggers about abortion on the 40th anniversary date of Roe v. Wade (Part 4) “How do pro-lifers react to the movie THE CIDER HOUSE RULES?”

January 25, 2013 – 8:23 am

Francis Schaeffer pictured above._________ The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” Over the years I have taken on the Ark Times liberal bloggers over and over and over concerning the issue of abortion. I asked over and over again […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Current Events, Prolife | Tagged the outlier | Edit | Comments (0)

Taking on Ark Times bloggers about abortion on the 40th anniversary date of Roe v. Wade (Part 3) “What should be the punishment for abortion doctors?”

January 25, 2013 – 7:44 am

The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” On 1-24-13 I took on the child abuse argument put forth by Ark Times Blogger “Deathbyinches,” and the day before I pointed out that because the unborn baby has all the genetic code […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Current Events, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Tagged Carl Sagan | Edit | Comments (0)

Taking on Ark Times bloggers about abortion on the 40th anniversary date of Roe v. Wade (Part 2) “The pro-abortion child abuse argument destroyed here”

January 24, 2013 – 7:00 am

PHOTO BY STATON BREIDENTHAL from Pro-life march in Little Rock on 1-20-13. Tim Tebow on pro-life super bowl commercial. Over the years I have taken on the Ark Times liberal bloggers over and over and over concerning the issue of abortion. Here is another encounter below. On January 22, 2013 (on the 40th anniversary of the […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)

Taking on Ark Times bloggers about abortion on the 40th anniversary date of Roe v. Wade (Part 6) For many pro-abortionists ” …the problem is not determining when actual human life begins, but when the value of that life begins to out weigh other considerations”

January 28, 2013 – 6:30 pm

The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” Francis Schaeffer pictured above._________ The 45 minute video above is from the film series created from Francis Schaeffer’s book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” with Dr. C. Everett Koop. This book  really […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Tagged Vanessa | Edit | Comments (1)

Taking on Ark Times bloggers about abortion on the 40th anniversary date of Roe v. Wade (Part 7) “Poverty not good reason for abortion, why not give up for adoption?”

January 30, 2013 – 9:06 am

Dr Richard Land discusses abortion and slavery – 10/14/2004 – part 3 The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” Over the years I have taken on the Ark Times liberal bloggers over and over and over concerning the issue […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Prolife | Tagged Elwood Ark Times Blogger, MountainGirl Ark Times Blogger | Edit | Comments (0)

Taking on Ark Times bloggers about abortion on the 40th anniversary date of Roe v. Wade (Part 1)

January 23, 2013 – 8:37 am

Dr Richard Land discusses abortion and slavery – 10/14/2004 – part 3 The best pro-life film I have ever seen below by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop “Whatever happened to the human race?” Over the years I have taken on the Ark Times liberal bloggers over and over and over concerning the issue […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)

Paul Greenberg became pro-life because we are all “endowed with certain unalienable rights”

January 22, 2013 – 4:16 pm

On January 20, 2013 I heard Paul Greenberg talk about the words of Thomas Jefferson that we are all “endowed with certain unalienable rights” and the most important one is the right to life. He mentioned this also in this speech below from 2011: Paul Greenberg Dinner Speech 2011 Fall 2011 Issue Some of you […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

How Pulitzer Prize-winning Paul Greenberg, one of the most respected and honored commentators in America, changed his mind about abortion and endorses now the pro-life view

January 22, 2013 – 7:03 am

It is not possible to know where the pro-life evangelicals are coming from unless you look at the work of the person who inspired them the most. That person was Francis Schaeffer.  I do care about economic issues but the pro-life issue is the most important to me. Several years ago Adrian Rogers (past president of […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer, Prolife | Edit | Comments (0)

Dr. C. Everett Koop on Baby Doe, euthanasia, abortion

Uploaded on Nov 3, 2008

Dr. Koop

Joycelyn Elders was the first black Surgeon General of the USA and I have a picture of her with Dr. C. Everett Koop taken in 1993. I used to watch her husband Oliver coach at Hall High School and he always had a great basketball team. Sidney Moncrief was one of star players in the past.

On 2-25-13 we lost a great man when we lost Dr. C. Everett Koop. I have written over and over the last few years quoting Dr. C. Everett Koop and his good friend Francis Schaeffer. They both came together for the first time in 1973 when Dr. Koop operated on Schaeffer’s daughter and as a result they became close friends. That led to their involvement together in the book and film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” in 1979.

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. 

In this 1979 film series they dealt with the big social issues and predicted what social problems we have in the future because of humanism. For instance, they knew that the Jack Kevorkians of the world would be coming down the pike. They predicted that there was a slippery slope from abortion to infanticide to youth euthanasia brought on by the materialistic worldview.

Chuck Hagel is, of course, not the first presidential nominee to face stiff opposition in the Senate. In 1981, Democrats spent eight months battling the nomination of C. Everett Koop to be surgeon general. Ronald Reagan’s choice of Koop, who was known as an outspoken foe of abortion, was seen as a sop to rightwing evangelicals and to the new right, which had successfully used opposition to abortion as a wedge issue to defeat Democrats in the 1980 election. But Koop, who died on Monday at age 96, turned out to be one of the great surprises of the Reagan years. By the time he left office in 1989 the same people who had vilified him as Dr. Kook were singing his praises, and in 1995, Bill Clinton awarded Koop the Medal of Freedom.

Koop did change his views in office, but he was also misjudged by both supporters and detractors. Koop was a highly respected surgeon, the founder of the department of pediatric surgery at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. He was also a devout Christian and impassioned foe of abortion. In 1975, Koop and theologian Harold O.J. Brown met at Billy Graham’s home in Minneapolis to found the Christian Action Council (CAC), the first Protestant lobby against abortion. Koop wrote two books against abortion, including a 1979 tract with evangelist Francis Schaeffer, Whatever Happened to the Human Race. Koop and Schaeffer also produced an anti-abortion movie of the same name that they took around the country. It featured photos of dolls, symbolizing aborted babies, strewn over the floor of the Dead Sea.

Koop’s position on abortion was entirely uncompromising. In The Right to Live, the Right to Die, Koop explained how he had once believed that “Christian compassion” allowed for abortion in “hard cases,” but that under the influence of Brown he had decided to taken an absolute stand “for the sanctity of life.” Koop also saw the issue of abortion in the most extreme moral and religious terms. “The legalization of abortion on demand in the United States,” Koop wrote, “will someday be looked upon by historians as the last turning point of a materialistic society in abandoning the advantages accruing to our society from a Judeo-Christian heritage.”

Prior to becoming surgeon general, Koop’s other social views were equally conservative. He denounced “women’s lib” and “gay pride” for encouraging “anti-family trends.” He declared that the establishment of “government-subsidized childcare centers” was a sign that the U.S. was following the same path as “Hitler’s Germany.” And his religious views were, if anything, even more extreme. Raised in the Dutch Reform Church, Koop was not only a Fundamentalist who rejected the theory of evolution, but also a Calvinist who believed, in Harold O. J. Brown’s words, that “government has the obligation to uphold fundamental principles of morality.” In The Right to Live, the Right to Die, Koop defended the practice of outlawing “private activity … repugnant to the moral sensitivity of the American people. That is why we have laws against such seemingly private engagements as homosexuality, sodomy, prostitution, and adultery.”

But even before taking office, Koop’s views diverged from the radical conservative of the day. Koop had no interest in using abortion as a political wedge issue. His anti-abortion activity was not part of a broader political agenda; it was entirely an expression of his religious belief. Koop worked against abortion in the same spirit that he worked with MAP International—a Third World medical relief agency—or with Philadelphia’s Evangelical Family and Child Service. Koop distrusted the rightwing anti-abortion lobbies. “He was really suspicious of ideology,” Brown explained, “so where you have political ideology that is being presented as a sort of necessary consequence of a theological position he was very suspicious of that.”

In addition, as his colleagues from Philadelphia testified at his hearings, Koop viewed his responsibility as a “health man” as being above politics. He saw “the office” of surgeon general as having a certain function that must be performed regardless of the surgeon general’s own beliefs and wishes. For instance, if there were a conflict between protecting the public health and condoning what he believed were immoral actions, the surgeon general would have to protect the public health. Similarly if there were a conflict between medical evidence and religious belief, then the surgeon general would have to act on the basis of medical evidence even if doing so went against his religious beliefs. From the beginning, this distinction put him at odds with new right activists who wanted him to use his position as a bully pulpit for their political agenda.

Koop first offended Reagan conservatives, including his chief Senate sponsor, North Carolina Republican Senator Jesse Helms, by his outspoken campaign against tobacco products. At issue was not merely an important Republican constituency, Southern tobacco growers, but also the administration’s unequivocal support for free enterprise. In May 1984, Koop issued a blistering condemnation of smoking and the tobacco industry. Attacking the effects of “passive smoking,” when non-smokers were forced in inhale smoke from others’ cigarettes, Koop called for a “smokeless society by the year 2000.” Koop also endorsed smoking bans in workplaces and other public places. In response, Helms called for his resignation, and the administration sabotaged his attempt to strengthen anti-smoking regulations.

Koop clashed directly with the administration two years later when he came out in favor of a bill banning cigarette advertising. White House Chief of Staff Don Regan had tried to prevent his appearing before Henry Waxman’s House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, but Regan finally agreed to Koop’s appearance on the condition that a Justice Department official accompany him and speak against the bill. An incredulous Koop put on his best Dr. Johnson imitation when Ohio Rep. Buz Lukens defended cigarette advertising on the grounds that “more discussion… is the answer rather than less.” Koop replied, “I don’t think advertising, sir, is discussion.”

But Koop really began to alienate the Republican right when he started taking positions on the growing AIDS epidemic. New right conservatives like Paul Weyrich and Howard Phillips blamed the AIDS epidemic on homosexuals, and wanted the Reagan administration to use the epidemic to point out the immorality of homosexuality. During Koop’s first term, his immediate superior, Assistant Secretary Edward Brandt, ordered him not to take a public position on AIDS, but after Brandt resigned, Koop began answering reporters’ questions on the epidemic. Then, after the 1984 election, Reagan, put on the defensive about the administration’s lack of action on the disease, asked Koop to prepare a report.

After personally going through 27 drafts, Koop issued his report in October 1986. Koop’s report tried to calm the rising hysteria about AIDS by explaining that it could not be spread through casual social contact, but the report raised hackles on the right by calling for sexual education about AIDS in elementary school and by advocating the use of condoms by heterosexuals and homosexuals to prevent the spread of infection. Koop also addressed directly the new right’s attempt to blame the epidemic on gays. “At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic many Americans had little sympathy for people with AIDS,” Koop wrote. “The feeling was that somehow people from certain groups ‘deserved’ their illness. Let us put those feelings behind us. We are fighting a disease, not a people.”

Koop’s position was based on the assumption that as a “health man” he had to recommend programs that protect the public health even if they indirectly condoned behavior that he disapproved of. “With AIDS,” Koop later explained, “the law has to wink at certain things. If you find all the prostitutes in a given community are infected, you have to step in and do something about it.” Koop also believed that AIDS education had to be credible. “When you approach the 70 percent of sexually active teenagers and tell them to just say no, they laugh at you,” Koop said.

Koop’s pamphlet created a furor on the right. In its January 1987 issue, Conservative Digest charged that Koop is “proposing instructing in buggery for schoolchildren as young as the third grade on the spurious grounds that the problem is one of ignorance and not morality.” National Review accused Koop of “criminal negligence” in recommending the use of condoms. In response, Koop accused National Review of “letting politics and ideology supersede science.”

There is no doubt that Koop’s actions reflected his view that as surgeon general he had to act as a “health man” rather than as a moralist. But when Koop talked about the issues raised by the AIDS epidemic, it became evident that his morals have also changed. Koop has lost some of his most extreme Calvinist convictions. In talking about AIDS, Koop went out of his way not to blame the gay community. He now rejected the idea that the state should pass laws against homosexuality. “I don’t think such laws are enforceable,” he said.  

Koop’s attitudes changed because of his encounter with the AIDS epidemic. “He suffers with the disease of AIDS and he suffers with prospect of millions of being affected. This is an agonizing situation for him, and it is very unsettling,” Harold O.J. Brown explained. Koop let the struggle against AIDS color his views on a wide range of subjects in the same way the he once let the struggle against abortion color his view of “women’s lib.” He no longer condemned homosexuality, because he saw homosexuals as innocent victims of a terrible disease. He turned away from the right and from his former allies because he believed they lack compassion for AIDS victims.

Koop’s last controversial act as Surgeon General was a report on the psychological effects of abortion is bound to raise new questions about whether he had abandoned his absolute opposition to abortion. Ironically, Reagan had asked Koop to do the report to mollify pro-life lobbyists angered by the administration’s unwillingness to press their case defending the dismissal of a pro-life activist at Health and Human Services. White House aide Dinesh D’Souza had convinced the president that by documenting the terrible psychological effects of abortion, Koop’s report would lay the basis for overturning Roe v. Wade. But in preparing the study, Koop acted as a “health man” rather than as an anti-abortion activist.  He and several staff people went over the scientific evidence carefully, and became convinced that past studies demonstrating post-abortion stress were flawed.

Koop remained unalterably opposed to abortion, but he remained a professional committed to medical science and to the responsibilities of his office. “What has given me so much trouble in this job from the right,” Koop told me in 1988 when I did a profile of him for The New Republic, “is that I separate ideology, religion and other things from my sworn duty as a health officer in this country.” Koop remains a stirring example—to both left and right—of how a public official should conduct himself. He was one of the most impressive officials I ever had the chance to interview.

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This is a picture of Dr. C. Everett Koop with Joycelyn Elders from Little Rock.

M. Joycelyn Elders (1993-1994)

Joycelyn Elders was born Minnie Lee Jones in Schaal, Arkansas on August 13, 1933. In college, she changed her name to Minnie Joycelyn Lee (later using just Joycelyn). In 1952, she received her B.A. in biology from Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas. After working as a nurse’s aid in a Veterans Administration hospital in Milwaukee for a period, she joined the Army in May, 1953. During her 3 years in the Army, she was trained as a physical therapist. She then attended the University of Arkansas Medical School, where she obtained her M.D. degree in 1960. After completing an internship at the University of Minnesota Hospital and a residency in pediatrics at the University of Arkansas Medical Center, Elders earned an M.S. in Biochemistry in 1967.

Elders then received a National Institutes of Health career development award, also serving as assistant professor in pediatrics at the University of Arkansas Medical Center from 1967. She was promoted to associate professor in 1971 and professor in 1976. Her research interests focused on endocrinology, and she received certification as a pediatric endocrinologist in 1978. She became an expert on childhood sexual development.

In 1987, Elders was appointed Director of the Arkansas Department of Health by then-Governor Bill Clinton. Her accomplishments in this position included a ten-fold increase in the number of early childhood screenings annually and almost a doubling of the immunization rate for two-year-olds in Arkansas. In 1992, she was elected President of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers.

Elders became Surgeon General of the Public Health Service on September 8, 1993, appointed by President Clinton. She was the first African American to serve in the position. As Surgeon General, Elders argued the case for universal health coverage, and was a spokesperson for President Clinton’s health care reform effort. She was a strong advocate for comprehensive health education, including sex education, in schools. She was outspoken in her views, and was forced to resign after only 15 months in the position as a result of a controversial remark about sex education. Her last day in office was December 31, 1994. She returned to the University of Arkansas Medical Center as professor of pediatrics.

Dr. C. Everett Koop is pictured above.