Category: Image of god
Stevie Nicks just said the quiet part out loud about abortion — and it’s horrifying
Almost every civilization has, at one point or another, practiced child sacrifice. In our rebellion against God and rejection of Jesus Christ, modern America is no exception.
While we may not burn our children like the Canaanites, cut out their hearts like the Aztecs, or drown them like the Gauls, we most certainly sacrifice our children in acts of worship to benefit ourselves.
We cannot afford to overlook the severity of this sin or its stench before the one true and living God.
Take the example of Stevie Nicks, the singer-songwriter best known for her years with Fleetwood Mac. Nicks boasted about the benefits of her past abortion in a recent video posted on social media and described as a “must watch” by the Center for Reproductive Rights.
In recalling her past abortion, Nicks was not filled with regret or shame, but with a sober admission that murdering her own pre-born baby was worthwhile for allowing her to continue her music career.
“Fleetwood Mac is three years in, and it’s big, and we’re going into our third album,” Nicks recounted.
“It would have destroyed Fleetwood Mac,” she said of her baby.
“I would have, like, tried my best to get through, you know, being in the studio every single day expecting a child,” Nicks continued.
“It would have been a nightmare scenario for me to live through.”
RELATED: Fleetwood Mac’s real breakup story: Death before motherhood
Rather than making Nicks seem sympathetic in her decision to have an abortion, the video posted by the Center for Reproductive Rights made her look callous. The organization plainly acknowledged that “access to abortion made her life, her art, and her voice possible.”
Nicks admitted to murdering her baby in exchange for career success: She took the life of her own child for the specific reason of pursuing stardom in the music world.
In other words, she committed child sacrifice.
In the same way that past civilizations sacrificed their children to enable abundant harvests, victory over their enemies, or improved rainfalls, Americans sacrifice our children to enable success in our careers, more financial freedom, or fewer inconvenient responsibilities.
But unlike other civilizations, we do not murder our children in the name of any specific false god or demonic entity. Instead we serve ourselves as our own gods — murdering our babies as an act of devotion in the cult of our own autonomy.
We cannot afford to overlook the severity of this sin or its stench before the one true and living God.
Rather than speaking clearly on abortion as child sacrifice, many pro-life organizations over the past few decades have not only downplayed the distinctly spiritual nature of the abortion holocaust, but have insisted that many of its perpetrators are themselves victims.
In speaking about abortion — even writing laws against abortion — many pro-life leaders emphasize the small minority of cases in which women are compelled with threat of life and limb into having abortions.
But in the vast majority of cases, women who have abortions are active participants or even willful initiators, not passive victims compelled into abortions they do not want.
Stevie Nicks is a perfect example. By her own admission, nobody forced her into having an abortion. Nicks willfully chose her music career over the life of her child, and several decades later, she would clearly make the same decision once more.
The notion that all women are categorical second victims of abortion downplays the moral agency women have as image-bearers of God and obscures the justice due to pre-born babies as true victims of abortion.
By defending the legal ability of women to willfully murder their own children, pro-life organizations sorrowfully allow the abortion holocaust to continue, even in conservative states that misleadingly claim to ban abortion.
RELATED: Why defunding Planned Parenthood is a distraction from the real fight
Just like men, women are ultimately responsible for their own actions. Just like men, women will one day stand in judgment before God and provide an account for those actions.
Stevie Nicks may publicly boast about her abortion today, but when she stands before a perfectly holy God, she will no longer boast in her decision. And unless she turns from her sins and trusts in Jesus Christ for salvation, she will bear the penalty of her decision for all of eternity.
When pro-life organizations insist that women can only be victims of abortion — and oppose laws that would criminalize abortion for all parties willfully involved — they fail to deter women from committing sin that destroys both their babies and their very own eternal souls.
That is why we must simply make murdering anyone illegal for everyone.
The exact same laws that protect born people from murder must protect pre-born people as well, or else we are denying the truth that pre-born babies are image-bearers of God worthy of equal protection under our laws.
The existing laws against murder deter the vast majority of murders from happening in the first place. If we extend those same laws to apply from fertilization — without loopholes allowing women to enjoy special murder privileges over their pre-born babies — we will deter the vast majority of abortions as well.
God judges nations that commit child sacrifice. America is well on its way to joining the Canaanites, the Aztecs, and the Gauls in the history of nations that murder their own children and are brought to their knees by the God who cannot endure such rebellion forever.
If we want our nation to continue, we must protect all image-bearers of God from murder, criminalizing the unjustified taking of human life for everyone willfully involved.
Rather than rebelling against God, our nation must turn in repentance and faith toward Jesus Christ — abandoning the works of death and once more bowing the knee to the only one who offers everlasting life.
Why defunding Planned Parenthood is a distraction from the real fight
In the past three years since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, pro-life organizations have been searching for a new national priority. They appear to have found one in the form of permanently defunding Planned Parenthood.
This objective, of course, is far from an original idea. Any conservative voter will know all too well that Republicans have been promising it for decades.
We should end the abortion holocaust without exception or compromise.
This year saw the first time national Republicans actually did defund Planned Parenthood. But it was only for one year — a lackluster achievement given that Republicans control both Congress and the White House.
A coalition of pro-life groups such as Live Action, Students for Life, and National Right to Life has now set “a permanent taxpayer defund of all organizations that commit abortion” as their new national priority.
The intention, according to Live Action, is to make sure Planned Parenthood is “permanently defunded” by July 4 of next year.
Certainly, stopping the flow of taxpayer dollars to organizations like Planned Parenthood is a worthy action, and we hope it is successful. But setting that as a central priority of the anti-abortion agenda is underwhelming at best, and doing so will end up distracting from what should be the ultimate goal — passing laws to abolish abortion.
Defunding is not enough
We live in the midst of a holocaust. Beyond the more than 65 million pre-born babies murdered under Roe, abortion numbers have continued to increase over the past three years since it was overturned, now surpassing 1 million pre-born babies per year.
This trend even extends to red states with restrictions claiming to ban abortion.
The removal of taxpayer dollars from the abortion holocaust is not wrong. But it is far from an action that will move us toward a decisive end to the bloodshed. Moreover, setting the mere defunding of baby murder as a central priority diminishes the gravity of this atrocity.
The main problem with abortion is not that we are forced to help pay for it. The main problem is that people are murdering babies.
We should not merely defund specific facilitators of the abortion holocaust. We should end the abortion holocaust without exception or compromise. The best way to defund Planned Parenthood is to criminalize abortion as murder.
For every year we let something else overshadow that objective, we allow another million babies made in the image of God to be murdered.
False victory
As we have seen before, many leading pro-life groups have shown a pattern of overstating their wins. Some will undoubtedly do that if Planned Parenthood is defunded. Such inflated rhetoric misleads anti-abortion Christians and conservatives to think substantial victories have been won, decreasing their zeal to remain engaged and win the actual battle.
When leaders at Planned Parenthood Michigan closed four locations earlier this year, Students for Life insisted that “the death industry is collapsing under its own weight” and proclaimed that “fewer Planned Parenthoods” means there are now “fewer babies killed.”
RELATED: Planned Parenthood’s ugly truth finally has consequences
Olivier Douliery/Getty Images
But just a few months after that proclamation of victory, Planned Parenthood Michigan announced that it would expand virtual appointments to “seven days a week, including weekends, morning, and evening appointments.” The organization also reported “growing demand” for the virtual appointments, leading it to “expand the program even further.”
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America has also called the defunding of Planned Parenthood this year the “biggest national pro-life victory” since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. The organization has repeatedly highlighted the closure of individual abortion clinics as evidence that “the lives of moms and babies are being protected.”
In its public statements about the move, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America insisted that Planned Parenthood closures are evidence that “life is winning.” The organization failed to include the context that abortion rates across the nation are still on the rise.
In other words, the closure of physical abortion clinics does not necessarily mean fewer babies murdered. But pro-life groups celebrating as if that were the case are sorrowfully leading anti-abortion people to think otherwise.
Exaggerated impact
Planned Parenthood facilitates about one-third of all abortions in America. But even if it lost access to taxpayer dollars, the same number of abortions in our nation would almost certainly continue.
If the federal government were to cut off all funds to Planned Parenthood, the organization would find money elsewhere — from blue-state legislatures, from private billionaire donors, and most of all from the men and women who themselves fund Planned Parenthood by paying to murder their own pre-born babies.
Also, taxpayer money does not cause the abortion holocaust in our nation, but it subsidizes an already existing marketplace that will continue even if Planned Parenthood disappears tomorrow.
In other words, as long as there is abortion demand, there will be some form of abortion supply. We must address both the supply and demand for abortions, or else the murder of pre-born babies will continue.
The real priority
By prioritizing a weak objective of defunding Planned Parenthood, pro-life groups might achieve exactly that goal, but they will not get more than that goal any time soon. In order even to substantially decrease abortion in America, let alone actually abolish abortion, a much more ambitious goal must be set.
That is why every anti-abortion leader and organization should support legislation enacting equal protection of the laws for pre-born babies, which would not only break the power of abortion providers, but truly abolish abortion itself.
Christian conservatives rightly affirm that pre-born babies are made in the image of God and should be protected from the moment of fertilization. By calling for equal protection bills at the state and federal levels, anti-abortion groups would be setting the expectation that the exact same laws protecting born people from murder should protect pre-born people as well.
The focus should remain on establishing equal protection. This is the only policy that would criminalize abortion as murder for all parties involved, obey God, and dramatically reduce the number of murders of pre-born babies in America.
If such an expectation is set, then state and federal lawmakers may still defund Planned Parenthood — probably even faster than they otherwise would have. But setting a lower expectation than equal protection, such as defunding Planned Parenthood, decreases the likelihood of strong anti-abortion policies advancing.
The pro-life organizations searching for a new priority after the overturn of Roe should not set their sights too low, and they most certainly should not exaggerate their victories.
If they truly desire to protect pre-born babies and move America toward the abolition of abortion, merely defunding Planned Parenthood will not suffice. They must remember that we are in a holocaust that has continued for far too long — and act with the appropriate urgency and priority.
