For the past several years, my favorite part of the summer has been the opportunity to help out with Minnesota Family Council’s summer program, LEAD. LEAD encourages and equips teens to become thoughtful leaders through a rigorous week-long program, and it is always such a joy to see them rise to the occasion! Teens deserve to be challenged, and we do them a disservice when we set the bar low. Today’s teenagers are tomorrow’s leaders, and setting low expectations for teenagers fails to prepare them for that task. That’s why LEAD is focused on training and challenging teenagers to take up the responsibility of citizenship.
We are first and foremost citizens of the kingdom of God, but we are also citizens of the nation in which we live. As the people of God, we are called to live out our earthly citizenship in a manner that reflects our heavenly citizenship. This means that, in all areas of our lives, we ought to engage with our culture in such a way that we seek the good of those around us as we proclaim God’s truth. One aspect of this is training and mentoring young people so that they can be ready to engage with the world around them.
Coming alongside teens and preparing them to become citizens and leaders is a vital task. Teenagers are pelted with lies from our culture on a daily basis, all while navigating the difficulty of growing up. Students need to hear and know the hope of the gospel and be equipped to communicate biblical truth to their peers.
Today, the Minnesota House Judiciary Committee voted to send HF3749 to the House floor by party line vote. This is a bill that targets sidewalk counselors who work outside abortion clinics to help women access compassionate alternatives to abortion.
Because it’s already illegal under Minnesota and federal law to obstruct the entrance of a clinic, this bill is targeting people who are exercising their free speech rights, not getting in the way.
This bill was sponsored by Rep. Heather Edelson (DFL-Edina) and supported by Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America. Minnesota Family Council and Pro-Life Action Ministries submitted testimony against the bill, and we will keep fighting until women and babies are safe from the scourge of abortion in our state.
This dangerous bill could be a worrying sign of things to come. If pro-abortion legislators win a majority in the Minnesota Senate in November, they will immediately get to work on taking away the rights of people and organizations who are working to give women better options than abortion.
Recently, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar has been hailed as a “moderate” for calling for a “big tent” approach that makes room for pro-life democrats. Early in the Primary cycle, Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard broke with the current progressive narrative by reintroducing a mantra from the Clinton era: abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. Former Vice President Joe Biden, for much of his career, has described himself as taking a “middle of the road” position on abortion.
Some have regarded these statements and positions as evidence that “abortion moderates” are emerging in the Democratic party. The problem with this view is that it assumes a “moderate” approach to abortion can exist. This simply is not so. There is no such thing as an abortion moderate because there is nothing moderate about abortion. So-called “moderate” positions attempt to find a middle ground between two ideas that cannot co-exist.
Furthermore, Klobuchar’s voting record on abortion is not moderate in any sense of the word. She has voted in favor of abortion every opportunity that she has had, and supports abortion up until birth. She even opposes the Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act, which would make sure that abortion survivors receive medical care.
Many who claim to be abortion moderates will argue that they are personally opposed to abortion, but do not want to prevent someone else from making that choice, or that they want abortion to be allowed, but only in a small number of cases. But taking the life of another human being cannot be a “private” choice and the choice of a society or an individual to turn a blind eye to the taking of innocent lives is not neutral. If someone is only privately or personally opposed to abortion, they are either unwilling to say that it is evil and that it takes an innocent human life, or by their refusal to publicly oppose abortion they are saying that such evil is acceptable. As Kathryn Jean Lopez asked, “What good is private opposition in the face of the death of innocent life, the pitting of a mother against her child, the trail of misery that is legal abortion, with all the cultural pressures in favor of abortion?”
Tuesday marked the beginning of the legislative session and that morning almost 100 people joined Minnesota Family Council in the Capitol rotunda to pray for our lawmakers and the great state of Minnesota! Pastor Jeff Evans, Director of Minnesota’s Church Ambassador Network (CAN) also announced that CAN would be giving personalized bibles to each legislator. Check out the video here. What a great start to the session! As we kick things off at the capitol, it’s important to remember why the legislative session matters.
As those who have been reconciled to God, we are called to be ambassadors, imploring others to be reconciled as well. We are called to affirm the lordship of Christ and the goodness of God’s design for humanity, to proclaim the truth, and to point others toward grace. This is something we need to do in every area of life, including politics. The session is not the only opportunity to shine the light of Christ in the state of Minnesota, but it is an important one.
It is during the legislative session that our elected leaders make changes to the law, both for good and for bad. Because of this, we commit to being at the Capitol every day of the session fighting for life, family, and religious freedom.
The legislative session also highlights the importance of elections. The people that we elect become the people who shape our laws, so it’s important that we elect leaders who will take a stand for the truth. Faithful pro-life, pro-family leaders make laws that value life and family. Pro-abortion politicians make laws that devalue life. The contrast is clear.
In 2015, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released a series of undercover videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s horrifying and illegal practices of harvesting and selling organs from aborted babies. Over four years after the fact, Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation have managed to persuade a jury and much of the public that they are the victims in this case and that David Daleiden and his associates at the Center for Medical Progress owe them restitution for damages caused by the undercover videos.
The videos released by CMP revealed Planned Parenthood medical directors callously discussing pricing of aborted fetal tissue over lunch, making jokes about increasing prices for certain organs in order to afford a Lamborghini and admitting to leaving abortion survivors to die, as well as abortionists admitting to illegally altering late-term abortion procedures so that harvested organs would remain intact and discussing strategies for harvesting body parts without violating bans on partial-birth abortions.
In a ruling against Daleiden in November, the judge and jury refused to take into account Planned Parenthood’s crimes that were exposed by the Center for Medical Progress or their First Amendment rights to call into account the evil being committed by this powerful organization. As the Center for Medical Progress stated in their response to the ruling, “This is a dangerous precedent for citizen journalism and First Amendment civil rights across the country, sending the message that speaking the truth and using facts to criticize the powerful is no longer protected by our institutions.”
Although six charges have been dropped, Daleiden and his associates at CMP are still facing trial on nine felony counts and potentially up to ten years in prison. He and Sandra Merritt will be arraigned on the 21st of this month.
