Shownotes Transcript
In this episode of Life Matters, Commissioner Johnston examines the meaning of the right to life. Why does this have to be about the law? Where did this right to life come from? Did it begin at America’s founding, or is it a deeper, more widely recognized, universal truth - a self evident truth - that everyone should take the time and interest to deliberate?
The American founders strongly felt this was so. They proclaimed to the world that they would form a new form of government that appealed to this universal, higher law, view of life and society.
Now, with the Dobbs decision, the entire issue is laid at our feet. Individual states which comprise the United States, are now free to exercise the explicit God-given and constitutionally-explained authority to protect or take lives within their own borders.
If a state determines that a human life can legally be taken within its borders it is authorizing capital punishment. The state itself must outline the specific rules and procedures to be followed so that that individuals life has had the due process of law. A trial, with evidence, with adequate defense, with right to appeal - the law must protect even that person’s life from being taken unjustly.
Similarly, if a human life is taken outside of the law (extra-judicially) the state must also outline how and under what circumstances the appropriate protective measure can be taken. For this reason, each state has proscribed various forms of homicide - levels of severity, and appropriate punishments for these extrajudicial killings.
The Dobbs decision, in overturning Roe v. Wade, which licensed abortionists to kill at any time they decided, now gives the authority over life and death back to the states, from which it had been taken. Each state now will determine how a child in the womb is to be protected: at what stage of pregnancy, what standards of evidence, what conditions, who is authorized to take this child’s life. Each of these determinations will now be set state by state. In many states, these measures are being contemplated in the summer of 2022.
Perhaps, most importantly, the November elections of 2022 will determine the nature of the lawmakers who will make these laws. Federal government lawmakers - the Congress and Senate, are already trying to prohibit individual states from exercising this authority. Yet, this is an authority granted, in fact, instructed by the United States Constitution.
Dobbs, rather than ending the abortion debate, has brought it home to every citizen. They must determine whom they should elect. They must determine what ideas should guide the lawmakers within their own states, and given the approach of Planned Parenthood et al., even local communities and their elected officials will be addressing the abortion mentality in their counties, cities, and schools.
The elections of 2022 are critical for enacting the laws which will reflect the self-evident truth: that every innocent human life should be protected under the law. Such laws must be enacted if that law is in fact the law of a just government.
“To ensure these rights, governments are instituted among men.”
The laws and elections of 2022 are critical. Brian gives in-depth insights into the danger of being mislead at this moment, misled by those who would lie and misrepresent the killing of human babies.
The state of Indiana offers just one example. There, lawmakers asserted SB 1 would protect babies in Indiana, but in fact the deceitful and misleading language which they presented was craftily worded and specifically designed to allow abortions. Brian reminds listeners and readers to consult the works of many insightful authors on this subject such as Orwell and Kafka, but in particular C.S. Lewis, and his book, the Screwtape Letters.
In Screwtape, Lewis describes the genuinely demonic twisting of language and meanings and feelings to accomplish truly evil ends.
“We are now in a very serious battle of ideas, and ideas have consequences,” says Brian. “This battle of ideas is not far away, and we often considers ideas as removed and far from physical reality, but the battle is now on us. And we must apply ourselves to these elections and these laws as if the sanctity of every life is at stake, because in fact it is.”