Roe v Wade

June 24, 2022

The angst regarding the striking down of the right to an abortion (as a right to privacy) under the United States constitution represents for the USA (no longer united, but fractured into two nations of divergent beliefs and philosophies), represents the downfall of the liberal democratic tradition which has informed this nation and its citizens for the past 50 years.  In a real sense, the persons who enjoy the freedom of our democratic way of life have rejected it for religious intolerance.  The constitutional wall separating church and state is being torn down.  The right to individual liberty and freedom is being dismantled, under the rubric of returning the right to decide about abortion and a woman’s use of her body to the states, not the federal government.  This well-meaning attempt to save the life of the unborn, which I do not oppose, is an unintended (or perhaps intended) consequence which has dismantled our religious and political liberty to make our own choices governed by our own consciences and placed our conscience and beliefs under the authority of state governmental law.

It is the most unholy irony that one of the most corrupt politicians to have ever enjoyed the high office of President (that is Donald Trump) has delivered to the conservative right-wing church and politicians the very thing they have worked so hard to achieve, that is the dismantling of Roe v Wade and the right of a woman to choose how to use her own body.  Immediately upon the publication of the Supreme Court opinion, the attorney general of Missouri made all abortions illegal in that state.  Up to 23 other states may soon follow suit.  For a woman now to obtain an abortion of any kind will mean she will need to travel to another state which allows this medical procedure.   39% of childbearing women are residents in those states restricting abortion rights.  So, it is easy to see the undue burden this places on these women, some of who have limited means to travel 10 miles, much less 500 or 1000.

I am a church member and a Christian.  I profess faith in Jesus Christ our Lord and Redeemer.  I am not opposed to the church of Christ of any denomination, Protestant or Catholic trying to persuade women with unborn children to bring these children to term and raise them in a loving Christian home.  I am opposed when my religious faith is imposed on persons who do not espouse the faith, who are in fact secular persons, or whose faith does not inform their conscience against having an abortion.  What I am opposed to is coercion!  I am opposed to powerful men and women telling less powerful women and men what that can and cannot do with their own bodies!  If we tear down the right of personal autonomy and freedom, soon the all-seeing eye of the conservative agenda will be intruding into all our bedrooms, seeking to impose a conservative morality as dictated by a conservative, right wing and radical interpretation of the Holy Scriptures and the Gospel of Jesus Christ upon us all!

When did divine love become hate?  When did acceptance become exclusion?  When did tolerance of others unlike ourselves become racism and intolerance?  The persons who espouse the faith of Jesus Christ cannot invite and exclude persons made in God’s image in the same breath.  Persons who proclaim liberty for the soul in Christ cannot impose law upon behavior they consider morally objectionable.  This is not the way of Christ.  It is however the way of the Pharisee, who opposed Christ and thought they were doing so in the service of God.  Jesus called them “blind guides, leading the blind, full of darkness, full of dead man’s bones.”  Jesus encountered religious Pharisaism just as we are seeing it played out today.  It is unfortunate that the Supreme Court has fallen prey to this new religion of bigotry and power.  They have now become the new Pharisees, having shifted the authority of the court from persuasion based on accepted law of precedent to that of a new law based on religion and power!  This new law, which is invading our country, is the religion of bigotry, intolerance, right wing conservatism and state’s rights.  Well meaning persons, believing they are doing God’s service have instead become instruments of Satan, bringing darkness and oppression of their personal religion instead of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ which is for all men, women and children, which makes us free to live and serve Christ and not the so-called “conservative agenda” or the oppressive powers of a state government.

Federalism is designed to balance states rights to prevent the oppression of their citizens.  How quickly we have forgotten the lessons of the constitution!  How quickly we have abandoned a United States of America and as Texas we work to secede from one another.  The rights of the few become more important than the rights of the many.  The strict interpretation of the constitution has placed us back in 1776, and not in the 21^st century where we now live.

The current interpreters of the constitution have forgotten the importance of hermeneutics, in which the application of the past words are interpreted as to how to apply the meaning of the constitution to the current time, which is not 1776 but June 24, 2022.  The fourteenth amendment was meant to remedy this oversight, but now it is being dismantled by the very court which swore to uphold this same constitution.

Today, the court has fully declared its political allegiance to the “conservative agenda,” which makes it increasingly irrelevant to most Americans.  If the authority of the Supreme court is bigotry, racism and oppression of those most vulnerable, will the destructive forces unleashed not tear apart the nation?  When law becomes oppressive law, who will defend the poor?  It will instead be a time of ‘Robin Hood”, who worked to right the wrongs, ignoring any law he deemed oppressive and cruel.

I hope I am mistaken in my assessment of this moment in our nation’s history.  I hope we do not finally tear ourselves apart, limb from limb.  The darkness unleashed today could do it.  But at least we can carry an unregistered weapon, an AR 15 to defend ourselves.  We do have freedom to kill one another and to be killed by one another.  That is one freedom we can still cherish. 

May God in his mercy help us all!  In Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Amen and Amen.

Bill Wilson, MD

Servant of God by God’s grace and mercies.

“Amen!”  We praise you, Lord Jesus Christ!”