Baptist Press
By By Matthew Blankenship, posted July 19, 2024 in Abortion
The “Hyde family” of amendments are provisions included in annual government spending bills, known as appropriations bills, that prevent the use of federal funding for abortions. In recent years, the Biden administration has sought to bypass this group of provisions through funding the cost to travel across state lines for the purpose of obtaining an abortion, also known as abortion tourism.
The ERLC has continually advocated to retain and expand these vital pro-life protections by opposing the undermining of these policies by the Biden administration and supporting legislation such as the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.
What is the Hyde Amendment?
The Hyde Amendment is a provision that prohibits federal money from being used to pay for abortions. Government spending bills designate the budgets and spending stipulations for various federal agencies, directing how taxpayer dollars are spent.
The Hyde Amendment initially passed as a response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade. It was introduced by Rep. Henry Hyde (IL) in 1976 to ensure Medicaid funds are not used to fund abortion procedures.
Originally, this amendment was applied to the Labor and Health and Human Services appropriations bill. Since then, its provisions have also been extended to other federal programs through similar language in other legislation. In doing so, these amendments placed restrictions on other agencies, including: More Here
The GOP is now playing ‘political football’ with God’s babies……
Do not count on the GOP to end the slaughter of God’s babies. About 2 years ago a top GOP official told me that abortion will never end here in New Mexico.
Americans grow less religious. People cannot see JESUS through your politics
Is the United States of America in Bible prophecy?
Repentance is missing in action in America!
God’s Word is the final authority for faith and life.
as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
OPEN FIELD ABORTION CLINIC & LAST CHURCH OF LUBBOCK
Posted onMay 29 by Agent X
It’s one of my great pleasures in life to preach to the Last Church of Lubbock, Texas. This is one of the humblest gatherings of Christian brothers and sisters with whom I ever met. A few of you are people of some means and wisdom, but by far, most of you are not of noble birth, powerful, or wise by human standards (I Corinthians 1:26). However, in your neediness, you are rich in faith (James 2:5), and that is a great asset to bring to any church! All the more, ours.
I thank God for you in my prayers, and I count it a blessing to speak to you again today. Thank you also. Thank you for having me.
What is the word God brings to a motley crew of street homeless beggars, bums, and prophets through me today?
Ostensibly, the word today is “abortion.”
Abortion is a hot topic in America. I’m in my mid-fifties, and I can’t remember a time it wasn’t. Abortion is a political hot potato. Americans get quite passionate about this word. We have heated exchanges. People fill the streets to shout about it, wave signs, shoot people and blow-up clinics! The topic of abortion is a divisive one pitting American against American in anger, fear, and bitterness.
The issue (to move from simply the word and/or the topic) of Abortion seems to be rather black-and-white. You are either for it or against it. Two main positions, so pick a side. While most thinking people see some ground in between, some complex features to the issue, the two main sides in this overarching “debate” refuse to concede middle ground, and the sides champion the labels “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” Either label lays claim to freedom, each in its own way.
Choice. The freedom for a woman to choose where matters of her own health, her own body is concerned. That surely is a cherished freedom! Who in their right mind wants to infringe on freedom at that level?
And yet, in God’s grand design, he makes another life dependent upon the choices that woman makes regarding her health and her body. And life is surely the most basic of all freedoms. No?
Life. What is more basic to freedom than life?
Despite its black-and-white nature, the “debate” rages on in complexity. And it seems the people of God champion one side overwhelmingly. The people of God get red in the face and passionate over this word abortion. The people of God shout, preach, and sometimes bomb clinics in zeal for their position regarding this word, abortion.
Is that you, Last Church?
Somehow, I wonder if shouters from both sides of this “debate” don’t march their ideals right past your spot on the corner, if not right over your tent, to shout down the other shouters. What does this have to do with you?
Oh, no doubt you have an opinion. No doubt your opinion is held in some passion. But I aim to bring you the word of God today, and if you look carefully in your Bible, you will find the word abortion is not in it.
Huh?
The word abortion isn’t in the Bible?
Nope.
And yet I, as your preacher again today, aim to bring you a word from God today, Last Church, and that word today is abortion.
Wait. What?
Yeah.
Amen?
Anyone???
Today, Last Church, I want to talk about abortion. But I don’t aim to say the same old thing you’ve heard a million times about abortion. Nor, Last Church, do I intend to talk about the millions of abortions that have been performed in America legally since the case of Roe v. Wade. No. None of that.
Instead, Last Church, I want to talk about your abortion. It turns out God has a word about that, and it turns out you were the one aborted. This is the one abortion no one ever talks about, no one ever shouts about, no one ever forms an opinion about it either. It turns out, Last Church, no one in America today much cares about the time YOU WERE ABORTED.
I ONCE WAS LOST BUT NOW I’M FOUND, WAS DEAD, BUT NOW I LIVE
Open your Bible (or look over your neighbor’s shoulder if need be) and look at Ezekiel 16:3-6 with me please.
3…Thus says the Lord God to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. 4 And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths. 5 No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.
6 “And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’
I need to make a couple of qualifying remarks at this point, but I will be brief, briefer than the subject deserves.
For one thing, this text seems addressed to ancient Israel in captivity and not to you. But I beg to differ, and I hope this becomes clear as we go along, but if you want to discuss this point later, please feel free to address it after. For another, I have chosen to stop at verse 6 before God’s word moves toward a more disciplinary tone. I fully concur there is more to be had from this passage than I am highlighting, but this is merely one sermon, and not a full exposition of Ezekiel 16. And one more thing, the word abortion does not appear in this passage, but I will argue the picture painted here is how abortion is performed in ancient times.
No where in all the Bible does God command, “Thou shalt not abort your babies.” You might think it is implied in the sixth commandment, and I wouldn’t argue against that. But all through ancient times, the process you see here in Ezekiel 16 was a common practice, very well known to the people of God, yet at no point in all the recorded history of Scripture between Adam and Eve and the Apocalypse of John do we get a single sermon, protest, or shouting match against this practice which clearly goes far beyond “partial birth abortion.” Abortion in ancient times fully and unequivocally qualifies as murder or attempted murder in modern American courts. Yet, none of the prophets, apostles, psalmists, or teachers preach against it.
The silence is stunning. (Or at least it should be.)
What are the people of God to think about it?
Well, through the great prophet Ezekiel, God tells his people, this is how they were born, and subsequently how they were adopted.
We come to have our life in God’s family through abortion! Who knew???
You see, Last Church, though this customary practice of abortion was widespread in ancient times and well known throughout every society, what was less common, though not unheard of, was how sometimes caring people would save such an aborted infant. (Not the fetus, the infant!) Saving such a baby, in those days, wasn’t a matter of shouting pro-life rally cries in the streets; it was a matter of taking personal responsibility for the life whenever you stumbled upon such a child cast in the open field.
Cast in the open field.
Can you see that, Last Church?
Somehow, I think you of all people are uniquely qualified to see that. An open field full of dying, innocent babies. Go there with me now. Let’s look at that open field and talk about it a moment.
It’s ancient times. There are no hospitals or abortion clinics around for miles and miles and centuries to come. But a baby is on the way. Many a young pagan family gets pregnant, but they are having layoffs at the mill or it’s another girl, and well… enough said, right?
Okay, no. That’s not enough said. Not for us. We are modern intruders visiting this open field, and so it’s incumbent on me to inform you that even if – IF – boys are generally more desirable than girls, one of the main reasons for that is “social security.”
Yes.
There is no “social security” as we know it in those days, and as wonderful as girls are, a woman needs to bear a son or two (or more) just to manage her retirement years. (Sorry Edward Jones!) Your sons are your social security in those days, and if you have too many girls, you create a financial burden on yourself and them too. No one will take care of you or them when you are too old to work!
So… there is almost a back-handed mercy about this process.
Almost.
A godless mercy for a godless world order… but yeah.
In ancient times, there are no sonograms. You don’t know if you are getting a boy or a girl until the time of birth. Thus, there is no eggbeater-and-hoover style sanitizing of the thing. You can’t go to a clinic and do this behind closed doors, and you can’t scramble a “fetus” in the womb while it’s still underdeveloped. So, your hand is forced. If you are going to abort, you are left with the next best option: terminate the pregnancy at the earliest point after pregnancy.
How does a mother do that?
Well, like any abortion whether ancient or modern, the mother of the aborted baby needs a truckload of denial!
She can’t bash the baby’s head in and walk away. No. She needs her man, or her man’s friend, to immediately whisk that baby away to the open field and leave it there to languish. No one has the heart to bash in the child’s brains and make it quick. No. Denial insists that you leave the child alive and well in the off hand chance the gods save it.
And now you’ve come to this open field of ancient abortions with me to look for yourself, and now you come to terms with a simple observation about us humans. We enter this world extremely vulnerable.
Those babies languishing in this field don’t last long. A particularly hearty baby might last through the night, but not much more. Between the elements and the critters, a helpless baby crying for its mother there in that open field is as doomed as a soul can be in a matter of hours, almost certainly.
But here’s the thing about open fields: sometimes people traverse them.
This means that it’s just not uncommon for people to happen upon an aborted child in varying degrees of abortion. Sometimes you arrive only to see the bones. Sometimes, you arrive to smell the rot or even to see the critters taking a breather. But once in a while, and not too uncommonly, you happen through the field and hear the cries!
What’s that doing to your heart right about now, Last Church?
Can you hear those cries?
What do you think the sounds of those cries do to God who created humans in the first place?
We’ll get to that in a minute.
First, let me point out that the ancient pagan world is filled with denial. It is easy for people walking through an open field to practice NOT HEARING the cries in what we now call “studied nonobservance.” I mean, Last Church, if you knew you had an open field to cross on your journey, you might even anticipate the possibility that some infant would be dying out there, and you’d kinda know from experience where NOT TO LOOK, and so forth. If you were journeying with a friend and the faint sound of a baby cry wafted on the wind, you might strike up a song and start singing loudly as you walk so as not to actually hear too much. I mean, it’s sorta the ancient equivalent of rolling up to a stop light at an intersection with beggars on the corner and locking the door while looking the other way.
Denial.
The ancient world was good at denial.
But every now and then a particularly sensitive soul might stop and save such a baby.
This was rare, but not unheard of.
In fact, Pharaoh’s daughter takes a baby from Denial – ahem – The Nile River in a slightly modified version of this picture and takes the boy home to raise as her own. And that boy grows up to be Moses, a great savior of God’s people! (Poetic, almost!)
In fact, Last Church, though we don’t have any illustrations of this from God’s word, those who study church history tell us the practice of saving babies abandoned to this ancient form of abortion in the open field becomes a common practice of the early church. The early church is made up mostly of women, the poor and needy, with few of noble birth, worldly wisdom, or influence like we normally think of in our world. But they are rich in faith, and they see potential for God’s love in the saving of those unwanted babies, not in political shouting, but in deep, personal sacrifice – even when it threatens their “social security.”
Ain’t that something?
Yes. And NOW I am ready to say something about what those cries do to God’s heart.
Yes, the passage in Ezekiel 16 does eventually move to a more forceful disciplinary tone. But that is grounded first in the picture of God’s sacrificial love for us. We are adopted into his family, grafted into a family which itself was adopted from Open Field Abortions R Us. We are the people of God, and the Open Field is where he finds us and loves us into a life he has in mind for us.
Can I get the Amen?
As I study on this abortion issue, Last Church, it occurs to me that God does after all have a word about abortion, but it doesn’t seem to be what I would have expected. He seems to have an agenda, alright, and it seems that agenda has nothing to do with bombs, guns, shouting, judgment, or denial. It seems to me he is looking for a few good babies to take home.
Yes, there will be disciplinary issues we need to discuss along the way. I in no way deny that. But of course, there are other things we are more apt to deny which are primary even to all of that. And so, for today, I ask you to look at the Open Field Adoption Agency of God and cut through the denial. If you are taking in this sermon yourself, you really must – MUST – acknowledge your own salvation from the open field. God’s people are adopted from here with a deeply self-sacrificial love that saves the whole world.
God says to you in your blood, LIVE!
You have living to do now and discipline to learn it through, but none of that will make any sense if you remain in denial of your origins.
If you want to know more about how God saves you, please come forward from the ether and ask. I’d love to explore that with you, Last Church.
Amen.