Pro-Life

Stay in the Fight for the Right to Life

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Tim Wildmon
President, American Family Association
January 22, 2003

Message delivered by Tim Wildmon, president of American Family Association and American Family Radio to gathering in Waco, Texas, on January 22, 2003, at the Church on the Rock.

When I was growing up my dad was a Methodist minister. Although I can’t remember all his sermons I do remember this. At least once a year he would preach specifically on the value and dignity of each human life. Rich, poor, black, brown, white, educated, uneducated, it didn’t matter. In God’s eyes we were all the same. One thing Dad used to say that has all ways stuck with me is this: God cares for the common ditch digger as much as he does the President of the United States. What dad was communicating was a New Testament principle. "For God so loved the world the He gave..."

God loves and cares for the unborn. Unborn human beings created in the image of God.

I was 10 years old in 1973 when the Supreme Court made Roe vs. Wade the law of the land. Since then, somewhere between 42 and 45 million unborn babies have had their lives ended by abortion. To put that in perspective, we are talking about the same number as the entire population of Spain. The numbers boggle the mind. We must repent. We must repent and we must continue to work towards an end to this killing of the most innocent among us.

If you are like me you sometimes get weary of fighting the culture war. By culture war I mean the fight that is raging between those who believe in God, the Holy Bible and moral absolutes and those who do not. It is tiresome. It is daily. Sometimes I just want to pack it in, move to a mountain somewhere and forget about it all. So many of our fellow Americans see no need for the Lord and certainly do not revere His law. But we can’t stop defending righteousness. We can’t stop defending biblical truth. Galatians 6:9 says, "Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."

Pat Buchanan defines the culture war and the Christian’s responsibility this way: "Ultimately, our culture war is about one question: Is God dead, or is God king? If God is dead, as the European philosopher Nietzsche wrote, everything is permissible, and eventually, one will logically reach the conclusion of Paris’ student radicals of 1969: The only thing that is forbidden is to forbid. But if God is king, men have a duty to try, as best they can, to conform their lives to His will and shape society in accordance with His law. Defection and indifference are not options open to us. We are commanded to fight...For the culture war is at its heart a religious war about whether God or man shall be exalted, whose moral beliefs shall be enshrined in law, and what children shall be taught to value and abhor. With those stakes, to walk away is to abandon your post in time of war."

Even with all the bad news we have to look at today–and the sadness we feel in our hearts for what has taken place in America the past 30 years–still, there is a glimmer of hope that things might be changing. You may have seen or heard about the poll released last week by the Wirthlin Wordwide polling firm that showed that 68 percent of Americans now say they favor "restoring legal protection for unborn children." Some 1,000 adults were asked whether, in light of medical advances that reveal the unborn child’s body and facial features in detail, "are you favor of restoring legal protection for unborn children?" Of the sixty-eight percent of the randomly surveyed adults who said they favored legal protection, 44 percent were in "strong agreement" with such action. This is very good news for the pro-life side. It means people who are in the mushy middle about abortion, who may have been sympathetic to the "woman’s right to choose" argument in the past, are changing their minds based on medical science and are now asking the question, "A woman’s right to choose what?"

Another important finding from the survey is that 66 percent of those polled said they favored nominees to the Supreme Court "who would uphold laws that restore legal protection to unborn children." Again, this is more good news because it is likely that President Bush will have the opportunity to appoint two or more new members to the Supreme Court in the next few years, assuming he will win re-election. And the chances are also good that he will have a pro-life majority in the United States Senate who will confirm those nominees.

Quite frankly, I am somewhat surprised by the results of this poll. America has become such a hedonistic society the last 25 years I have wondered if we had not gone so far away from God that He would just turn us loose to eventually self-destruct. And we may yet. But I believe perhaps–just perhaps–the Lord is beginning to take the faithful remnant of men and women, boys and girls, who have been praying, who have been working, who have been speaking out, and giving us some hope that America might be turned around.

And who would have ever thought that we would see this photograph on the front cover of TIME magazine a few weeks back?

So some things are going our way in the pro-life community. Some good things are happening. However, the killing goes on today. And it will go on tomorrow and the day after that. So we must keep on keepin’ on.

Here are some steps that we can take as we move towards restoring the rights of the unborn.

1. We can support crisis pregnancy centers who are there for young girls who are pregnant, scared and thinking of abortion. My wife Alison and I have been monthly financial contributors to our local crisis pregnancy center for 10 years. If these ladies can do the work–often voluntarily–to reach the young women with the love of Jesus Christ and help in their time of need, the least I can do is support them with my prayers and my money.

2. Vote and educate others about pro-life candidates who are running for public office. Often times not even 25% of Christians of voting age actually vote. This is a shame and a disgrace. Are we always going to get everything we want from the politicians we elect to office? The answer is no, we are not. Often times we will be disappointed. However, if Christians do not participate in the political process I can guarantee you we are not going to see righteousness exalted. Christians are "we the people" too, and we should not shy away from letting our voices be heard by those who are making decisions for us in Austin or in Washington, D.C.

3. The third step we can take, and certainly not the least important, is to pray for America. Pray for our president, pray for the Supreme Court justices, and pray that the abortion industry would continue to fall into ill repute with the American people. Also, pray for the millions of people–both men and women–who have been party to one or multiple abortions. There are millions of people out there who are carrying the guilt of abortion. I know because every time we do a radio program on the subject we get call after call after call from women–often crying–because of what they did 20 years ago that no one knows about. But we also get calls from men who pushed their girlfriends into having abortions and they too carry a lot of guilt. Tthat is the natural consequence of sin. What a joy it is when we can tell these people about the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ.

Finally, let me reemphasize again the need to persevere until we see the end of abortion in America. Keep praying, keep working, keep speaking out. We will have our detractors and as we get closer to winning those who stand against life–who stand against God–will become more angry and more desperate. We have already seen how these people lie about and slander judicial nominees they see as a threat to abortion on demand. As we continue to stand firm we would do well to remember the words of President Teddy Roosevelt when he said:

"It is not the critic who counts–not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause... Who, at the least knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while doing greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."

We must stay in the arena for the right to life for unborn babies.