I believe God created this earth and created all of its inhabitants. The Bible also says that he knew us before we were in our mother's womb. I also believe that he numbers our days and is sovereign.
I think there is plenty of confusion among Christians about the authority of the Bible and how that applies to life in this century. For instance, the Presbyterian Church USA has as its official policy that it is both pro-abortion and anti-abortion. That defines confusion to me.
The slope is very slippery once you allow wide leeway for interpretation of Scripture, or, for that matter, redefine what the law clearly says—the so-called right to marry that five Supreme Court justices dreamed up to force gay marriage upon our society.
For an example of how far to the extremes politicians can go, consider that 177 Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against a bill to prohibit physicians from killing babies who were born alive during an abortion procedure. As Fox commentator Bill O'Reillly correctly put it, those votes were to justify infanticide—a similar argument goes against late-term, partial birth abortions. When do the "rights" of the mother trump the life of the baby?
Sadly, the Democrats will not tolerate any limits to a woman's "right" to kill her baby.
Among those voting against were Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of Florida, Jackie Speier of San Mateo, and our own Eric Swalwell of Dublin and Mark DeSaulnier of Concord (who formerly represented the valley in the state Senate).
Incidentally, Jason L. Riley, a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, offered an interesting perspective in the Sept. 16 edition on abortion. He pointed out that there is a huge racial disparity in abortion rates with black women. Research showed that more black babies were aborted in New York City than were born. Black babies accounted for 42 percent of the total abortions there where blacks make up 25 percent of the population.
In Georgia, where whites out-number blacks by 2-1, 53 percent of the abortions were performed on black babies and black women terminated pregnancies at rates 2.5 times greater than whites.
Riley suggests that one reason poor black women abort at much higher rates than either whites or Hispanics is black marriage rates are much lower than either of the others. The women may doubt that the father will stick around to support and raise the child.
