A letter from Lencioni

The following is a letter in part that I received via email box from Patrick Lencioni, he was a speaker at Catalyst last year...

Barack Obama has already promised that on his first day in office he will sign FOCA, the Freedom of Choice Act. What will this do? It will make it impossible for states to require girls/women seeking abortion to get parental consent, speak with a counselor, or get an ultrasound of their unborn baby. It will also make it impossible to ban partial birth abortion. And for those who don’t know – and so many people don’t know – partial birth abortion is horrific. It is the procedure in which a late term unborn baby is pulled partially from his or her mother’s womb, scissors are inserted into its brain to scramble the contents, while the child goes into spasm and jerks in horrible pain. Then the baby is vacuumed from its mother’s womb.

There is no doubt that the impact and intent of FOCA is to prevent anything from happening that might make a women reconsider or be restricted in having an abortion. It is by far the most aggressive action since the Roe vs. Wade decision.

Finally, it simply cannot be ignored that on two separate and unequivocal occasions, Barack Obama voted against providing medical care to babies who were born alive after botched abortions.

I am writing to implore you to consider the abortion issue as the most foundational issue of our culture and our time. When you look at any society, you can judge so much of where it is headed by how it treats its most innocent and vulnerable people. And there is no one more innocent and more vulnerable than an unborn child.

Many people will say that war or poverty or medical care are just as important issues, and just as much related to “life”. However, each of those issues involves far less clear moral imperatives. For instance, there is an argument to be made that there are “just wars” (think about WWII and the need to stop the Nazis, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War), and there are some poor people who are poor because of their own bad decisions and refusal to work hard (what percentage I don’t know, but it is not insignificant), and there are health care issues that are not clearly fundamental rights (elective cosmetic surgery and care for self-inflicted problems from smoking or chronic over-eating). In other words, war, poverty and medical care have gray areas that can be debated in terms of what is good and what is evil. Some wars are certainly wrong. Many poor people are poor through no fault of their own. And many sick people need and deserve care regardless of their financial means. But there are gray areas.

Abortion, on the other hand, is not really debatable. No child wants to be aborted. Every abortion is the pre-mature and unnatural ending of a human life. I heard someone say recently that all people are born pro-life, and have to learn to be pro-choice.

Finally, think about that ultrasound image of an unborn child, and the teary eyes of the mother and father seeing their first glimpse of their son or daughter. Now ask yourself if it makes any sense to worry about that baby if there are complications during pregnancy. To pray for him or her during that time. To do surgery on him or her to improve the chances of survival. Of course it does.

And then we must ask ourselves if it makes sense to let another unborn child be purposely injected with saline solution so that it will burn and die, or to have its arms and legs and face and hands chopped into pieces and vacuumed from the womb, simply because his or her mother decided he or she didn’t deserve to be born.

How can we treat these two equal and innocent creatures so differently, one as a life worthy of prayer and concern and tears, and another as disposable property? There is no logical or moral way to explain this, not to a ten-year old, a teenager or an adult.

Yes, this is uncomfortable. Yes, this is controversial. But what it is not is political. It is about life. It doesn’t matter whether you are a liberal or a conservative, a democrat or a republican, a man or a woman. What does matter is whether you believe in God, and the He created us in His image. Because if you do, then it is hard to see abortion as anything but morally wrong.

I don’t write this to you out of superiority or condescension. I am a sinner like everyone else. And I fear taking an unpopular stand just like anyone else. But in this case, out of love, I had to let you know how I feel.

God bless you and all of us, and the unborn children who depend on our courage.

Patrick Lencioni, The Table Group