By J. Michael Sharman, Contributing Writer
Since 2004, Sen. Barbara Boxer has been introducing a bill called the “Freedom of Choice Act” which would repeal “every Federal, State, and local statute, ordinance, regulation, administrative order, decision, policy, practice, or other action enacted, adopted, or implemented before, on, or after the date of enactment of this Act” which in any way “interferes with” a woman’s ability to abort her child.
In the past four years, the Freedom of Choice Act (“FOCA”) has never gotten much mainstream attention or even gotten out of committee, but two of FOCA’s past 19 co-sponsors included then-Senators Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama. The Washington Post quotes a speech Mr. Obama gave at a Planned Parenthood event in 2007 in which he promised that “the first thing I'd do as president” would be to sign the bill , and so it is not unlikely that this is the year that FOCA could actually become the law of the land.
Mr. Obama has been said to be more than just a little inclined to pattern his political strategies after Abraham Lincoln, and we can only pray that he will seriously meditate upon the words of the speech that Mr. Lincoln gave in recognition of Gettysburg’s transition from battlefield to burial ground.
As he spoke to the crowd gathered at the dedication of the new national cemetery, on the ground where just four months earlier 7,863 Americans had been killed and another 46,286 were wounded , President Lincoln pledged that: “[W]e here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
The dead that Mr. Lincoln was talking about were, of course, the Union and Confederate soldiers who had fought on that ground over two issues: For the North, the fight had been to give the millions of slaves held in bondage the same God-given rights as their white owners had to “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” For the South, the fight was to allow their own legislatures to end slavery, and to not have the timing and terms of emancipation dictated to them by the Federal government. Until Fort Sumter, every Southern legislature had had continual debates on the abolition of slavery. Most Southerners did not own slaves, and to them it was not a question of whether slavery would be abolished, it was only a question of when and how.
In our modern era, the FOCA bill offends those who believe that children in the womb are also endowed by God with rights to “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”, and it also offends those who believe that the people still have the city, county, and state rights guaranteed to them under the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
As a student of Lincoln, Mr. Obama should look for direction from the original source of the most ringing phrase in Mr. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
Five and half centuries before the American Civil War, John Wycliffe and Nicholas de Hereford made the first English translation of the Bible, and in their preface to that Bible they said, “This Bible is for the government of the people, by the people and for the people.”
That statement was true when Wycliffe and Hereford first wrote it in 1323, it was true when Lincoln restated it in 1863, and our current leaders would do well to acknowledge that it is still true today in 2009.
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Dear Saints,
As One Nation Under God expands, we are pleased to have God-fearing writers like J. Michael Sharman join our team at CADIPS PRESS. J. Michael Sharman has written FAITH OF THE FATHERS: RELIGION AND MATTERS OF FAITH CONTAINED IN THE PRESIDENTS' INAUGURAL ADDRESSES FROM GEORGE WASHINGTON TO GEORGE W. BUSH and he has a work in progress, ENDOWED BY OUR CREATOR: DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE OF OUR CHRISTIAN HERITAGE. He is a practicing attorney, author, and speaker with a broad base of legal and legislative experience. He served for five years on the Board of Directors for Washington Bible College and Capital Bible Seminary, and is on the Advisory Council for In Trust: The Magazine for Theological Education. Mike has a B.A. in International Relations from Mary Washington College, a J.D. from the University of Wyoming College of Law, and an LL.M. in International Taxation from Regent University."
We look forward to having more entries from J. Michael and a few more fine contributing writers, each of whom recognize the need for the United States to be ONE NATION UNDER GOD.
Soli Deo Gloria!
--Olivia M. McDonald, CADIPS PRESS
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