THE LAST, GLORIOUS GASP OF THE HEARTBEAT BILL
By Dr. Patrick Johnston
December 23, 2012
NewsWithViews.com
A Daring Eulogy
Many of my fellow pro-lifes will scold me bitterly, as if I dared to start the wave at Grandma’s funeral. But my eulogy must be honest. The Heartbeat Bill has breathed its last in the Ohio statehouse, and I mourn it as if I would mourn the burning of a counterfeit dollar bill. The Heartbeat Bill has unfortunately been the most formidable obstacle to rallying the pro-life community to actually end the killing of Ohio babies.
What Senator Niehaus and Heartbeat Bill Leaders Have in Common
Don’t mistake my rejoicing in the demise of the Heartbeat Bill with any support for the Ohio Senate President Tom Niehaus, who’s responsible for burying it. He claims to be pro-life, but reasoned that if the Heartbeat Bill passed and the Supreme Court overturned it, it would “undermine all of the good work the right-to-life community has done.” He worried that the Heartbeat Bill, if overturned, would become one more obstacle to protecting the babies whenever we do get a pro-life majority on the High Court.
Although Niehaus and the Heartbeat Bill leaders are at odds on this particular legislation, they both adopt the same philosophy of submission to judicial tyranny. Niehaus’ belief that the Supreme Court reigns supreme over the law of God and the law of the land – the Constitution – provokes him to bury the Heartbeat Bill, but the same belief leads the Heartbeat Bill leaders write a Bill with crippling compromises that displease the Lord. Why does it displease the Lord? The Bill justifies the killing of some children threatened by abortion; the Heartbeat Bill specifically allows the killing of children conceived by rape and incest – heartbeat or no heartbeat. The Heartbeat Bill specifically states that if the abortionist does not document a heartbeat in the medical record, then the abortion is not even a crime – heartbeat or no heartbeat. The Heartbeat Bill virtually guarantees that abortionists will not document the fetal heartbeat, for only if they do so is the abortion a crime. And the crime of killing a child with a documented heartbeat is a fourth degree felony, which makes killing a dog more severely punished than killing a baby. This penalty dehumanizes the preborn child, further inscribing into the law the very same godless standard of morality and justice that brought us a Holocaust of 55 million babies in the first place.
Why did the Heartbeat Bill leaders add these exceptions, compromises, and caveats? Do they believe that abortion is justified in cases of rape or incest? No, they don’t. Do they believe it should be a crime to do an abortion even if the abortionist doesn’t document the heartbeat in the medical record? They do. Do they believe that the preborn are people in the eyes of God and the Constitution, or do they believe them to be subhuman? They believe that the preborn is a full person from the time of conception. Why then all the pathetic exceptions and compromises? Here’s why: to increase the likelihood of the legislation surviving the judiciary. But when we start with the premise that God’s law forbidding all murder may be compromised in order to please mass murdering Supreme Court justices, haven’t we started on a foundation that is intrinsically corrupt? Why should we be surprised when what is laid upon this foundation is corrupt?
A Variation of Immorality is Still Immorality
American Right to Life rightly pointed out on their website, “Just like Roe v. Wade, heartbeat bills regulate the age at which a child can be killed, showing them to be violations of God’s command, Do not kill the innocent, and therefore unconstitutional…. The 2012 Ohio Heartbeat Bill is fundamentally a variation on the immoral Roe ruling.” A variation of immorality is immorality.
Exposing the Failed Pro-Life Strategy that Birthed the Heartbeat Bill
When are we going to give up on the pathetic, failed strategy of trying to get a pro-life majority on the Supreme Court? The Court that gave us Roe v. Wade in 1973 included seven Republican appointees, and one of the Democrat appointees was against the Republican’s pro-abortion decision. There were eight Republican appointees on the High Court when they reinforced legal abortion in the Casey case in 1993. George W. Bush gave us Sam Alito, who issued a radical abortion ruling before his appointment to the High Court, declaring New Jersey’s partial-birth-abortion ban to be unconstitutional, citing Roe v. Wade approvingly in the process. (With Alito, Bush definitely kept his promise – “I have no litmus test.”) John Roberts, Bush’ other appointee, has now sided with abortion-funding Obamacare. With Republican appointees like these, who needs Democrats?
Now we’ve got to put up with Obama’s radical communist appointees for the next four years (who, God forbid, might be just as bad as the pro-abortion appointees of Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts). So, pray tell, when in the next thousand years do we expect to get this magical pro-life majority on the High Court? Our failed pro-life strategy has us begging for crumbs at the child-killing altar of judicial tyranny until Jesus comes, and never, ever actually abates the wrath of God against us for the shedding of innocent blood.
Brace for an enlightened announcement, my fellow pro-lifers: the Supreme Court is not God. We don’t have to ask the courts for permission to do what God requires. God requires Ohio’s leaders to protect the innocent people under their authority and within their lawful jurisdiction – even if the Supreme Court dares to forbid it. Ohio’s “Higher Powers” will stand before the Highest Power and give an account for whether they obeyed the One who delegated them with authority (Romans 13:1-4). The duty to protect the innocent through justice is local, according to the Constitution (Article X of the Bill of Rights) and the Bible (Deuteronomy 21:1-9). Ohio deserves God’s wrath if we don’t do justice for the slaughtered preborn (Numbers 35). On Judgment Day, pathetic pro-life legislators and compromising pro-life leaders won’t be able to point their fingers at the Supreme Court and say, “They wouldn’t let us protect the babies.” In matters of loving our neighbors as ourselves – including “the least” of God’s children – “it is better to obey God than man” (Acts 5:29).
“But If We Can’t Save Every Baby, Shouldn’t We Save the Ones We Can?”
Here, the pro-life leader levels the rebuttal, “But when we can’t save every baby, shouldn’t we at least save the ones we can?” Of course – as long as you don’t have to kill babies in order to save some babies. It’s never right to do wrong to do right. God’s enduring command, Do no murder, takes precedent over circumstances, pragmatic considerations, and situational ethics. American Right to Life addresses these common justifications for abortion exceptions and compromises on their website, and their answers are so good that I’ll let this link suffice.
The Threat of the Counterfeit
One of the greatest threats to the value of the dollars in our wallet is counterfeit dollars; likewise, the Heartbeat Bill is one of the greatest threats to protecting every child in state law. As director for Personhood Ohio, which is gathering signatures to amend the Ohio Constitution to protect every preborn child in defiance of unconstitutional and immoral judicial tyranny, I have asked passers-by to sign our petition and been told, “We don’t need your Amendment. The Heartbeat Bill will protect every child with a heartbeat.” Most supporters of the Heartbeat Bill have embraced it because it was marketed as an abortion ban, but that is a dishonest representation of that Bill. That even the media has announced that the Heartbeat Bill would ban almost all abortion demonstrates the success of the Heartbeat Bill marketing campaign. But the Bill is a counterfeit – a fake. Take the time to google the Heartbeat Bill and read it for yourself.
Just as putting counterfeit money-printing rings out of business is important to protect the value of the American dollar, so exposing the phony Heartbeat Bill is critical to protecting every Ohioan baby. The blood of the babies cries out for justice, and protecting them is more important than protecting the feelings of our fellow pro-life advocates who throw their weight behind phony legislation.
The Heartbeat Bill has hindered the kind of support from pro-life organizations that would get our 100% abortion ban on the ballot. The Ohio Christian Alliance, which promised to help us before the 2010 election, has been too busy drumming support for the Heartbeat Bill the past two years to keep their promise. The Ohio bishops forbade parishes to allow signature-gathering for the Personhood Amendment. Created Equal, the Center of Bioethical Reform, Ohio Right to Life, and Citizens for Community Values have more important priorities that get in the way of supporting a Bill or Amendment would protect all of Ohio’s children. Although Faith2Action’s leader Janet Folger kindly signed our petition, agreeing with us in premise that every Ohioan baby should be protected under Ohio law, she hasn’t lifted a finger to rally her supporters to help us get the Ohio Personhood Amendment on the ballot.
As they mourn the death of the Heartbeat Bill at the hands of Senator Niehaus, it is a good time to remind them that they can bypass corrupt Statehouse leaders and gather signatures for the Ohio Personhood Amendment, which would allow 50.1% of Ohioan voters to protect 100% of Ohio’s babies.
It’s Time for State Nullification of Federal Tyranny
We pro-lifers could learn a lot from the TEA Party movement that is sweeping the nation. More and more, states are courageously defying federal tyranny on several fronts. Almost a million Americans have signed petitions trying to secede peacefully from the Union. Dozens of states have passed sovereignty resolutions, trying to restrain the federal government to specifically enumerated constitutional powers. The leadership of Texas and Wisconsin has publicly stated that they will not fulfill Obamacare’s mandates for their states. Arizona is trying to take the enforcement of illegal immigration laws into its own hands, ignoring failed federal policies. Two states have followed Montana’s lead with its Firearms Freedom Act, declaring guns made in their state for citizens in their state to be outside the jurisdiction of the federal bureaucrats. Dozens of states have legalized medical marijuana, in defiance of 2001 and 2005 Supreme Court decisions that declared states had no right to violate federal drug policy. In our attempt to protect preborn children from death by dismemberment, why can’t we at least be as assertive as pot-smokers who want to smoke pot for their migraines?
Maybe now that this counterfeit pro-life bill has been buried by the Ohio statehouse, we can rally to a battle that if won would actually abate the wrath of God against Ohio. With God, all things are possible – especially His will, and it is not the will of our Father in heaven that one of these children should perish. Not one. Can we pray and act in accordance to His will, and quit aiming for counterfeit alternatives?
Israel didn’t conquer their Promised Land as God promised and empowered them to do. Why? The Scripture says, because of their “unbelief”; because of their compromise with the idolatrous standards of morality and justice in the land. You worship the author of the standard by which you live, and you shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve. If Ohio fails to ban abortion and suffers under the judgment the rest of the nation has coming to it, it will be because of the unbelief and idolatry of Ohio’s pro-lifers.
What can you do to help?
1.
Pray as if your life depended on it. We must love these babies as we
love ourselves. When we ask anything according to God’s will,
believing we have received it, we shall have it.
2. Give
a gift to Personhood Ohio today. Every $25 dollars gets you entered
into a $5,000 drawing on Dec. 15, so do it today!
3. Gather signatures for our Personhood Amendment.
Print
off a petition.
4. Email your friends and family, urging them to sign
the petition and gather signatures of pro-life friends and family.
5. Ask your pastor if you can make an announcement
and gather signatures in the foyer after church. Many pastors have invited
Personhood Ohio leaders to do this, and it is an effective means of
awakening God’s people to prayer and gathering signatures.
6. Visit
and sign up for our Email list, and “like us” on facebook.
7. Email the following pro-life leaders in Ohio:
Janet
Folger at Faith2Action
Phil Burress
at Citizens for Community Values
Mike Gonadakis
at Ohio Right to Life
Chris
Long with the Ohio Christian Alliance
Mark
Harrington with Created Equal
Darius Hardwick with The Center
for Bioethical Reform
Your
local Right to Life organization
Contact
Carolyn Jurkowitz and Jim Tobin with the Catholic Conference of Ohio
Your church denomination’s state denominational leaders
We have contacted and lobbied each of the above repeatedly, so they will not be a stranger to the content of your Email. Simply urge them prayerfully to stop supporting a failed pro-life policy that justifies the killing of some people, and that tries to satisfy a godless Supreme Court, and instead work through the lawful means of state nullification and criminalize abortion at the state level. If you support or donate to these organizations, you may prayerfully decide to make further support contingent on their willingness to support the Ohio Personhood Amendment.
Suggested Email:
Hello ____________,
With the re-election of President Obama and four more years of his pro-abortion judicial appointments, do you ever think that we can pass laws that can protect every single Ohioan child that will survive the Supreme Court? As you know, the Bible says that the shedding of innocent blood brings God’s wrath on our land. If we do not protect these children, I fear divine judgment against us for the slaughter of so many of his dear children.
I think we need to re-think whether we should work for bills like the Heartbeat Bill, which do not protect all children and which, with their weak penalties for child-killing, further dehumanize preborn children. This bill’s compromises, which were inserted to help it clear the Statehouse and survive judicial muster, allow abortion in cases of rape and incest and do not criminalize abortion if the abortionist didn’t’ document a heartbeat in the medical record. Instead of trying to please the Supreme Court with weak pro-life bills, why not try to protect every preborn person in state law, in compliance with God’s law, and in defiance of judicial tyranny? Many states are nullifying federal tyranny on many different fronts and succeeding. Why can’t we pass the Personhood Amendment – which would end all abortion in Ohio without exception – and urge state leaders to nullify bad federal law by enforcing their good law? The pot-smokers have done it in legalizing medical marijuana at the state level in defiance of two Supreme Court rulings. Why can’t we do it too?
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I’m going to help them gather signatures to protect every preborn child in state law, and I would urge you to do it too. Will you urge your followers to do it too? Why don’t we call the Ohio Personhood Amendment the “Heartbeat Bill” in 2013, for it alone will protect every Ohioan child with a heartbeat (unlike the failed Heartbeat Bill), and it will protect them from the time of their conception. Please prayerfully consider this. Thank you.
Respectfully
submitted,
(Your name)
www.PersonhoodOhio.com
(Your address)
(Your phone number)
(Your Email)
Dr. Johnston has written a Trilogy that provides the blueprint for a successful, God-blessed secession from the moral and financial corpse the federal government has become. The first and second novel in the Trilogy, The Revolt of 2020, and The American Tyranny of 2020, may be purchased at www.TheRevoltTrilogy.com. The third, The Uncivil War of 2020, is due out this month. A novel addressing the popular false doctrine of pacifism and the need for Christians to restore justice is The Lesser Hills of Kinder County, and may be purchased on the same website.
For a more thorough study of the historical Christian doctrine of the lesser magistrates, purchase the book The Magdeburg Confession written in 1550 and translated into English by Matthew Colvin, available on amazon.com.
� 2012 Patrick Johnston - All Rights Reserved
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