This video excerpt of a sermon Matt Chandler, lead pastor of Village Church in the in Flower Mound, TX (Dallas-Ft. Worth area), preached back on January 12, 2014 on the sanctity of life has been making the rounds recently on social media. Ā It is apropos in light of the horrific Planned Parenthood videos that have been released.
It shines a light on what is truly at stake as we discuss defunding Planned Parenthood, etc. Ā It’s about innocent human life that is being snuffed out, murdered, in the name of convenience.
Here’s the video, and it is worth the 6 1/2 minutes or so to watch:
Ā Here is the transcript of this excerpt of Chandler’s sermon:
When Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973, there was no 3D sonogram. There was no ability to watch our babies smile at us before they were born.
By eight weeksā¦ That’s not even the first trimester. Your wife is probably still throwing up. At eight weeks, babies will suck their thumbs. We see they respond to sound. There is evidence building that they’re dreaming. Here’s a crazy one. Are you ready for this one? They recoil from pain. What really the ability to do sonograms has shown us is when doctors need to draw blood or take a sample and they stick aĀ needle up there to do that, the baby at eight weeks will pull its heel up, will pull back in away from the needle.
Why? Because at eight weeks, all major organs are functioning, which means you have a nervous system that’s developed, and you have a brain that receives signals that that hurts! We see the heart is pumping. The liver is making blood cells. The kidneys are clearing fluids, and there’s a fingerprint. By 21 weeks, a baby, with just a little bit of help, can live outside the womb. Twenty-one weeks! Listen to me. Nearly all of the 1 million abortions committed in the Western world last year were performed after this period of time.
Here’s what happens. I know argumentation, and here’s what happens. In our head, it’s, “What about this? What about this horrific situation? What about this?” Listen to me. Statistically speaking, the majority of abortions are not taking place because of the woman’s life being in danger or because there was some horrific rape. It is purely around convenience. “I don’t want to do it. I’m not ready for this. I didn’t ask for this.” Murder for the sake of convenience.
What ends up happening is you’re forced, because you can’t argue with thisā¦ You can’t argue these things are true. What ends up happening is you show your cards. Your cards show this isn’t a rational argument at all anymore. This is now purely driven by the exaltation of self. Let me show you this, just show you how mad things have gone, how insane things have gone. Mary Elizabeth Williams wrote an article on January 23, 2013. Here’s what she said. She is wildly pro-choice. Let me just read you the title of her article.
The title of her article is “So What If Abortion Ends Life?” Here’s what she says. “Yet I know that throughout my own pregnancies, I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me. I believe that’s what a fetus is: a human life. And that doesn’t make me one iota less solidly pro-choice.” Let’s just start thinking about the crazy that just happened there. She basically said, “I have no doubt that what I am carrying is a human life, and yet I have not wavered one iota, one little mark, away from this belief that it is the woman’s right to choose whether or not to terminate the life of this baby.”
Do you want to hear her rationale? I mean, her rationale almost made me weep in my office. “Here’s the complicated reality in which we live.” Listen to this. “All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.” Period.
That’s insane! Who chooses whose life has the most value? Who gets that power? That sounds like Nazi Germany excrement to me. That sounds like the Three-Fifths Compromise, when African Americans, when it was decided how the United States would vote, compromised three-fifths of a man. Who decides this? To whom do we give this power? “Well, it’s the woman’s body.” The baby might be inthe woman’s body, but the baby is not the woman’s body.
It has its own DNA. It has its own genetic code. It has its own blood type. It has its own functioning brain, its own functioning kidneys, its own functioning lungs, its own dreams. It’s not the woman’s body. It’s in the woman’s body. That’s not the same. The argument is a woman should get to choose what she does with her body. Bull. Go prostitute yourself. See if you get arrested. You don’t! I don’t have the right to do whatever I want with my body. No one does!
That’s this kind of weird, ethereal argumentation that’s so detached from rational thought that it shows our consciences have been seared. You can’t do whatever you want. I’ll tell you what. Drive 95 mph naked on the way home today. Just do it! Let’s see if you can do whatever you want. See what kind of rights you have. The argument is, “No, no, no, no. You don’t get to tell me what I get to do with my body.” Of course they do! Our elected democratic republic gets to tell us all sorts of things we can and can’t do. Right now what they’re telling us we can do is murder babies.