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. 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. Itās about innocent human life that is being snuffed out, murdered, in the name of convenience.
Hereās the video, and it is worth the 6 1/2 minutes or so to watch:
Here is the transcript of this excerpt of Chandlerās 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¦ Thatās 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 theyāre dreaming. Hereās 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 a 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 thatās 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 thereās 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.
Hereās what happens. I know argumentation, and hereās what happens. In our head, itās, āWhat about this? What about this horrific situation? What about this?ā Listen to me. Statistically speaking, the majority of abortions are not taking place because of the womanās life being in danger or because there was some horrific rape. It is purely around convenience. āI donāt want to do it. Iām not ready for this. I didnāt ask for this.ā Murder for the sake of convenience.
What ends up happening is youāre forced, because you canāt argue with thisā¦ You canāt argue these things are true. What ends up happening is you show your cards. Your cards show this isnāt 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. Hereās what she said. She is wildly pro-choice. Let me just read you the title of her article.
The title of her article is āSo What If Abortion Ends Life?ā Hereās what she says. āYet 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 thatās what a fetus is: a human life. And that doesnāt make me one iota less solidly pro-choice.ā Letās just start thinking about the crazy that just happened there. She basically said, āI 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 womanās right to choose whether or not to terminate the life of this baby.ā
Do you want to hear her rationale? I mean, her rationale almost made me weep in my office. āHereās the complicated reality in which we live.ā Listen to this. āAll life is not equal. Thatās 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. Sheās 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.ā Period.
Thatās 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? āWell, itās the womanās body.ā The baby might be inthe womanās body, but the baby is not the womanās 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. Itās not the womanās body. Itās in the womanās body. Thatās 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 donāt! I donāt have the right to do whatever I want with my body. No one does!
Thatās this kind of weird, ethereal argumentation thatās so detached from rational thought that it shows our consciences have been seared. You canāt do whatever you want. Iāll tell you what. Drive 95 mph naked on the way home today. Just do it! Letās see if you can do whatever you want. See what kind of rights you have. The argument is, āNo, no, no, no. You donāt get to tell me what I get to do with my body.ā Of course they do! Our elected democratic republic gets to tell us all sorts of things we can and canāt do. Right now what theyāre telling us we can do is murder babies.