Coral Ridge Ministries Applauds High Court Partial-Birth Abortion Ruling
Fort Lauderdale (April 18, 2007)—Brian E. Fisher, Executive Vice President of Coral Ridge Ministries, released the following statement on today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the federal ban on partial-birth abortion.
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered good news for unborn children. The Court’s 5-4 ruling to uphold the federal ban on partial-birth abortion was, to be sure, a narrow decision and one which, sadly, does not end the bloodletting that takes place every day in abortion centers nationwide.
“You shall not murder,” God’s edict to Moses on Mount Sinai, is still disregarded some 3,500 times a day in America. Even so, for the first time in more than 30 years, a ban on one method to end the life of an unborn child has been found constitutional.
This is enormously good news. It underscores how important it is for men and women who care about the unborn to participate in the civic process. Today’s decision is the fruit of more than a decade of labor by the broader pro-life community. Partial-birth abortion is opposed by some 70 percent of Americans. Many of them have made their wishes known to their elected representatives.
We, as a ministry under the leadership of Dr. D. James Kennedy, have over the last decade forwarded hundreds of thousands of petitions to Washington – to the President, Congress, and the U.S. Supreme Court – urging an end to this heinous practice.
Three years ago, Dr. Kennedy praised Congress and the President for enacting the ban on partial-birth abortion. “Unborn children cannot speak,” he noted, “but Congress and the President have spoken on their behalf. In so doing they have fulfilled what Thomas Jefferson called the ‘first and only legitimate object of good government,’ which is, he said, ‘the care of human life and happiness.’”
Jefferson recognized that we are all endowed by our Creator with an unalienable right to life. That endowment comes when life begins—and, biologically speaking, there is no debate but that human life begins at fertilization. The Scriptures agree about the humanity of the unborn. “For you created my inmost being,” the Psalmist David proclaims. “You knit me together in my mother's womb” (Psalm 139:13 niv).
Today’s High Court ruling begins the process by which, we pray, the Court itself will recognize this Scriptural truth and join the ranks of those who, as Jefferson said, make the protection of innocent human life, not its destruction, a first order of good government.
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Coral Ridge Ministries is the radio and television outreach of Dr. D. James Kennedy. Its programming reaches into 200 nations.