Lutheran pastors participating in the Jan. 17 March for Life event in Santa Fe, from left, Rev. Elisha Lietzau of Faith in Christ Lutheran Church in Albuquerque, Rev. Brian Kachelmeier of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Los Alamos, Rev. Phil Quarles of Sangre de Criso Lutheran Church in Taos and Rev. Douglas Escue of Immanuel Lutheran Church in Santa Fe. Courtesy photo
Redeemer Evangelical Lutheran Church News:
Life is precious, and it is something to be cared for, provided for, and protected from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death. Life is a gift and it is something that cannot be snuffed out in the womb, hospital bed, or nursing home based upon convenience or hardship or subjective opinion or choice.
The question isn’t whether or not a two-celled embryo floating down her mother’s fallopian tubes is a life or not. The question is: does that life hold the same rights as me, as you. Does the 19-week-old baby (or here in New Mexico, the 9-month-old baby) sitting comfortably in the uterus, the very place in all the world made to house such a child, have the same rights to that life-nurturing organ as his mother? Does the terminally ill man lying in a hospital bed have the same rights to dignity, protection, medical care, and life as a healthy man sitting in his home? Does the great-grandmother with Alzheimer’s have the same right to see tomorrow as her bright-eyed and fully functional great-granddaughter? … We would say, “Yes!” And those rights aren’t subjective. They aren’t granted by the government. The institution of the government does not create natural rights; instead, it is called to defend them.
The government is instituted to defend life, to defend freedom, to defend natural rights. And society calls on that government to do these very things. The natural right to life is not left open to the whimsies of democracy. The natural right to life does not begin or end with a 51 percent majority. It is not created by five men clothed in black robes over and against four others. The natural right to life is not legislated. It is not signed into law. It is not bought or sold. It simply is. … And when a government overreaches its authority, when it declares that it alone is the author of natural rights, then it has become corrupted. It has stepped into the realm of tyranny. When government withholds protection for the weakest and smallest and lowliest of those it was instituted to protect it is no longer acting for the good of society but for the good of an ideology that is contrary to the natural rights of its citizenry.
Society is called to provide and care for those within itself. We do not look for the government to do these things; instead, we do them. What we demand from the government is the freedom to do so. What we demand from the government is for it to guard against any infringement on the natural right to life. And when the government ceases to do these things what is demanded of society is that we carry on about our business of care and love and self-sacrifice. And we speak and march and demand that the government upholds its responsibility that it has forgotten: a responsibility to protect the innocent. … That is what we are doing today; and hopefully not just today, but each and every day.
As a Christian I don’t have to appeal to religious arguments to speak for the sanctity of life. This natural right is true and valid in what we call “Natural Law” and you don’t have to adhere to any specific faith to know this as rational and logical, certain and unchangeable, throughout all time and all space. … But as Christians, we do have the understanding of something greater. In Jesus’ Incarnation, in God taking on our flesh and becoming man, in His conception and gestation in Mary’s womb, God sanctified all human life as a precious gift given by Him and to be taken away only by Him. And here, too, He sanctified the wombs of all women as the very place that He designed (not by random chance or evolutionary accident, but by divine purpose) to hold, nurture, and protect a life which He alone creates. … If Jesus is true man at the moment of His conception inside the womb of His mother than we too are truly and fully human at the very point of our conception within our own mother’s wombs. If we thank God for Mary, then we must give God that same thanks for all pregnant women. And if we would see Jesus’ death inside His mother’s womb as a horrible and untimely thing then we must also see the death of any unborn baby as the same!
Today we march and we rally. But in a few moments we will walk out these doors and the question is, “Now what?” … We speak. We speak for those who were never given the chance to speak. We speak for those whose voices never left their mother’s wombs and for those too overcome by disease or old age to speak for themselves. We give love to the hurting mom who is covered by shame, the heartbroken dad who is overcome with loss, the blind doctors who refuse to acknowledge that they bring death, and those in public office who have neglected their most important duty of protecting those who can’t protect themselves. We then pray for the sinner that is in all of us; because Christ our Lord became man, became one of us to free us from this sin. And finally we proclaim the gift that God alone has endowed upon us all. … We stand for life!
