Battle to Defeat Pregnancy Center Bill Contains Valuable Lessons

As most readers are now aware, Monday evening was the deadline for this session to pass bills out of the "House of origin", and HB1366, the bill created and pushed by the Washington State abortion industry to shut down pro-life pregnancy centers, was abandoned by the Democratic leadership.

So the bill is dead. Pro-lifers are celebrating. What seemed almost impossible 24 hours earlier was achieved.

The abortion industry -- NARAL and Planned Parenthood, and their lackies in the Democratic Party -- are seething. This is the second year in a row of setbacks, and this is the friendliest state in the union to their agenda of death. They passed a similar bill a couple of weeks ago in New York City.

Perhaps they believe Frank Sinatra, if they could make it there, they could make it anywhere. They are peddling this bill across the country. They passed one similar in Baltimore, but this was to be the first state they have tried. The thought was actually Sinatra in reverse: if you can't make it in Washington, you can't make it anywhere.

But while the merchants of death are doing their own post-mortem, pro-lifers need to clean up the ticker-tape and take careful stock of lessons learned. Because the abortion industry has vowed to bring this bill back next year, and they are usually relentless. The pro-life community was taken by surprise the first time. Frankly, they should have been ready this time, but they were somehow caught flatfooted again, and succeeded despite something of a last minute scramble.

If the Democrats do decide to pursue this bill again in eleven months, despite the fact that it will be closer to an election, we need to make sure they walk right into an ambush.

The most important thing that needs to happen is that the pregnancy center community needs to finally, once and for all, abandon the notion of "detente" with Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry. These pro-lifers, doing wonderful work on the front lines, have in too many cases adopted a "live and let live" approach with those who kill unborn babies. They have become seduced by a lie that if they just operated in the margins, Planned Parenthood would leave them alone.

We know of numerous cases where pro-life pregnancy clinics have become paralyzed because a nearby Planned Parenthood occasionally refers clients to them. In exchange, the CPC has given PP a pass, and deliberately avoided fighting them publicly. In one case, a CPC discouraged its staff from attending a city council meeting that was deciding whether or not to allow Planned Parenthood to open up a new clinic in town.

It doesn't seem to occur to these center directors that perhaps Planned Parenthood is "buying off" their silence with what is to them a tiny percentage of their client base.

The fact is, we firmly believe that everything that is needed to crush the abortion industry forever is in the filing cabinets of the state's pregnancy centers. It's in the stories of your clients.

The ones who went to Planned Parenthood and were denied an ultrasound until they agreed to an abortion. The ones who were scheduled for an abortion within minutes of finding out they were pregnant. The ones who had an abortion that the abortionist and staff knew she didn't want.

The ones who had multiple abortions without ever being shown a fetal development model or photo, let alone hearing their baby's heartbeat on a fetal heart monitor. The ones who now have nightmares about their abortion. The ones who tried to commit suicide after their abortion.

It's in the unfiled police reports, the unfiled lawsuits, the unfiled complaints with the Department of Health, the unmade tipoff phone calls to malpractice insurance carriers.

Hopefully now that Planned Parenthood and the rest of the Washington State abortion industry has made their intention to destroy you painfully clear, it's time to end the denial and show the myth of "peaceful co-existence" the door.

Even after 9/11, there were -- and remain -- those who thought Islamofascists could be understood or negotiated with. But just as in that case, the fact is there are those who know nothing but death. They kill and destroy because they must. There may be fascinating psychological, sociological, and spiritual explanations for their genocidal behavior, but while you're busy trying to figure all that out, they're busying plotting their next move to destroy you.

They may individually even have nice smiles, wear nice clothes, have one or two cute (living) children that seduce you into detente. But we know that the devil comes as an angel of light.

It's wonderful to pursue their individual salvation, but it's critical to understand that that will almost certainly never stop their movement. Biblical Christians must be able seek the souls of the lost with abandon, while seeking the destruction of their genocidal movements without compromise.

So let's put "detente" on the bus. What you know, and can prove, about Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics has to start becoming public. The stories from your clients must be told. They are devastating. Send them to us. Or find a way to publish them yourself, on your Facebook page, or start your own blog.

Pro-life hero Phil Kline, who pursued legal action against Planned Parenthood in Kansas as Attorney General, and has been targeted for destruction by them ever since, just said in an email:

"The pro-life community has never focused on enforcing the law."

That's something we have been saying. Just because it's legal for them to murder babies, doesn't mean everything else they do is legal. They'll break every law they can get away with. Let's not let them.

File police reports where it looks like a crime, any crime, may have been committed. Get to know your local police chief and your local prosecutor. File complaints with the Department of Health. Get to know every regulation that applies to them, financial or medical, and look for violations when your clients tell their stories.

There are many Christians who feel that pursing legal action against the wicked is somehow secular and dirty or perhaps vengeful when we should be extending grace and showing love. That's not what the Apostle Paul said:

What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; (Romans 7:7)

While strictly speaking Paul was referring to the Mosaic law, the point stands. Even more on point, Paul said:

[F]or [the state] is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. (Romans 13:4)

 It's time to go on offense. We have everything we need to bring the abortion industry to justice in both the court of public opinion and human courts of justice.