Abolish Abortion Nebraska: Equality Before the Law

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Questions for Nate Grasz

and Nebraska Family Alliance

 

(Image credit: Laurin Steffens)

 

Last month, Nate Grasz, policy director for Nebraska Family Alliance, gave a message at Radiant Church in Lincoln which was uploaded with the title, “Abortion On The Ballot: The Sermon Every Christian Voter In Nebraska Needs To Hear.”1 This post will be an interaction with Mr. Grasz’s talk.

 

 

Aspects of Agreement

 

There was so much in the message to agree with and give a hearty amen to that we thought we would begin by simply quoting several portions that we found to be excellent, without too much in the way of commentary. (And please do keep reading for some follow-up questions!)

 

Near the beginning of the address, Mr. Grasz laments the unbiblical thinking and passivity promoted by many churches on abortion: “For too long, instead of thinking biblically and speaking the truth with love, too many churches have been silent on what the Bible teaches about these issues because we have become convinced that Christians must avoid these issues in order to avoid offending someone” (1:04). (Note: throughout this article, references containing only numbers and a colon specify time stamps from Mr. Grasz’s message.)

 

Rather, he asserts, “I think it’s offensive to our Christian witness that God would graciously reveal to us what is right and good and true, and we would silently keep it to ourselves, and in the process abandon our neighbors, our state, and unborn children who are made in the image of God to the evils and devices of the world, instead of shining a light where it is so badly needed” (1:43).

 

Regarding church and culture he says, “This is the greatest issue of our time, and it’s on the issues that matter most that the people of God should be leading the way” (12:02). “The biggest difference maker in our culture and in government can and should be the church. And that’s why the outcome of this initiative will ultimately be decided by the church. We cannot and will not be successful without churches and people of faith helping lead people in the truth” (12:30).

 

We would adjust this slightly to say that the biggest difference maker is the church. The church’s impact upon culture is inescapable. When godly male pastors lead their churches with boldness, speak truth unflinchingly, and proclaim God’s Word directly in the areas where truth is most under attack, the body of Christ is rallied to take action in the face of great evils. But where churches are led with passivity, silence, or compromise, we reap the rewards of apathy and inaction, even when living through a holocaust.

 

Mr. Grasz believes that the gospel is the foundation for the necessity of the church taking action: “The healing, forgiveness, and hope that each and every one of us needs can only be found in Jesus Christ. And that is why we can’t be silent on this issue, church, because at its core — and we have to understand this — at its core, abortion is the antithesis of the gospel. Abortion is the anti-gospel, because abortion says, ‘While you are innocent, you die for me.’ But the gospel says, ‘While you are guilty, Christ died for you.’ So every time that we fail to speak on this issue, we create a gap, and that gap gets filled by everything except for the truth and everything except for the gospel of Jesus Christ. So if a church says that we can’t talk about this issue because it’s too political, then it’s probably time to reevaluate exactly what gospel is being preached” (21:20). The congregation suitably applauded at this point.

 

He points to the significance of prayer in fighting the culture of death: “This is where we have to start, and it’s where we have to finish: on our knees in prayer, asking God for forgiveness, for the truth to be known, and for lives to be saved. We need you to pray into this daily, because this issue, it’s not going to be won or lost just on election day. It will be won or lost in the coming weeks and months, because we’re not just competing for votes. We’re competing for hearts and minds” (24:11).

 

Yet prayer is not a substitute for other godly action. We must act, and we must do so with urgency: “It is right now that the Christian church must step up to seek justice, to defend the voiceless, and to speak the truth with love” (4:17). “We have to understand the reality and gravity and urgency of our situation” (6:10).

 

He also quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer as saying, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act” (7:28).2

 

He exhorts the church to act without delay, and to do so with courage: “It is time for the church to act courageously and be a voice for the voiceless. We have to be willing to live out our values and beliefs, even when it makes us uncomfortable, and even if others will hate you for it. We all have a choice: to step out, to act courageously, and to speak truthfully, or to keep our beliefs and convictions to ourselves. The nation will be watching to see what happens in Nebraska, to see if our state will choose a culture of life and love, or a culture of death and darkness. Because if they can do it here, if they can do it in Nebraska, they can do it anywhere. And it’s up to the church” (26:21).

 

Mr. Grasz closed his message with the motivating words: “Our children and our children’s children are depending on our faithfulness today” (29:48).

 

There was much more that we found merit in, but these citations will suffice for the present.

 

 

Questions of Importance

 

Now, if the article ended here, the reader could be left thinking that we are united in our understanding of how to fight legalized murder in the form of abortion. And with such substantive agreement, how could it be otherwise?

 

But is the approach Nebraska Family Alliance is taking consistent with Nate Grasz’s message? Read on, consider the questions, and decide for yourself. (And if you’re still left wondering, please see the ballot comparison at the end.) The questions below are addressed to Nate Grasz and Nebraska Family Alliance, and by extension, Nebraska Right to Life and anyone else who is promoting the “Protect Women and Children” ballot initiative. Quotations will first be from the portions already cited above, and then from other sections of Mr. Grasz’s message.

 

  1. If “too many churches have been silent on what the Bible teaches” (1:09) about abortion, why do you not call it what it is: murder? Is it “in order to avoid offending someone” (1:20)? We could not find the word “murder” on Nebraska Family Alliance’s website anywhere. Do you not believe it is murder — that is, the intentional destruction of innocent human life?
     

  2. If it is “offensive to our Christian witness” to “abandon … unborn children who are made in the image of God to the evils and devices of the world” (1:43), why do you promote an initiative which would constitutionally abandon almost all preborn children being aborted?

    Of the abortions reported nationwide to government agencies in 2021, the CDC reported that “nearly all (93.5%) were performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation.”3 Note that as high as that percentage already is, it does not include self-managed abortions, which are rising dramatically, and are not reported to state or federal agencies.4 One recent calculation concluded that even before the “Preborn Child Protection Act” was made state law, 96.78% of all abortions reported in Nebraska were during the first trimester.5 The point is, and this is simply incontrovertible: the overwhelming majority of all abortions occur in the first trimester.
     

  3. If “it is right now that the Christian church must step up to seek justice” (4:17), why are you touting legislation that would constitutionally deprive the innocent of justice? (See Proverbs 18:5.)
     
  4. If “we have to understand the reality and gravity and urgency of our situation” (6:10), why do you support such wholesale compromise with intrinsic evil?
     
  5. If abortion is anti-gospel “because abortion says, ‘While you are innocent, you die for me’ ” (21:43), then why are you a proponent of an amendment that would declare to women that, for the vast majority of abortions, according to the Nebraska Constitution they would not be guilty, despite having killed innocent children? If the highest law in our state will tell a woman she is not guilty if she commits murder, then what need has she of the gospel?
     
  6. If “we’re competing for hearts and minds” (24:35) in the fight against child sacrifice, why are you advocating for legislation that continues to train our culture to suppress the truth in unrighteousness and persist in the belief that murder of preborn children is generally acceptable, just as long as one does it early enough? In what sense would this “build a culture that sees and values every person the way that God does” (25:48)?
     
  7. If “it is time for the church to act courageously and be a voice for the voiceless” (26:21), why are you seeking to get people to give their voices and sign their names to a petition which, if successful, would establish in the Constitution that most preborn children who are aborted continue to die without justice? And how is this in any sense a courageous thing to do?
     
  8. If “the nation will be watching to see what happens in Nebraska, to see if our state will choose a culture of life and love, or a culture of death and darkness” (26:50), why champion a law that would further entrench the very culture of death you purport to oppose?
     
  9. If “we need to start being less concerned with what’s politically correct and more concerned with what’s biblically correct” (3:43), why do you advocate for a law that God himself detests? “Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent— the Lord detests them both” (Proverbs 17:15, NIV).
     
  10. If you tell us we are on the one hand to pray and be “pleading with God to have mercy on our state” (23:50), why on the other hand do you support constitutionally legalized child sacrifice, a crime for which God has destroyed cities and nations? (See Leviticus 18:21,24–28; 20:1–5; Jeremiah 32:29–35.) Is legally giving approval to those who commit murder likely to invite God’s mercy or his wrath? (See Proverbs 6:16–17 and Romans 1:32.)
     
  11. If “the Hebrew midwives in Exodus 1 [were] blessed and rewarded by God for refusing to follow Pharaoh’s command” (16:00), why, in the 34 years of your existence before the Dobbs opinion, has Nebraska Family Alliance never once told legislators that they should ignore Roe v. Wade and establish equal justice for the preborn? (If this claim is made in error, please provide evidence to the contrary, and we will gladly set the record straight and update this page.)
     
  12. If “God is the author of life, and every human being beginning in the womb is created in the image of God” (16:48), and “the result of every abortion is the death of a baby with their own DNA” (17:33), how can you promote legislation that would constitutionally permit parents to destroy human beings made in God’s image without any penalty?
     
  13. If “this abortion initiative is … an attack on … the very essence of God’s design for life, marriage, family, and imago Dei — the understanding that every person is made in the image and likeness of God” (22:59), why is your response to that attack to promote an attack of your own? For is it not precisely because murder is an attack on God’s image the reason why it is so heinous? But the “Protect Women and Children” initiative will allow such attacks to continue with impunity for the perpetrators.
     
  14. If it was fitting to ask, “instead of thinking about government and politics the way the world does, what if we actually stopped and looked at it the way God does?” (3:14), then why does the amendment being put forward allow governing authorities to continue to abdicate their God-given duty as “the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer”? (Romans 13:4, ESV)
     
  15. If dismemberment abortions are so horrible (18:33), why does your proposed amendment permit them for no less than three separate reasons? Why would you add into the Constitution permission for a mother to kill her child conceived in rape, when the Bible says, “Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers”? (Deuteronomy 24:16, ESV) Why add an exception for incest, as if the way a child is conceived has any bearing on whether or not his innocent life should be protected? Why add an exception for medical emergency, when many doctors have publicly declared that abortion is never necessary to save a mother’s life?6 Premature delivery and intentional destruction of human life (murder) are not the same thing. When God said, “You shall not murder,” did he give any exceptions?
     
  16. If “the abortion industry is currently pushing a well-funded, well-coordinated ballot initiative deceptively called ‘Protect Our Rights’ ” (4:35), why are you pushing a ballot initiative of your own deceptively titled “Protect Women and Children,” which would put into our very Constitution a divide between human beings who should be protected and those who should not be, and leave unprotected the vast majority of preborn children whose lives are in jeopardy?
     
  17. If in the “Protect Our Rights” amendment, “the language and the messaging is incredibly deceptive” (8:05), and “viability does not mean 23 or 24 weeks — when people hear viability, that’s what they think,” (8:33), why do you use the language of second and third trimesters in your initiative? When people hear that, might they think that’s a large portion of the abortions taking place? In reality, the very opposite is true. And why do you deceptively talk about a “floor of protection,” and not tell people your so-called “floor” would constitutionally approve of almost all abortions?
     
  18. If the pro-abortion initiative “would create a right to abortion in our state Constitution” (4:45), why is your response to do essentially the same thing, but with different language?
     
  19. If “as Christians, we get to represent Christ to the world” (14:26), and Jesus himself cried woe upon those who neglect justice (Luke 11:42), then does it represent Christ well to promote an amendment that does precisely that — neglects justice, and from those who need it the very most?
     
  20. If “the greatest example and picture of God’s heart for life and for preborn children and the value that we should have for their lives is to look at the life of Jesus” (16:11), whose human life began as a zygote, a preborn child in the earliest stage of development, are you showing that you have value for preborn lives by advancing an initiative that treats vulnerable preborn children as if they have so little value they can be murdered without mercy under the Constitution?
     
  21. If “our throwaway culture today … treats human life as expendable” (17:01), why does your amendment do the same thing?
     
  22. If abortion “has pitted men against women and turned mothers and fathers against their own children” (17:23), why are you putting forth a petition to embed the legality of abortion into our Constitution?
     
  23. If “we have been commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves — that’s what it means to be a Christian, to love God and to love others” (22:29), is it loving your preborn neighbors to amend our Constitution so that it no longer treats each person alike, but rather makes ageist distinctions between one human being and another, allowing the youngest of our neighbors to be murdered, and the highest law in our land (save the law of God), our Constitution, would not protect them? Is it loving to God when his law says, “You shall not be partial in judgment” (Deuteronomy 1:17, ESV), or loving to our neighbors when our state motto is “Equality before the law,” to support impartiality and inequality in constitutional law?

 

 

Likeness of Amendments

 

With these questions pressing upon the reader’s mind, let us now display the language of both the “Protect Our Rights” and the “Protect Women and Children” amendments, and then briefly list several ways in which they are similar.

 

“Protect Our Rights”: “All persons shall have a fundamental right to abortion until fetal viability, or when needed to protect the life or health of the pregnant patient, without interference from the state or its political subdivisions. Fetal viability means the point in pregnancy when, in the professional judgment of the patient’s treating health care practitioner, there is a significant likelihood of the fetus’ sustained survival outside the uterus without the application of extraordinary medical measures.”7

 

“Protect Women and Children”: “Except when a woman seeks an abortion necessitated by a medical emergency or when the pregnancy results from sexual assault or incest, unborn children shall be protected from abortion in the second and third trimesters.”8

 

Here are ways both initiatives are alike:

 

  1. Both would constitutionally allow most abortions in Nebraska.
     
  2. Both would subvert the Constitution so that it would no longer treat all human beings as equal under the law. (Compare the language of the amendments to sections 1 and 3 of the same article in our Constitution.)9
     
  3. Both would embed abortion into the Constitution as something other than murder. Another way of putting this is that both treat abortion as healthcare, which can be regulated, rather than murder, which must be abolished.
     
  4. Both consider many preborn human beings to not be persons, making a distinction never before seen in our Constitution (that some humans are not persons), and thus eroding existing protections for the preborn already implicit in the Constitution.
     
  5. Both account many preborn children as neither possessing nor worthy of having the right to life, due process, or equal protection of the laws. If according to our Constitution, all persons have a right to life, from which they cannot be denied without due process of law, but many preborn human beings were to be excluded from protection, deprived of life, and denied any recourse under the law, then are they being treated as human beings and human persons?
     
  6. Both would give women a constitutional right to choose to have an abortion. For if a woman could kill her own child, and the Constitution would protect her, clearly she would have a right that would supersede the child’s right to life. Or, to restate: both would make abortion constitutionally legal, adding special murder rights for mothers into the Constitution.
     
  7. Both encourage evil: “Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil” (Ecclesiastes 8:11, ESV).
     
  8. Both makes ageist distinctions between one kind of human being and another.
     
  9. Both promote a culture where some children are worth more than others, and murder of the youngest children is acceptable by constitutional law.
     
  10. Both are anti-family. (Unless preborn human beings are not part of the family?)
     
  11. Both pervert justice by being partial in the extreme toward mothers who kill their children, and severely prejudiced against preborn babies. “You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality” (Deuteronomy 16:19, ESV).
     
  12. Both decree iniquity through perpetuating the oppression of the most innocent among us, preventing the neediest from receiving justice, and depriving them of their most basic rights. “Woe to those … who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!” (Isaiah 5:22–23, ESV)
     
  13. Both would acquit the guilty mothers and fathers who kill their very young children, while constitutionally condemning to death their innocent victims without mercy and without trial.
     
  14. Both neglect justice by treating less developed and less wanted human beings as less valuable — indeed, as having no inherent value at all, but only property to be destroyed at will as one pleases.
     
  15. Both call good what God calls iniquitous and detestable. (See Isaiah 10:1–2 and Proverbs 17:15.)

 

Note that some of these points are addressed in detail in our prior article, “Nebraska Family Alliance’s Anti-Family Initiative.” The interested reader is directed to that post for additional information.

 

 

Duty and the Outcome

 

If “our children and our children’s children are depending on our faithfulness today,” what will you do now?

 

Our answer would be: Don’t approve of what God hates. Stand firm on the truth of his Word. “Give not an hairbreadth of truth away; for it is not yours, but God’s” (Samuel Rutherford).10 Seek equal justice for the oppressed with a contrite heart (Isaiah 1:16–17), and trust God for the outcome. In other words, leave the compromised pro-life movement and become an abolitionist! » Find out more here. «

 

If “every Christian voter in Nebraska” needs to hear what Nate Grasz had to say, we think that the same Christians should also read this response.

 

“The one who states his case first seems right,

until the other comes and examines him” (Proverbs 18:17, ESV).

 

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Footnotes

 

[1] Nate Grasz, “Abortion On The Ballot: The Sermon Every Christian Voter In Nebraska Needs To Hear,” Nebraska Family Alliance, May 13, 2024, 29:58, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybK3qsR7bPU.

[2] This quote is certainly a popular one of Bonhoeffer’s, but it may be misattributed.

[3] “Abortion Surveillance — United States, 2021,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/ss/ss7209a1.htm.

[4] It has been estimated that nearly 100,000 self-managed abortions took place over a 12-month period in the 14 states with abortion “bans.” “Babies Unprotected: An Analysis of Self-Managed Abortion Numbers in States with ‘Bans’,” Foundation to Abolish Abortion, January 2024, https://faa.life/sma.

[5] Peng Xiao, “In 2022, Nebraska had 2,547 unborn babies aborted,” Facebook, June 7, 2024, https://www.facebook.com/story.php?id=1278380203&story_fbid=10232771563412942.

[6] See, e.g., the “Dublin Declaration on Maternal Healthcare,” Dublin Declaration, https://www.dublindeclaration.com/. Additional examples can be found under “8. The Endangerment Exception” at “Nebraska Family Alliance’s Anti-Family Initiative,” Abolish Abortion Nebraska, May 6, 2024, https://abolishabortionne.org/Blog/Nebraska-Family-Alliances-Anti-Family-Initiative/.

[7] “Protect the Right to Abortion Constitutional Amendment,” Nebraska Secretary of State, https://sos.nebraska.gov/sites/default/files/doc/elections/Petitions/2024/Protect%20the%20Right%20to%20Abortion%20Constitutional%20Amendment.pdf

[8] “Protect Women and Children Constitutional Amendment,” Nebraska Secretary of State, https://sos.nebraska.gov/sites/default/files/doc/Protect%20Women%20and%20Children%20Constitutional%20Amendment.pdf

[9] “All persons are by nature free and independent, and have certain inherent and inalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness…” Neb. Const. art. I, § 1. And, “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor be denied equal protection of the laws.” Neb. Const. art. I, § 3.

[10] Samuel Rutherford, Letters of Samuel Rutherford (East Peoria, IL: Versa Press Inc., 2021), 280.