By Judie Brown
We consider anyone who defends life, stands up for life, or lives a pro-life life to be an influencer. The thing about such people—and there are many—is that their presence in our world influences others without fanfare and without a self-awareness that they are doing so. These people live a reflection of God’s love in a world that needs more of the Lord’s influencers and less of the mundane gibberish that receives hollow acknowledgment from misguided loons.
Bill O’Reilly calls them ideological loons. And unlike the heroes of whom we write, such people mislead and often tiptoe along the ridge of the abyss.
I would suggest that Senator Durbin is a loon and Bishop Thomas Paprocki is an influencer. In between them is Cardinal Blase Cupich, who created a public scandal when he sought to give a Lifetime Achievement Award to pro-abortion Durbin.
About this, Bishop Thomas Paprocki said, “Honoring a public figure who has actively worked to expand and entrench the right to end innocent human life in the womb undermines the very concept of human dignity and solidarity that the award purports to uphold.”
Paprocki is a life-affirming influencer.
On the opposite front we find the ethically weak president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. Those who are not cowed by the Trump façade teach us that truth is the only way to end abortion. While Trump once claimed to be pro-life, he has never been honest about his views. So we are not at all surprised that his Food and Drug Administration is scurrying to approve a generic version of the abortion pill. The emperor, as it were, has no clothes.
The weakness affecting our nation’s president reminds us of the urgent need to remember that if Christ and His teachings are not informing our views, that chink in human nature is an invitation to the compromise that arises from egoism. For as life-affirming influencer Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen once wrote, “Only when the ego is deflated can God pour in His blessings.”
Finally, American Life League applauds the dauntless commitment of pro-life influencers in Florida who have succeeded, by the grace of God and their ongoing efforts and prayers, in causing Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast to announce to the public that it is officially shut down “after nearly 90 years in Texas and more than 40 years in Louisiana.”
According to a LifeNews article, “Melaney Linton, president of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, called the decision ‘heartbreaking, infuriating, and the direct result of these sustained political attacks,’ pointing to decades of coordinated efforts by GOP officials to dismantle the organization through abortion bans, Medicaid exclusions, and funding cuts.”
But the truth is that life-affirming defenders who persistently prayed and demonstrated their concern for mothers and their preborn babies resulted in this wonderful news. However, we must add these words of caution from Texas Right to Life, “But while brick-and-mortar clinics in Texas are disappearing, challenges remain in the form of mail-order abortion pills and out-of-state networks. This is a victory—but also a call to stay vigilant.”
Life-affirming influencers all have one brilliant characteristic in common. They know that our work is never ending because as long as a single innocent baby dies from an intended abortion by any means, the innocent are not safe.
We move forward with this assurance from 1 Peter 2:24: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”
Thank you, Jesus, for blessing us with the grace to be life-affirming influencers.