Abortion: Time for a GC 2020 Vote (Part 2: Survey Results)
(Note: The first part article of this series Abortion: Time for a GC 2020 Vote? is linked here: http://www.fulcrum7.com/blog/2018/5/6/abortion-time-for-a-gc-2020-vote )
Survey results are in. 93% of Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA) Leadership respondents agree the Bible does not support abortion. Good. Yet 86% disapprove of a world body vote at General Conference Session in 2020. Similarly, 86% will not do all within their power to bring this issue up for discussion in the 2018 and 2019 Annual Council sessions. What? Where is the disconnect? Is this cognitive dissonance at its finest?
A three question survey was sent to SDA Leadership on May 24, 2018. The survey closed on June 6, 2018. See this link for survey questions and graphs of responses -- https://www.surveymonkey.com/analyze/aXRVsumMdh9qRJBiVlMSchLc7bQkuYAOV133jbR1RGY_3D&tab_clicked=1 . The definition of “Leadership” is listed in the previous article of this series -- http://www.fulcrum7.com/blog/2018/5/6/abortion-time-for-a-gc-2020-vote?rq=abortion%3A%20time .
It took on average 30 seconds to complete the survey. 182 emails were sent, 168 went through, 1 unsubscribed, 16 clicked the survey link and 14 completed the survey. 46% opened the email and 10% clicked the survey link. Survey responses were anonymous (aside from IP addresses). Approximately 50% of all recipients opened the email (60% with General Conference (GC) domain addresses). However, only 10% of North American Division (NAD) domain recipients opened the email and none clicked on the survey link (why am I not surprised?). Congratulations to the following recipients who clicked on the survey link:
Luis Eguiluz
Matthew Lucio
John Piroski
Milenko Tanurdzic
Rodney Willey
Dr. Patricia Williams
Linda Fuchs
Robert Costa
Abner De Los Santos
Karnik Doukmetzian
Pako Mokgwane
Hensley Moorooven
Dr. Andres Peralta
Claude Richli
General Conference Executive Committee website (person unknown)
Mark Finley
Shame on the rest who could not find 30 seconds to complete the simple survey. They simply ignored or avoided the issue. Yet there were two individuals who want to actually do something about it -- either bring it up for discussion in upcoming Annual Council sessions and/or vote on it in 2020. They are among those listed above. Will Joshua and Caleb please stand up? Will you two lead us into the Promised Land?
Compiling email addresses was cumbersome due to lack of cooperation at all levels: Illinois Conference, Lake Union, North American Division and General Conference. They all rejected the author’s request for a list of their respective executive committee’s email addresses. Likewise, world divisions did not respond to the same request. Two of the world divisions email requests did not go through. However, a good portion of Leadership addresses were found on their respective websites and via additional web searches. At least one individual from each level of organization (with the exception of the NAD) reached out to me. I appreciate each one of them and they will remain anonymous to avoid potential repercussions to their actions. God knows them and I pray that they join this noble cause by word and deed.
A Glimmer of Hope
One individual tipped me off. God bless him! Apparently, the Biblical Research Institute (BRI) is working on the abortion issue. Dr. Elias Brasil de Souza (BRI Director) confirmed the same. His response to my query was this:
“Dear Brother Hart,
The issue of abortion is a concern of BRI. Currently the BRI Ethics Committee is working on this subject in order to draft a statement reflecting the biblical view on the matter. Subsequently, once the first draft is ready, it will go through the proper committees until it reaches the final stage of approval. Apart from this I cannot say much because this will go through a number administrative levels. But you can be assured that BRI will do its work on this most serious and important subject. Considering previous experiences, the BRI part may take one or two years to get concluded. We started this last February.
Elias Brasil de Souza,
BRI Director”
One may wonder why it might take “one or two years” to conclude but these men are highly educated. What may take some 30 seconds to resolve may take them a little longer. I get it, I understand it and I am not poking fun at his response. I am heartened by it. I trust that he will do what he says. I hope the committee members of varying administrative levels are principle-type members not policy-type members. If discussions veer off into defense of abortion via the Exodus 21:22-25 passage then they should read the fine scholarly refutation of this argument by Dr. Ron du Preez -- http://www.atsjats.org/publication/view/412 . I encouraged Dr. Brasil de Souza and all others involved to “...resist the temptation that led to Lucifer's downfall and tripped up the religious leaders of Christ's time -- taking God's plain, simple and direct statements and making them appear obscure, mysterious and confusing.” I trust they will complete their work prior to GC 2020 and include its finding with a motion on the GC 2020 agenda.
Motion
In an effort to get the talks moving I propose a Motion. In my opinion, this motion is a vast improvement over the church’s official abortion policy guidelines from 1992. Said guidelines have enough abortion loopholes to drive a truck through. Motion as follows:
MOTION: "The Bible supports life and does not support abortion. As Bible believing Christians we support life and oppose abortion. Therefore, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church opposes all forms of abortion except to save a mother's life. However, if the mother chooses to pay the ultimate sacrifice -- that is, desire that her baby lives even if she were to die; then the mother's desire must be respected. Henceforth, from this point forward, no Seventh-Day Adventist healthcare institution including, but not limited to, hospitals, community health-care clinics, etc. is permitted to perform abortions except as noted herein."
If the motion is not sufficiently worded to include ADRA and its “family planning” services then please revise accordingly. Further, if anybody can come up with a more concise and precise biblical motion for God’s remnant church then have at it.
No new thing
Truly, there is no new thing under the sun. Ken Blake is a fellow church member. He wrote me and explained what he attempted to do back in the late 1980’s -- prior to GC World Session 1990. Following is his correspondence:
“Dear Bob, As you continue efforts to have the Illinois Conf. Constituency request the GC to schedule discussion and a vote on abortion policies in SDA hospitals, you should be aware of how previous efforts were derailed. In 1989 I persuaded the N. New England Conf. exec. committee to request that the then very liberal abortion guidelines (which had never been voted by more than leading GC officers) be scheduled for discussion and either affirmation or rejection at the 1990 Session at Indianapolis. No effort was made to block this resolution, but after it was voted, the union president asked whether I thought it best to send it for further discussion and a vote at the Atlantic Union, or to send it directly to the GC. Thinking it would expedite the matter, I suggested our action be forwarded directly to the G.C., which the committee voted to do. I suspected duplicity when I shortly learned the G.C. exec. committee hadn't even considered our resolution because it hadn't also been voted by union and division exec. committees before arriving at the G.C. When I later learned that an earlier and similar resolution that emerged from the Ohio Conference had been rejected by the G.C. for the same reason, I wrote to the Atlantic Union President to inquire if he had been aware of the reason given for the rejection of the Ohio Conf. resolution, when he suggested at the NNEC committee that sending our resolution directly to the GC might expedite the matter: he denied any previous knowledge of why the Ohio resolution was rejected. The other thing to keep in mind concerns one of the first votes that is taken at a General Conference session: that of approving the agenda. Once this vote is taken, any subsequent efforts to introduce for discussion and vote matters that are not listed on the official agenda, can be ruled out of order. I well remember how at Indianapolis I plead with a lay delegate from NNEC to request that this matter be added to the agenda before the agenda was voted. This good man, a doctor, asked me why I wanted him to make such a motion. After I explained that the abortion guidelines had never been voted at a GC session, Annual Council, or even Spring Meeting, and my conviction that such a large gathering of devout Adventists ("the voice of God",) would never approve such liberal guidelines, he asked me "What makes you think God wants the G.C. to weigh in on this matter?" It was then that it dawned upon me that it might be a much greater scandal, if the "voice of God," should indeed weigh in on and approve the abortion guidelines as they then existed! Fast forward to the 1990's as I continued my efforts by designing a survey sheet and requesting my conference president, (different conference) to distribute it to my colleagues within our conference. He declined to do so and requested that I not do so either. So I instead sent copies to every NAD conference president, asking them to distribute it to their pastors to be returned to me for compilation of the results. Only two conference presidents (in Michigan and Alberta) forwarded my survey to their pastors, but the 20 or 30 responses I received seemed too insignificant to produce accurate results (plus I had avoided the course in statistics while in college.) When the Christian View of Human Life Committee shortly thereafter revised the guidelines, eliminating # 5, the most egregious ("When for some reason the requirements of functional human life demand the sacrifice of the lesser potential human value..." abortions were permissible), the revised guidelines were voted by a more representative gathering of G.C. officials; and after I was persuaded that it was so much less expensive for women to obtain abortions at PP clinics than at hospitals, that the practice at SDA institutions was almost non-existent, I decided to give the matter a rest. More recently articles on the history of abortion in SDA institutions (published on both the Fulcrum 7 and Adventist Today websites) indicate that the practice of infanticide (i.e. abortion) in some of our hospitals runs as high as one for every ten live births! (When I read in A-Today that half a dozen of our N. Cal. hospitals had recently merged with a Catholic hospital association, I not entirely facetiously commented, "Perhaps this is the hand of God trying to bring about and end to the practice of abortion in SDA hospitals!") I honestly don't know how God can continue to bless our denomination if this is the case (but like Peter, I must confess, "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life."--John 6:68.) And I don't know what it will take to persuade the powers that be within our denomination to bring an end to this horrendous practice--especially if lawyers keep demanding that we endorse liberal statements and adopt liberal practices, (as also I was told brought about the recent BRI statement and Spring Meeting vote on transgenderism--wasn't it lawyers that persuaded the Sanhedrin, "that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.--John 11:50.) I hate to even suggest it, but it may ultimately come down to the adage, "Money talks." It may only be scuttlebutt, but some have reported that a major factor in the recent early retirement the president of one of our larger conferences was precipitated by the drop off in tithe after he rescinded the invitation of Doug Batchelor to speak within that conference. Thankfully there are many faithful institutions supported by faithful SDA's who "sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst [of Jerusalem],"--Eze. 9:4; and who, like me, are hoping and waiting for the time when "The Lord will work to purify his church. I tell you in truth, the Lord is about to turn and overturn in the institutions called by his name. Just how soon this refining process will begin, I cannot say, but it will not be long deferred. He whose fan is in his hand will cleanse his temple of its moral defilement. He will thoroughly purge his floor. God has a controversy with all who practice the least injustice; for in so doing they reject the authority of God..."--Paulson Collection of EGW Letters, p. 415 So God speed, Bro. Hart, as you continue your efforts on behalf of the least (and most innocent and vulnerable) of these, our brethren and sisters.”
To sum up, I replied:
“So, to sum up your experience and learn from it, it appears that the following must occur:
Have abortion resolutions follow up the chain of command: Conference, to Union, to Division, to GC (or, methinks, at the least -- from the Union, to the Division, to GC -- would you agree?)
If the abortion issue is on the GC 2020 Agenda then we can finally have a vote as "the voice of God". However, based on the scenario that played out for you and based on the survey response from the NAD (zero) -- I don't foresee the chain of command playing out. Any suggestions?”
If anybody knows how to get the NAD onboard then please so advise. As per my last article, constituency delegates take note -- it may be time for a good house cleaning from top to bottom. Question is: who will you replace the policy-type people with? More reason for constituent delegates to press their Leadership on this issue. Where do they stand and what are they going to do about it?
Allies in the Cause
Let’s not forget, although the “sighers and criers” may be few in number, it appears that the majority of Leadership oppose abortion. They appear hesitant to speak out about it. Some of our leading evangelists are in our camp: Doug Batchelor, John Bradshaw, Steve Wohlberg ... Mark Finley??? Will one or two of them stand up and be counted? 3ABN is definitely on the Lord’s side. Let’s also remember the little guys -- regular church members -- who are relentless in their pursuit to stop this evil: Andrew Michell (Prolife Andrew of Youtube fame), Nic Samonjuk, Petra Vincent and his “abortion in our church” Facebook page and many others. Periodically check with these good folk and also my website: Abortion: Time for a GC 2020 Vote -- https://hart2hartbiz.wixsite.com/website . Let’s keep each other informed and abreast as new developments arise. Pray as if everything depends upon the Lord and act as if you have a part in it (small as it may be). Plan on meeting at Indianapolis in 2020 to celebrate a hard fought victory!