Albert Mohler says “elections matter,” and “sometimes it is a matter of life and death.”
A Southern Baptist Convention leader says new abortion restrictions in Kentucky would not have been possible before the election last fall of a governor strongly opposed to the medical procedure.
Albert Mohler
Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, described the “informed consent” abortion law signed into law Feb. 2 by Republican Gov. Matt Bevin as “further evidence of the fact that elections have consequences.”
“There is full evidence of why elections matter,” Mohler said in a news commentary podcast Feb. 3. “Sometimes it is a matter of life and death.”
Bevin, an evangelical Christian and major financial donor to the SBC-owned seminary in Louisville, Ky., signed a bill immediately after it passed the Senate requiring women seeking abortions to have face-to-face meetings or real-time video consultations with their physicians.
A ceremonial bill signing is set for Feb. 11 during a Right to Life rally at the state Capitol.
The measure, a rare compromise in a legislature divided over abortion during the administration of former Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear, was backed by groups including the 750,000-member Kentucky Baptist Convention.
Paul Chitwood, executive director of the statewide affiliate of the Southern Baptist Convention, said he’s hopeful women seeking abortions might change their minds after physicians answer their questions about the development of unborn babies.
“Information is vital in all decision-making, and providing women with information about the little child inside them would most certainly cause many to rethink their decisions to have abortions,” Chitwood said in comments quoted by the recently launched KBC news and commentary website Kentucky Today.
Mohler said in Kentucky the issue of abortion “has mushroomed into a huge statewide controversy” not only because of the informed-consent law but a high-profile battle between the new governor and Planned Parenthood.
Bevin accused a newly opened Planned Parenthood facility in Louisville of illegally performing abortions without a license. The clinic temporarily stopped offering abortion services after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services.
Planned Parenthood denied doing anything wrong, claiming the clinic followed advice of the Office of the Inspector General before beginning abortion services Jan. 21.
Mohler said the local debate echoes a national controversy over investigative videos by the anti-abortion Center for Medical Progress quoting Planned Parenthood officials discussing the procurement of fetal tissue for medical research.
The defenders of Planned Parenthood and Planned Parenthood itself is at pains to describe everything they do in terms of health services, but it isn’t a health service for the unborn child,” Mohler said. “It is a death service.”
The Louisville Courier-Journal quoted a board member of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky as saying adding abortion services in Kentucky has long been a goal of Planned Parenthood in order to “offer a full complement of reproductive health care.”
“What does that now include?” Mohler parsed the “full complement” of services phrase. “It includes killing unborn children in the womb.”
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