Jor-El Godsey [00:00:00]:

It shows that Christians are voting to hang on to abortion. And what they don't, often don't understand is that what they're actually voting for is to protect abortion under almost any circumstances. Like that. Like that's the lie of that campaign. Christians are not connecting what we talked about for so long as the sanctity of human life to that vote in that moment.

Jim Spiegel [00:00:26]:

Welcome to the Kalos Center Podcast.

Jor-El Godsey [00:00:32]:

SA.

Jim Spiegel [00:00:58]:

Welcome to another episode of the Kalos Center Podcast. Our guest today is Jor-El Godsey, the president of Heartbeat International in Columbus, Ohio. Heartbeat International is the largest pregnancy help network in the world. Their mission is to reach and rescue as many lives as possible by providing a wide array of services for people who are at risk for abortion. Heartbeat serves individuals and organizations in over 100 countries by providing informational resources, training services, leadership development conferences, and daily support to help affiliates develop and expand their services to women and couples at risk for abortion. Jor? El has served in the pregnancy help movement since 1988 and has been working with Heartbeat International since 2006. Jorrel and his wife Karen currently make their home in Columbus, Ohio, and they have three children. So, Jor? El, welcome to the Kalos Center Podcast.

Jor-El Godsey [00:02:03]:

Thanks, Jim. Grateful that you provided the opportunity.

Jim Spiegel [00:02:06]:

So you've been involved in the pro life movement for more than three decades. How did that start for you?

Jor-El Godsey [00:02:12]:

Well, it started with actually my own journey with an unplanned pregnancy, unintended pregnancy that I I experienced with a girlfriend. And I actually helped facilitate her the abortion that she experienced. So I helped actually abort my first child. And at the time I didn't know any better. I wasn't raised in a home where that was a particular clarified issue. And so I walked in that reality, in that moment of fear and concern and future issues. And unfortunately, that relationship did not survive that experience, as most don't. I think more than 85% of the relationships that experience abortion don't survive it.

Jor-El Godsey [00:02:57]:

That one didn't. But I stepped into a different relationship not long after that, and that was one with the God of the universe. And he was very kind to accept me and to allow me to draw close to him and learn more about his heart for, for me and for the purpose that he had set before me. So that's kind of how I I came into the, came into that relationship with Christ. But I was in a church on a Sunday morning with a visiting pastor who came, came to our little church. I'm a new Christian sitting in the middle of the, of the congregation and this pastor came with a plan. He came with a plan to talk about the issue of pro life and. And what it meant to be engaged and be involved.

Jor-El Godsey [00:03:38]:

And I was listening intently and. And there was this moment. And honestly, Jim, I can remember this moment so clearly every time I. I speak about it. But he said these things, and he said, abortion is not a social issue. And I was like, huh, I don't know much about it, but I. I do think it's a social issue. And he said, abortion is not a political issue.

Jor-El Godsey [00:04:01]:

And I'm like, okay, I don't know much at this point because I'm pretty young, but I know it's been in the politics, it's been headlines. And then he said this. He said, abortion is a gospel issue. And when he said that, sitting in that little seat, I was completely penetrated. To my knowledge, there was not another soul in that room except for me. And the Lord was speaking right to my heart. And I was convicted on two levels. The first level with.

Jor-El Godsey [00:04:31]:

Was with my own sin, my own culpability in the action, and the fact that I had done something opposite of God's heart. The second thing was that this is a reality in our nation. And, you know, I didn't know it was even bigger than in the world at large. This is a reality in our nation, and we should be doing something about it. Which is exactly the intent of his sermon. And he came prepared, he brought signs. And we actually, as a little church, we closed that. That service by leaving there and going to the local.

Jor-El Godsey [00:05:07]:

Local abortion doctor's office and picketing on a Sunday afternoon. Now they were closed, as they should be on Sundays or any day, actually. But it was the whole idea of getting engaged. So it was a dramatic change because I walked into that church pro choice by action, and I lived pro life by conviction. And so that's how I got involved. From there, I. The next thing I knew to do was something called Operation Rescue, which was peacefully protesting out in front of abortion clinics in a more dramatic fashion, where you kind of practice the civil disobedience, as we knew of the Martin Luther King days and others before him, and got arrested. In one of those instances.

Jor-El Godsey [00:05:51]:

There was only two instances of getting arrested, but in one of those, I was actually in jail when I first learned about a pregnancy center, and one was opening up near our church. And I got to be the one to go connect with that. And I just fell in love. The idea that the pregnancy center was really trying to help women not feel like abortion was their only option. Was felt so much more. I felt so much more compassion in that particular effort. Not that the others didn't have merit, but there was just something really captivating about that. And that's my journey into pregnancy help.

Jor-El Godsey [00:06:27]:

That's how I, I got involved.

Jim Spiegel [00:06:30]:

Wow, what a powerful testimony. Tell us about Heartbeat International. What is that all about?

Jor-El Godsey [00:06:37]:

Well, Heartbeat was called into existence by the pregnancy help community of the day as abortion became an issue in our country. So it actually begins before Roe, like in the late 60s. You have people who, realizing, watching what's happening in state of Colorado, California, North Carolina, Oregon, those are the first states to legalize abortion in our country. And then others after that, even before, before we get to Roe. And there were people that were standing up immediately saying, we need to do something to help women until this political thing gets sorted out. Well, that is the pregnancy help community. And I always see it as the compassion arm of the pro life movement. It's that, that hand that reaches out to those that are kind of caught in the maelstrom of the, of the issue from a personal perspective.

Jor-El Godsey [00:07:23]:

And so that's where we, we were first known as Alternatives to Abortion, and then we became known as Alternatives to Abortion International because there were other countries that were feeling the same thing. And that is really what has occupied our efforts since then, is reaching and serving the pregnancy help community to be more effective, to learn from each other, to grow in our ability to help women not feel like they're trapped into an abortion decision.

Jim Spiegel [00:07:52]:

So you provide resources and all sorts of help for local pregnancy centers all over the world. Tell us what your typical pregnancy resource center does.

Jor-El Godsey [00:08:04]:

Yeah, the local centers are, at the very least, they're a warm, friendly place to kind of sit and walk through really what's being contemplated, really trying to understand the circumstances, understand the issue. As we know, like most people, when they're experiencing an unplanned, unintended pregnancy, as I did, is all of these fears kind of close in around them. They feel like there's only one path forward. And that path typically looks like abortion and pregnancy centers provide a kind of a safe place where, you know, we don't, we don't benefit from the decision. We don't. We don't profit from it for sure. So we provide a place where they can walk through that understanding. They can gain more insights.

Jor-El Godsey [00:08:50]:

Most people are walking around completely unaware of a couple of things that really are unfortunately largely unaware of the development of their own baby in the womb. Right. So that's where many pregnancy centers, I think about more than 70% of them now provide ultrasound services. So being able to kind of become aware and in touch of actually what stage of development is that little one at is key. And it's key revelation that's really through ultrasound services. But then there are myriad of other things. There are material help, material resources, kind of that constant companionship. Sometimes we can connect people to the other programs that are available to them.

Jor-El Godsey [00:09:32]:

Most people are not walking around with a clarity about what actually exists in the community to help in pregnancies, but there's a lot. And pregnancy centers typically have that information at the ready. And I can make connections to everything from government programs to church connections that can help support them as they really are, thinking about the options before them of parenting or maybe even adoption, or even that they would understand an abortion decision in an a better win.

Jim Spiegel [00:10:00]:

So one of your initiatives concerns something that I would think most people are not even aware of, and that's the Abortion Pill Rescue Network. Tell us about that.

Jor-El Godsey [00:10:12]:

Yeah, there was in 2006. So we've been really in an abortion culture since the mid-60s, so more than half a century. But in 2000, the Clinton. In the last days of the Clinton administration, they approved the abortion pill, which is not one pill, but two. And the first pill is called Mifera, which is designed to starve the baby. The second pill is called misoprostol, which is designed to expel the baby. And so what happened in 2000 is you began to see the beginnings of the proliferation of the. Of the abortion pill.

Jor-El Godsey [00:10:46]:

So the idea that you have chemical, it's also known as, you know, medical abortion or prescription abortion, but you have this pill being these two pills. And what. And when the woman would take the first pill, she now takes a second pill in about 24 hours. So she's advised to allow the first pill to do its work and then take misoprostol. In 2006, OB GYN in North Carolina named Dr. Harrison was approached by a woman who had taken the first pill and said, I don't want to go through with this. What can I do? And he was. He was taken aback.

Jor-El Godsey [00:11:25]:

He had never had this opportunity. In fact, we don't know that it's existed anywhere else before this moment. But he thought about it. He had some research at hand that he was able to reference, and he decided to prescribe a high dosage of progesterone. And progesterone is simply what a woman produces in her own body to sustain a pregnancy. And he prescribed a high dose of progesterone in 2006, and that baby survived. That young woman is now, I believe, 18. And we rejoice in that.

Jor-El Godsey [00:12:00]:

That was the first incident we know of. Another doctor in San Diego had a similar situation just two years later in 2008, same thing. That doctor saw also a successful reversal of that abortion pill, saw a successful baby born, and he launched something called the Abortion Pill Reversal Network. His wife's a nurse, and together they did this. And he just would champion it all over. He actually came to the heartbeat conferen, talked about abortion pill reversal, as he called it, apr, and he was encouraging more and more doctors to do this. And in 2018, he actually handed the keys to that network over to us. And we've been growing it like crazy since then.

Jor-El Godsey [00:12:44]:

We've seen now reversals happen in more than 95 countries around the globe. Increasingly in the US as chemical abortion has grown, we've seen more and more reach out to us. Regretting that decision and looking to change their minds. We now calculate that more than 7,000 babies are alive today because of abortion pill reversal.

Jim Spiegel [00:13:06]:

Wow. So this is being challenged. Oh, it is, I know. In. In the courts. What, what are the. What are those cases and what's the status of them?

Jor-El Godsey [00:13:15]:

Yeah, well, a couple of instances. We are. We are being sued directly by the state of California and also the state of New York. And their. Their line of thinking is similar in that they are saying that the. The offering of progesterone in these situations is deceptive. They're calling it fraud. They're saying that there's no proof of that.

Jor-El Godsey [00:13:36]:

They ignore some key information, not the least of which are the 7,000 lives that we count. But they also ignore some very good studies. The largest study that's ever done was done by that doctor in California, with over 500 women reporting the incidence of success of about 64 to 68%, which is the calculation that we use, because it came from that study. It was very well researched in our mind. The states ignore that information. They actually prefer some of their studies from the abortion industry, which also conveniently prove our point as well. In fact, their success rate was even higher, but it was a much smaller sample. So every study that we've seen proves that progesterone and high dosage can actually have the effect, not every situation, but can have the effect to reverse mifepristone in that window just after it's been taken.

Jim Spiegel [00:14:30]:

Such a simple antidote, you would think.

Jor-El Godsey [00:14:32]:

And if it weren't for this dynamic that we have in our country of abortion states and life states. It should be something that frankly is available in every emergency department everywhere. It should be something just like we offer life, saving things even for other issues like drug overdoses and whatnot. It should be something that a woman should be able to secure and everywhere that she would walk into without controversy. But we find ourselves in a place where we're dealing with the abortion distortion which impacts our entire culture and has done so for about a half a century, if not longer.

Jim Spiegel [00:15:06]:

It's pro choice, for goodness sake.

Jor-El Godsey [00:15:09]:

It is. That's exactly right. Yeah. This is what's funny because also the state of Colorado, which has turned very abortion oriented in recent history, they have actually in their laws, have a law against it. Now. That law has been enjoined by a judge allowing it to continue, you know, in a narrow fashion. But that's also the question, like they're trying to withdraw the choice for, for that woman to choose to save her baby and the opportunity to take progesterone. Progesterone again.

Jor-El Godsey [00:15:42]:

It's, it's been something that has been available to, for doctors to use since the 1940s, like so 80, more than 80 years. It's been available, it's been effective, it's been shown to be safe, and yet they still are standing against it. So we are very diligently watching that case in Colorado. We're also, of course, dealing with the, the state of New York and the state of California on pushing against us and some of our pregnancy center affiliates as well.

Jim Spiegel [00:16:11]:

Well, as you know, there are just so many confusions, distortions, fallacies, you know, in the whole abortion lobby. It's not surprising that, that this whole issue about APR would be distorted in a similar way. Let's get to some of the foundational values of Heartbeat. What would you say are the ultimate guiding principles of Heartbeat International and of your role specifically?

Jor-El Godsey [00:16:41]:

I guess the core value is that we welcome the gift of life. We recognize it as the gift of life because it comes from the giver of life, that we don't just find it in the womb either. We find it in the person that presents, you know, as the mom who's experiencing an unplanned pregnancy and then family, that we know that that's God's preferred institution. So these are things that we recognize and we value. We believe every life is precious, every life is important. And we work to do all that we can to make sure that someone doesn't make a decision on that life outside of some knowledge that they can actually have path that would help them. That's what most people feel. They feel alone.

Jor-El Godsey [00:17:24]:

We operate under something called the love approach, which is kind of grounded in First Corinthians 13, the love chapter. And the love approach really is an acronym, L, O, V E. So L stands for listen and learn. We listen and learn where she's at, what she desires, what are the things that's impacting her. O is that we open options again in, in a crisis, we tend to, we feel like the walls close in and there's only one path that we have to rush to and, and we try to step back and open the options and say maybe, maybe there are other possibilities here. And of course we want to encourage the, the most life affirming of those. Then we have that vision, the V for vision and values. We really lean into their own vision for their future, their own values that they have.

Jor-El Godsey [00:18:14]:

And we, we also want to introduce God's values in that process. And then we have E power, which means we really want to be in a place where we can help them make that life affirming decision. So those are kind of the guiding principles that we leverage in our day to day work and all of our programs.

Jim Spiegel [00:18:33]:

And then in terms of biblical concepts, theological foundations, what is all of that based in?

Jor-El Godsey [00:18:40]:

Well, primarily it's going to be based in the image of God that we find. Of course, you know, in Genesis 1:27, we see that we are made in his image. We see that kind of reflected even to the prophet Jeremiah when God tells Jeremiah, hey, I knew you before this, before you were born. We see that reflected again in the Psalms 139, a very familiar passage to the church community, particularly the pro life community. But we also recognize that even Jesus was first acknowledged by John in the womb. Right? You know, the baby leapt in Elizabeth's womb. And so there's this, there's this anchoring in biblical construct of the value of that, of that unborn life, of the value of what God is doing even before we can see. And of course our modern medicine is amazing at what it can show us and how it can happen.

Jor-El Godsey [00:19:28]:

But we anchor that sanctity of human life in the scriptures. But even if we don't take the scriptures as far as in consideration, we should all be able to recognize that the human life is itself a human right. There's kind of an innate, a value that we should all possess for one another, that the first right that humans should have is the right to be born, the right to live. So we anchored in that. We also recognize that God doesn't speak a lot about the shedding of innocent blood. There is this reality that we should be rescuing those who are being led to slaughter. And unfortunately in our culture today, that's happening all too often. Abortions are back up to over a million a year here in just the US globally, it's, it's, it's probably like 60 to 70 million a year around the globe.

Jor-El Godsey [00:20:22]:

So this is a huge issue that, that really stands opposite of God's value for life.

Jim Spiegel [00:20:28]:

It's often said that, you know, in these ancient cults that were described in scripture in the Old Testament, that they would often sacrifice their children, you know, their babies to BAAL or Moloch.

Jor-El Godsey [00:20:42]:

Moloch, yes.

Jim Spiegel [00:20:43]:

And it seems like such a foreign idea, but arguably wondering about your thoughts on this, that really hasn't changed. And there's an American Idol, let's say, sexual autonomy. And I don't know if there's an actual demon that corresponds to this, but maybe there is. But in our country, especially in the last 60 years, we have been doing just that. We've been sacrificing our children to this idol.

Jor-El Godsey [00:21:14]:

I believe that that's true in the, you know, you read about those sacrifices in ancient times, and there was motive behind it. There was in essence an attempt to appease the God or please the God of Molech, so that they could be some kind of reward or some kind of benefit would be from that. You know, they were trying to implore the God, you know, the gods of those days, to act on their behalf. In a sense, it's the same dynamic that's going on right now. When we enter into the issue of abortion. We are aborting because we're trying to really uphold our own position, our own status. We're looking for ourselves as individuals. It's not just for us as maybe as a family, because we're not thinking in those terms.

Jor-El Godsey [00:22:03]:

We're thinking that very individualistic mindset. That's why you hear so much about the term bodily autonomy, because there's this demand that we be allowed the right to possess ourselves as if it has no consequence to do otherwise. And that is that, I think is at least in the same vein as those that were sacrificing to Molech or BAAL back in the ancient times.

Jim Spiegel [00:22:29]:

I think it was the great poet John Donne that said that, that no man is an island, right? No one is so disconnected from others in a community that their actions are completely self concerning. Everything we do also concerns other people. And when it comes to the sacrifice of children. I think it's worth noting that that's no different in the Christian worldview. We do sacrifice our children, but it's in a life affirming way. We, we commit our children to the Lord. You know, in some traditions it's take some form of baptism, sometimes infant dedications. It's aimed at the same thing.

Jim Spiegel [00:23:14]:

And that is, Lord, we dedicate this child to you, whom we want you to renew to, to spiritually enliven and to. So that they will commit their life to you and live for you. That's the whole Romans 12, living sacrifices thing. So it seems to me Christianity is set apart as a worldview that really is all about life. And then the competing worldviews, whether they admit it or not, they end up having this trajectory towards death, even if they don't acknowledge that, at least in many cases.

Jor-El Godsey [00:23:51]:

I would agree. And that's where we see this in the phrase culture of death versus culture of life. And it feels like at every turn there is a constant beat for the culture of death in our land. You know, the thing that serves self only, that goes to the basest of our natures, right, not necessarily to the ideals. Whereas life is so much different where that culture of life that breeds and sees beyond the moment and sees the future and recognizes the call to fill it, you know, with God's goodness and God's creativity. It seems culture of death is completely contrary to God's creative nature. And that's why it's so difficult to deal with and so pervasive in our, particularly in our affluent American culture today.

Jim Spiegel [00:24:40]:

How has your work been affected by the Supreme Court Dobbs ruling from 2022, which it would have seemed, you know, as soon as that landed, you know, a lot of us may have thought, or been tempted to think, oh well, everything's sweetness and light now. We've achieved what we've been hoping and praying for, but in a lot of ways it's actually gotten harder. Can you, can you speak to that?

Jor-El Godsey [00:25:09]:

Absolutely. You know, we of course, something that on the one hand couldn't. There were times when it, like we couldn't imagine it to be otherwise. It had been decades, you know, and there had been a attempt after attempt to try to modify that. You know, the 92 was an opportunity. It was before the court in Casey vs Planned Parenthood. Instead of getting overturned, it actually gets reinforced, reaffirmed, and in some ways reinforced. And so to us, to what happened in 2022 was amazing, an amazing moment.

Jor-El Godsey [00:25:42]:

But what's interesting about that, Jim, is that, you know, remember, what is it like 200 something years of the, of the history of the court that had never been a leaked decision. And suddenly the one that was going to be leaked early was this one. Right. The idea that it's possible to that leaked in May. And then what happened at that point was people lashed out and they lashed out against some very publicly pro life churches and they lashed out against pregnancy centers. To date, we know of more than 100 that were physically vandalized. Even a handful were even firebombed. These are just horrendous actions.

Jor-El Godsey [00:26:23]:

Fortunately, to our knowledge, no one's been hurt directly, but there have been several buildings that were damaged, destroyed. So the idea that overturning Roe somehow was going to be the panacea that we had hoped was quite false from the beginning. But at the same time there were good gains. Some of the states were able to move quickly and reinstate some of their laws to establish this value for life in their laws. But then the other, the opposite happened. You know, what does it say for every reaction there's an opposite reaction? Well, the abortion states began to kind of solidify the abortion rights in their own states. Colorado did that, California, New York, others. And they began to then promote things like abortion tourism.

Jor-El Godsey [00:27:13]:

They began to do things like in their laws, protect abortionists from prosecution, even from negligence. So in a sense, we've become now too two very different countries within the same one. We have life states and abortion states, which is not unfamiliar to us. You know, we used to be known to have free states and slave states, and there are a lot of similarities. I've been startled to see those similarities. But, but what that ultimately has happened is that this chemical abortion, the, the industry has shifted away from more of the brick and mortar appointments in locations to an online service. And that way they can actually mail abortion drugs into these even to life states. There are no states where abortions are not happening.

Jor-El Godsey [00:28:01]:

That's happening because of the mail, because of these services that are allowed despite the law that laws that are on the books, they're able to mail into every single state. So even though the states have made lots of states have made progress in their laws, they still have not been able to enforce it across state lines. So abortion, abortions by chemical are happening on an increasing basis. By some estimates it could be as many as 70% of all abortions are done by the abortion pill. And the numbers are certainly up back over a million. We haven't seen that since the late 90s, early 2000s when it was as much as a million babies every year. Wow.

Jim Spiegel [00:28:44]:

The battle hasn't stopped. It's just the theater of operation has changed.

Jor-El Godsey [00:28:49]:

Yes, that's exactly. That's a great way to explain it. Yeah, yeah.

Jim Spiegel [00:28:54]:

So what is your sense of the level of awareness among Bible believing Christians in the US when it comes to these issues?

Jor-El Godsey [00:29:02]:

Well, I think that what you just talked about is true is that a lot of believers have understood Roe was the issue and they focused their energy on that. And so when Roe was gone, many of them have thought that this issue has gone away. I think that more and more people are becoming aware that that's not true thanks to some of the other actions that are happening. But unfortunately what we've seen happen, and I can say that from sitting right here in Ohio where we watched the, we watched the dynamics just play out in just a challenging way, was the abortion industry spent, I think it was upwards of $35 million to pass an amendment to our own state constitution to create and preserve abortion as a right in our state constit. And that was done by the vote of the people and it passed overwhelmingly. And unfortunately it passed with some majorities amongst believers who in another conversation would describe themselves as pro life, yet couldn't find a way to vote against abortion in our state constitution. And we've seen that happen in state after state. Only a couple of states have pushed back on that.

Jor-El Godsey [00:30:19]:

Thankfully Florida has done that. I know there was a win in the state of Nebraska as well. There's been some bright spots in it, but when we look at the polling, it shows that Christians are voting to hang on to abortion. And what they don't often don't understand is that what they're actually voting for is to protect abortion under almost any circumstances like that. Like the, that's the lie of that campaign. I want you to happen here. Television ads on that were being displayed were just lie after lie. Like they really were talking about things that we think, well, we don't want the government to be making these decisions.

Jor-El Godsey [00:30:59]:

Okay, maybe not, but we certainly don't want babies to be killed in the womb, particularly ones that are late term babies, particularly those that are after the viability. Like these are things that common sense laws were in place to prevent, now are being swept aside because of that type of amendments. And the unfortunate thing is Christians are not connecting what we talked about for so long as the sanctity of human life to that vote in that moment. It's like, like you can't do otherwise. If you really Believe and understand the value that every life is created in the image of God, is designed by God and God is the Creator, then, then that could carry over into how we conduct our day to day life, including when we vote on such things. And so the idea that, that we should hang on to abortion for any reason is really challenging amongst believers. So I think there's a lot more for us to learn, a lot more for us to understand as a church, as the people of God, to really connect what we've been hearing for many, many years into how the new landscape, the new theater, so to speak, really suggests we fight the battle.

Jim Spiegel [00:32:09]:

I'm sure you're familiar with the center for Christian Virtue here in Columbus and they do some, some excellent work and one of the things they're concerned to do is just to really raise consciousness and awareness among regular church attenders regarding some of these issues. And really it's just about communicating basic facts and trying to work through kind of cut through all of the distortions and the static that creates very misguided decisions that people make in the voting booth or who they support. Really does come down to just good fact based and biblical education doesn't.

Jor-El Godsey [00:33:01]:

It does. And it's got to be more than just the head knowledge. It's got to be kind of how do we now apply this information? Too often we get, get swayed as believers who, who have some anchoring in the word. We get swayed by some of the political buzzwords or the, you know, those kind of power phrases that, that get tossed around like, like suddenly we start to listen to things like reproductive rights. You know, like that's a term invented by some marketing people because we're not, you know, we're not really, we don't really reproduce. I mean we, you know, that, that, that belittles what I think the, the Creator God does. You know, we, we're not, we're not copy, we're not copies of our parents. We're a whole unique human being ourselves, fashioned as God says, you know, that he, he's the one that's doing that work.

Jim Spiegel [00:33:55]:

And if the fetus is a human being, then the reproduction has already happened.

Jor-El Godsey [00:34:02]:

Exactly right.

Jim Spiegel [00:34:03]:

I mean it's, this is another human being. How are you going to treat or regard this being that is not in, you know, in public view but is no less human than you or I.

Jor-El Godsey [00:34:14]:

Exactly. And yet we let these terms like fetus, you know, we let these, these terms be in the, in the, the common usage because they, they stand in the place of what we're really doing. I remember a friend talked about an example of if you're standing at the, the sink doing dishes and you're little child says, you know, hey, can I, can I kill this? Like, you should really check into what the this is because it could be the little brother, right? You know, then the answer would be no. If it's a bug that they found, you know, then maybe, right? So these are, we need to find what the this is. And in the womb, the this is a fully human individual with promise and potential that is akin to all of us that is designed by God. That's the part that believers forget the most. Jim. I just become kind of amazed at how we forget that every single occurrence of an individual is a unique masterpiece by the creator of the universe.

Jor-El Godsey [00:35:15]:

And so yes, circumstances where that person could be conceived may be challenging, maybe even sinful, right? But pregnancy is not a sin. How someone gets pregnant, maybe someone once said, I just was kind of stunned by this. They basically, and this is a person that was saying this, had been raped and then had gotten pregnant, saw that pregnancy through to birth and placed that young lady for adoption. And they were reunited years later. And she said this, she said, we don't make life. God makes life. We make love, but God makes life. Now, this was someone who was a victim saying this.

Jor-El Godsey [00:35:52]:

We shouldn't fall into the understanding that it's some kind of just mechanistic function like we see in the animals in the field. I mean, this is, this is God's unique creation. And this is more than just a mix up of DNA. It's like God chooses how this all happens and he is the great creator that's making it happen. And as believers, we need to remember that when we're talking to our neighbor, when we're at the grocery store, when we're dealing with our difficult family members, especially when we're at the voting booth.

Jim Spiegel [00:36:24]:

Another misunderstanding, it seems to me me it's pretty widespread and impacts the way Christians vote. Is this assumption that, okay, the biblical argument, the theological argument for a pro life position is just overwhelmingly strong, okay? But there are Christians who recognize that. But then say, you know what, we live in a pluralistic society. I don't want to impose my theological, biblical religious convictions on others by, by proscribing this right. So I need to vote pro choice, which makes a very problematic assumption. And that is that the only arguments for pro life position are theological. There are also some powerful philosophical arguments. There's a philosopher by the name of Don Marquis who's made, I Think the strongest philosophical argument for the pro life position.

Jim Spiegel [00:37:23]:

That's extremely powerful. Arguing that. Well, first he asked the question what makes killing wrong? When it's wrong, it can't be the pain that it causes to the person who's killed because you can, you know, kill someone in a painless way. It can't be the, the, the sorrow that it causes their survivors because even if the person's a hermit and nobody cares about them, we recognize it's still wrong. What makes killing wrong when it's wrong is you are robbing someone of a valuable future. And that is why we are that much more sad and sorrowful when someone dies who's very young. I mean it's sad, tragic if someone's murdered in their 80s. But how much more so when those, those four kids out in Idaho were murdered by Bryan Coburg, we think, oh, they had their lives ahead of them.

Jim Spiegel [00:38:17]:

Everybody says that they had their lives ahead of them. It was valuable futures that were, that were, that were stolen, that were never, that will never be lived out. And so the question is, does an unborn baby have a valuable future? Well, of course, of course. And this is why we are so sad when there's a miscarriage. My wife and I, we had a miscarriage. It was extremely traumatic and sad because we know that that future that would have been has been lost. That would put not just on a par with killing an adult, the killing of an unborn child, but it seems to even be more aggravated because you've got a person's whole life and this valuable future that can't be lived at all. That's a purely philosophical argument and it's powerful pro life argument.

Jim Spiegel [00:39:10]:

Another guy, Alexander Proust, down at Baylor, he begins with this simple premise and that is I was once a fetus and that's true of you and everybody else. And I am the same person. Even though I had no development in terms of application of my ultimate capacity for reasoning and, and, and physical movement and so on, those ultimate capacities were still there. And there it was is no point at which you could say, well, that was a different person than I am now. It's the same person at a different point on the timeline. And so if it's wrong to kill me now, it would be wrong to kill me then. That's a powerful argument. And there are others as well.

Jim Spiegel [00:40:03]:

I wish more Christians, more religious people generally were just aware of the fact that you have very strong, just purely philosophical, non religious arguments that point in the same direction that the Bible points to and that is that the unborn baby has a right to life.

Jor-El Godsey [00:40:22]:

Well, someone I was just listening to, Ryan Anderson, and he was talking about believers and their approach to, as we've seen them through these voting opportunities and politics he was talking about. He basically said something to the effect of people, you know, Christians today believe that abortion is wrong with four exceptions. You know, the life of the mother, incest, rape, and whatever difficult situation we may encounter. Right. It's like suddenly, it's like that kind of captured it in a different way. Like, we as believers think that, well, there are certain circumstances where it's okay, but it flies in the face of what you were just talking value of every human life not being defined by the circumstances around them or the circumstances they're facing. And that's important. But I.

Jor-El Godsey [00:41:14]:

There's one step beyond that from a believer's perspective is to recognize God's power to do something different in those moments ahead. You know, how many, how many lives do we celebrate today that were started in difficulty or challenge? Right. We, you know, some of our biggest celebrities started as penniless people that were virtually homeless. I know we celebrate certain people that have created big fortunes and huge things that are useful for us were adopted as an early stage and might have been aborted otherwise. But the fact that God is that we are willing to. This reminds me of our conversation about Molech a minute ago. We are willing to take out of God's hands something that we now no longer trust God for. And that's the fact that he decided that life should exist.

Jor-El Godsey [00:42:09]:

He decided that life should exist now for this person at this time. And yet somehow we are bringing greater wisdom than God to say, well, maybe this isn't the right time and this isn't the right place, and this is not the right person. So therefore, we should have abortion. Like, that's a dangerous, dangerous place for us to be.

Jim Spiegel [00:42:30]:

So one of the ironies of our time is that as massive as the abortion industry is and as desperate as so many people are to terminate their pregnancies at the same time a growing industry is that of in vitro fertilization. And this presents some significant moral challenges and issues. Can you talk about that?

Jor-El Godsey [00:43:01]:

Yeah. So the biggest thing, this is a huge issue, a lot of points of which I'm not particularly well versed on, many of them, but the one I am most familiar with is the idea that in the in vitro fertilization world, their effort is to create as many babies. They would say viable babies, and then they would. They would implant many and they do something called selective reduction. Like they, they can supposedly evaluate one over the other in those early, early stages and then effectively or selectively reduce the others. Now that's the euphemism for taking, you know, killing them and not allowing them to grow, allowing the, the strongest to survive, so to speak. So whatever we think about the other aspects of ivf, we should all agree that we shouldn't be creating life only to kill it for the sake of the strongest. That's, you know, there's a Darwinistic reality to that that is gruesome at its best.

Jor-El Godsey [00:44:05]:

And that's the part we need to be very, very careful about. Being clear on why people would need ivf, why they would seek it is a. We, of course understand couples that are suffering from infertility in their bodies and wanting children. Like those are great reasons to understand why someone would pursue ivf. But it also opens the door for some other stuff where we become consumers of babies for which our society is allowing same sex couples, for instance, which cannot produce babies for which IVF is an answer. These are difficult things that we have allowed modern science to take us further than where we probably ought to be.

Jim Spiegel [00:44:52]:

A very redemptive response to the fact that there are all of these frozen embryos in labs all around the country and nitrogen storage is. People in increasing numbers are doing embryo adoption option. I've, I've got some friends in Hillsdale who've done this. I know some other folks and their kid I think is a couple of years old now. And that's just a very redemptive move that, you know, if, you know, you're thinking of having a kid, you'd like to, but you're struggling with infertility. There's, there's something you can do that is a different kind of rescue mission that, that is very much in keeping with a gospel centered worldview. So you, all of your work is clearly a manifestation and outworking of, of your own faith, which began as you, as you mentioned at the outset in a pretty surprising and unlikely way. It's a powerful testimony.

Jim Spiegel [00:46:05]:

I like to conclude each of our episodes with this, this question that is the ultimate question and that is regarding the, the meaning of life. What, what you conceive, no pun intended to be the ultimate meaning of life. And how is your work a manifestation of your view of the, the purpose of your life?

Jor-El Godsey [00:46:28]:

It's a challenging question. I, I boil it down into. There's a scripture that talks about David served the purpose of God in his generation. And I take my cues from that. And essentially that the meaning of life is to serve the purpose of God in my generation and in eternity. That that's what I was created for, is for the purpose for the time that he's placed me and for what lies beyond. And so that's what I would say is serving the purpose of God. Very good.

Jim Spiegel [00:46:59]:

Amen. Even as he was knitting you together.

Jor-El Godsey [00:47:01]:

In your mother's womb. That's right. He knew me.

Jim Spiegel [00:47:03]:

He was setting you apart to work on behalf of those who are being knit together in their mother's wombs. That's wonderful. Well, Jor? Al, I've greatly enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much.

Jor-El Godsey [00:47:18]:

Thank you, Jim. It's a pleasure to be with you.

Jim Spiegel [00:47:23]:

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