Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.
Well, the president enthusiastically promoted in vitro fertilization both during his campaign and early in his second term.
However, the administration's policy, which was unveiled in late October, was rightly described by Ethics and Public Policy Center President Ryan Anderson as, and I quote, perhaps the least bad that we could have hoped for. But he then added, but least bad is still bad. In his follow-up to the earlier executive order, the president announced his plan to dramatically reduce the cost of IVF, to provide insurance coverage for fertility treatments that included IVF, and to increase access. According to the president, you just can't get more pro-life than this. The problem is IVF is not pro-life.
It's not even pro-fertility. While born children do result from IVF, the way it's most often practiced results in far more lives being lost or suspended in time in a freezer than any which survive. As Students for Life President Kristen Hawkins posted on X in response to the president, President's announcement, quote, the IVF industry kills more preborn babies than the abortion industry. It doesn't cure infertility and it practices eugenics, end quote.
Well, also in October, in the wee hours of Halloween morning, the Illinois State Senate passed a bill to legalize assisted suicide in the state. adding the lethal practice to an unrelated measure on food sanitation. Because the Illinois House had already passed SB 1950, the bill now sits on the desk of Governor Pritzker, who has until January to either sign or veto the legislation. If he signs, patients with six months or less to live would be granted access to life-ending medicine. as long as it was determined by a physician and a mental health professional that they were of sound mind after a series of oral and written requests with witnesses who could attest.
Doctors would also be required to explain other end-of-life care options like hospice. If prescribed a life-ending drug, patients would then administer it themselves. Healthcare providers would not be required to participate.
Now, assisted suicide is the best example of a culturally slippery slope. In fact, it's the best example there is. Anytime it's practiced, so-called safeguards inevitably fail. Patients are always left susceptible to both cultural and financial pressures to die. For example, in 2016, Colorado voters approved the End of Life Options Act.
Last year, the governor signed legislation to allow registered nurses to prescribe the lethal drugs and to reduce the waiting period from 15 days to just seven. A pending lawsuit would eliminate other restrictions like preventing out-of-state residents from receiving drugs for assisted suicide. If the lawsuit is successful, Colorado would then become a suicide tourism destination, allowing individuals from anywhere in the U.S. to shop for death. Colorado doctors already prescribe lethal doses to patients who have severe eating disorders.
Now the major bright spot on the life front in 2025 came from the Supreme Court, which ruled that states can defund Planned Parenthood. As a result, more than 20 states now exclude abortion groups from Medicaid dollars. And there are three cases with significant implications for the sanctity of life currently on the High Court docket. That includes allowing states to require its doctors to tell women that chemical abortions can be reversed. And the court will also consider the forced coverage of elective abortions and insurance plans.
But perhaps the most significant case is First Choice Women's Resource Centers v. Platkin, which will address whether or not crisis pregnancy centers can fight state harassment, specifically in how they attempt to force them to advertise their services. Even as the Court has taken significant steps to defend our most vulnerable citizens, the wider American culture continues to embrace and advance a dangerous view about human dignity and value, and therefore continues to advance a culture of death. The view which is centered around false notions of so-called autonomy and sexual freedom has left the most vulnerable among us even more so. Thus, even as we applaud any laws and court decisions that can protect vulnerable lives, we have to pray that God continues to intervene on their behalf.
In addition to praying, we also have to act. As theologian Stanley Hauerwass has said, if in 100 years Christians are known as those who did not kill their young and did not kill their elderly, we will have done well. This last year only reinforces just how prophetic that statement is. In short, Christians have to love and serve those who are the most vulnerable among us. We have to seek to persuade as many as we can that each and every person is made in the image and likeness of God, and we have to live differently than the world around us in response.
Each and every day, Breakpoint seeks to point people to this kind of clarity, the kind of clarity they need about the issues that matter most. Cultivating a Christian worldview will lead to stronger churches, better equipped families, and flourishing Christian schools. And if Breakpoint has helped you make sense of the world, would you please help us stay on the air? Thanks to a generous $500,000 match, each and every gift that's given to support Breakpoint and the Colson Center before the end of the year will have double the impact.
So please make your gift today at Colsoncenter.org slash December. That's colsoncenter.org slash December. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.
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