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"...if the church is the church, it should never be impossible for a woman to raise a child." -- Brian Fisher.
Brad Lindemann: Man's relentless promotion of abortion, exploits women in the most personal debilitating and disrespectful way. It is yet another tool to persecute and diminish women, pushing them farther away from gender equality. These strong words from our guests book “Abortion: The Ultimate Exploitation of Women.” Please join me in welcoming it's provocative pro-life author, Brian Fisher. Brian, welcome to the In Business for Life Podcast.
Brian Fisher: Thanks so much, Brad Lindemann. It's so good to be with you. Brad Lindemann: Great to have you. And by the way, our audience should know that Brian is the president of the Human Coalition, that's HumanCoalition.org. Brian, if I'm not mistaken, you guys are the largest pro-life organization in the country. And I suspect if that's true; that might be the world. Could you let us in on that? Brian Fisher: Sure. I think we are, although I think it's more poignant to talk about number of babies rescued in effectiveness, but we have about 165 staff trained over five states. Our main office is in the Dallas area down in Texas. But the Pro-Life movement in this country and worldwide is small and still growing and is still mobilizing, and so I wish we were far larger. Our competitor, of course, Planned Parenthood is about a hundred times our size, but in our space we're probably one of the largest groups. But more importantly, we want to be a unifying factor for the rest of the pro-life movement. Brad Lindemann: Well, and a great job you're doing. We're going to talk later about the number of children saved from abortion as a direct result of the work of Human Coalition. It's just amazing. I can't wait to get there, but before we do, Brian I know you're a podcaster yourself. And in one of your recent ones, I was intrigued; it was all about the worldview, which I know is a big topic of yours. And you say that one's view on abortion is substantially determined by their worldview; how so? Brian Fisher: Every adult on the planet has a worldview, whether or not they're conscious of it. And everybody's worldview stems from their theology. So, if you picture a worldview as a tree, and this is not my metaphor, I learned this in a study, but everybody's worldview is grounded and rooted in their theology. The trunk of our worldview tree is our philosophy, our view of truth. And then all the branches of our tree are basically our views on any other topic or subject related to human existence, psychology, sociology, biology, government politics, but all of those views at the branch level are driven by our theology. And therefore, anyone's of abortion is driven primarily by their view of who God is. And this is where we run into major, major conflicts in our culture that we think are political, but they're not, they're actually theological. And so an individual's view of abortion is at the end of the day, driven by their theology, their view of God. Brad Lindemann: So it's no accident; then I think in that podcast, that you also connecting the dots further noted that the majority, I suspect maybe a very large majority of active pro-life people tend to be faith-based, is that true? Brian Fisher: It is, as matter of fact, I'm only aware of one non faith-based pro-life organization. There might be others, but it is very, very small. And the reason is fairly simple. The Christian worldview is actually the only worldview on the planet that holds to an extraordinarily high view of human dignity from the continuum from conception through natural death. So, a secularist and atheist have no theological reason for valuing life in the world. And so, as I have preached in churches many times over the years, abortion can very easily be ended in America. It cannot be ended without the Christian Church because the Christian Church is the only people group on the planet with the theological worldview justifying the reason why it should be ended in the first place. Brad Lindemann: Wow. Yes, yes, and amen from the front row on that. So, worldview leads to human rights. And when it comes to human rights, you said that it-- I love the way you said this. I hope I'm quoting it correctly. You said that if everybody has the right to do anything; that nobody has the right to do anything. Can you unpack that profound statement for our listeners? Brian Fisher: I think our culture is very confused about what terms like liberty and freedom and rights actually mean. Our culture, which has lost its social and cultural moorings, and it's lost its moral groundings, basically says that the so-called right to choose or the right to consent is really the only right. Meaning, as long as you're not hurting me by whatever you're doing, you can do anything that you want. Well, that's basically a one step from anarchy, and a society can't exist in anarchy. The freedoms aren't free and liberty is not licentiousness. There are boundaries in place to guard us from ourselves. We are sinners; that's a theological term. It just happens to be vigorously true. But as sinners, we require constraints and boundaries because if we don't have those, you don't have a civil society. So, you're seeing play out on the news, even as you and I are talking that, you know, our country is recovering from a COVID virus and hurling headlong into protests that are turning violent across our country. Well, there are theological reasons for those. And if those theological reasons do not understand that human rights come from God, not from men, then a man or a woman can choose whatever rights that they want. And that's exactly what you're seeing. You're seeing a lack of understanding that we have inalienable rights that are not the stowed on us, by us. They are bestowed on us by God. And when we begin to play God, which is exactly what you're seeing on television. You then have the ability to choose who lives in dies and whose property survives and whose property doesn't; then you have chaos and anarchy. So there is a fundamental theological confusion in our culture. And that really is what drives the chaos and some of the madness that we're seeing even today. Brad Lindemann: And one of the many aspects of your writings that attracted me is the significant role that men play in this so-called right to choose. As we get into that a little bit, what do you think of this? It seems to me that a woman's so-called right to choose gives everyone, or presumably gives everyone in her support system a right to an opinion, an opinion that they often voice by either providing or withholding support from what I would say is her “choice.” begging the question: who's really making the choice? Brian Fisher: Human Coalition has served tens of thousands of women over the years. And you know, there are many, many, many cases, if not the majority of cases, where it actually isn't the woman who's making the choice. She feels like she has no choice. Whether or not she is being directly coerced which is often the case by a mother, a boyfriend, a husband to do the abortion, or whether or not she just feels as if her circumstances are so dire that there is no choice. Abortion has nothing to do with choice. I mean the entire abortion industry is based on a series of highly skillful marketed lies. And one of the lies that women are preached to all the time is that they can't handle a pregnancy. They aren't strong enough to handle that. I'm not sure how that would at all coexist with the idea of proper feminism and a strong woman. Anyway, at the end of the day, we have a pyramid of lies based on a Supreme Court decision, which is the most reprehensible decision in the Supreme Court's history, the 1973 Roe versus Wade case, which invented rights that are not articulated in the constitution. And again, when humans take on the role of God, death and destruction followings, and we have 61 million dead babies as a result. Brad Lindemann: So you argued, Brian, that men have not only a right, but also an intrinsic duty to end the abortion Holocaust they started. I suspect most men would be shocked to hear that. How do you support that position? Brian Fisher: Well, arguments don't have gender. So I realized that the culture says abortion is a woman's issue. As the book articulates it; abortion was legalized and pushed to be legalized almost exclusively by men and still today, although the marketing has become more savvy, it is men that “benefit” most often from abortion. So the reality is that abortion is either morally right, or it's morally wrong. It doesn't matter what gender a person is, who is opining on it. So I realized that the baby is located inside the woman's body, but the act of taking a life is not related to gender. What I argue in the book is that, if it is morally wrong to have an abortion, then as a Christian, we are obligated to right that wrong. And since men are primarily the ones who legalized abortion and continue to push for its furtherance often using women as tools to get that done, and since men are, by God's design, the protectors and providers of families, it is a sacred, holy, appropriately biblical duty for men to lead and partner with women in the effort to end abortion. The pro-life movement, for years and years and years, was populated primarily by women. Now, the last eight or 10 years, that's begun to shift thankfully. But, men have become so feminized and eunuchs. Metaphorically, eunuchs in our culture. And they've allowed themselves to become slaves to, you know, name it, porn or sports or whatever; that we are not paying attention to the greatest genocide in American history. And it takes warriors, quite frankly, to end that sort of genocide. And that's a role that men should take seriously in partnership with women to end the greatest genocide in our country. Brad Lindemann: Men or women who are listening, if you haven't read the book, “Abortion: the Ultimate Exploitation of Women,” please do. It's an incredible work. But Brian, if you could give every woman in America one takeaway from that book, what would it be? Brian Fisher: The most important point is for women to understand that they are treasured and valued beyond their own comprehension by God. Scripture clearly shows that women are equal in value, certainly different in biology and gender and other things, but equal in value to men and are to be treasured and revered by men as God reveres and treasures women. And I think, modern day, second, third wave feminism have confused our culture on this. But, the point of the book is to show that men have failed miserably, utterly, in their responsibility to not only honor women, but to protect their own children. At the same time, women have a God-ordained, divine beauty and vital role in the family and in society, and that includes the unbelievable gift of being the only gender who can produce life. And for a woman to be robbed of the gift of motherhood, regardless of the circumstances of conception is obviously fatal to the child, but soul-destroying to the woman. And if men really care about women and their wellbeing, the last thing we should do is persuade them to kill their children. It should be to stand with them and to support them and to protect them and provide for them and cover them so that they have the beautiful, majestic, miraculous opportunity to bring life into the world. I have been married for 25-years and I have two basically grown sons. And there's no way that I would want to live a single day without my wife and my children. And why would we want women robbed of that opportunity? Even though at times it's difficult, and it is. Even at times it feels impossible, and it does feel that way. But if the church is the church, it should never be impossible for a woman to raise a child. Brad Lindemann: You made a comment towards mega churches in the podcasts that I was listening to, and it resonated with me. You seem to suggest, Brian, that the larger the church, the less focus you've observed that they have on saving innocent unborn within their communities. I'd have to say I've personally observed the same, not only locally, but nationally. Why do you think that's the case? And what would you say to the leaders of those mega churches who were shrinking from what I think you and I both agree is the most important social justice issue of this generation? Brian Fisher: I think that the message is for pastors. I think the larger the church, the more pressure there is on the pastor to please his congregation. Although, I think that pressure exists in small churches as well. My observation is that it has to do with the head pastor. Whether it's a senior pastor of a large church or a small church, if the pastor is convicted and understands that at least in my view, biblically speaking, evangelism, the preaching of the gospel for saving of souls comes first, but a very close second is the rescuing of human beings. Proverbs 24:11-12. I think some churches get the “evangelism” piece. I think almost no churches get the “rescuing human beings from death” piece in our day and age. And the more the American pastor is pressured to please his congregation because, you know, his livelihood is dependent on it and its his career—I certainly understand that—the more lives are put at risk. So there are some great mega churches that are very pro-life and doing amazing work. There are some fantastic, smaller churches that are doing that. But my point is that, the percentage of churches that understand the biblical mandate to end abortion is so infinitesimally small, it's almost irrelevant. And so, I have traveled around the country and shared these messages over and over and over again. And pastors, because they, by nature of the way the American church has developed, need to be generalists, right? because they have to do a thousand different things, a thousand different ways to serve their flock. I am not sure we should be looking at local churches to be the solution to end abortion because they have a of number of obligations. What I do beg pastors to do, is educate their congregations on the seriousness of abortion-genocide, and allow their congregations to lead the charge to end abortion while they continue to shepherd. I think that's an appropriate role for a pastor to take. But if they do not step in and do not make abortion a regular cadence of education in their church, I think they're biblically responsible for the ongoing deaths of babies. Brad Lindemann: Well, I couldn't agree more and I know you likely know another life-minded friend of mine, Roland Warren, who heads up Care Net, and so love his concept of pro-abundant life. I so love the way he ties that whole story back to the ultimate unplanned pregnancy, the Immaculate Conception, and so wow, the churches just need to step up and do more. I did a little experiment a few years ago. I haven't done it recently. Some named pastors of very large congregations, who I highly respect. If you Google their names and abortion together, and you find virtually nothing. It's a shame. It's a bloody stain on the church right now, and I hope that it changes. But Brian, speaking of books, I think you've got another one coming out soon, and I'd love for you to give our audience a…. We might even give you a little more than a 30 second elevator pitch to let them know what it's all about and when it's going to be out and how they can buy it. Brian Fisher: Well, I appreciate that. I’m now working on a book; I think the title is going to be “Impossible, Difficult, Done.” That's one that comes from one of my old time, favorite quotes from the missionary Hudson Taylor, who said there are three stages in every reactive God: “Impossible, Difficult, Done.” It's basically a primer. I mean, I realized as I've traveled around the country to different churches and congregations and conferences, that there is, even in the Christian community, deep misunderstandings, if not confusion, about the Imago Dei, and the value of human life. And so it's really a back to basics book about what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be made in the image of God? And then what is our obligation as divine image bearers to protect one another? And I'm super excited about it. At this point, I think we're going to release it in the second half of the year. The COVID situation is just throwing everybody's plans into disarray, and so we'll launch it. And folks can go to humancoalition.org and sign up for the emails and we'll make sure they're alerted when it comes out. Brad Lindemann: So I've been looking over the Human Coalition website, which is awesome by the way, as of today, and I did check this morning, your organization can claim some, if not most, direct responsibility for 16,621 innocent defenseless lives saved from abortion through what you referred to as your lab-driven coalition wheel process, which is on your website, and you offer a download PDF of that wheel. It appears to be a very well thought out and sophisticated process. Obviously, the results speak for themselves. But Brian, what would you say is you step back from all of that? What's the secret sauce that brings it all together? Brian Fisher: It's not rocket science, although the data and the study behind it is extraordinary. We have an unbelievable team of data scientists and analysts, who work here to study how we can serve women. But at the end of the day, it's the hands and feet of Christ. It's intentionally reaching out to women who were in difficult circumstances and bringing them into a nonjudgmental holistic system of care and pledging to stand with them and to walk with them and to support them and to provide for them during the pregnancy and beyond, if they need that, by all means. And basically, you know, fulfilling the great commission, that we're going to preach the gospel, but along with that, we are going to make disciples and we're going to love our neighbor as our self. Loving our neighbor does require us to put ourselves out there to be intentional, be in very messy situations. But as a result, we praise God for every child. Over 16,000 children have been rescued, really through acts of sacrificial love on behalf of our staff and frankly, the hundreds of organizations that we partner with to provide our care. Brad Lindemann: You know, we live in the country today where a woman's right to choose trumps a child's right to live. Brian, do you believe that before the Lord calls you home, do you think that you will live to see where that is no longer the case in our country? What do you think the odds are? Brian Fisher: Yeah, I do. And I don't think it's just a hopeful platitude. I believe that we are seeing played out an acceleration of the conversation around the dignity of human life. And so if God allows me to stay on the planet long enough, I pray that regularly. But the reason that I think it's possible is because of William Wilberforce, who in one lifetime took a 5,000 year practice of slavery, which was unquestioned when he came on the scene, and slavery became illegal in the western world in one lifetime. It's easier to end abortion, frankly, because our country has never been settled on it. And the arguments are not nearly as persuasive for abortion as they were for slavery from an economic standpoint. So, I think it's entirely possible. I don't think it takes millions of people. I think it takes, you know, thousands of courageous people that are going to commit themselves with the long haul. But yeah, by all means it is entirely possible for us to end this in one generation. without question. Brad Lindemann: Well, Brian Fisher, president of Human Coalition, I couldn't agree with that last statement more. And I thank you that you are fighting the good fight along with those many thousands—likely tens of thousands—of a pro-life warriors that believe as you and I do, that we can end this Holocaust in our lifetime. And so, thank you for all you're doing. Thank you for helping us at In Business for Life to equip and encourage business people, to take a winsomely positive public stand for the sanctity of human life. We appreciate you, Brian. Thanks for being with us today. Brian Fisher: Thanks so much, Brad Lindemann. It's a pleasure to be with you.
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