Fifth Circuit Ruling Bodes Well for Pro-Life Law in Arkansas

Abortion, , ,

On Wednesday a three-judge panel from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a pro-life law in Louisiana that is similar to one Arkansas passed in 2015.

Life News writes,

[The Louisiana law] requires abortion providers to have hospital admitting privileges in case patients experience emergency complications. Soon after it became law, the Louisiana abortion facility Hope Medical Group for Women and the Center for Reproductive Rights challenged it in court.

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar Texas law in 2016, arguing it burdened women’s access to abortion. However, the Fifth Circuit panel said the Louisiana law is different because it “does not impose a substantial burden on a large fraction of women.”

Although pro-abortion groups have not made a clear statement, the Louisiana ruling presumably will be appealed to the full Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The ruling is significant, because right now the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals is reviewing an Arkansas law that requires abortion clinics that offer abortion drugs like RU-486 to contract with a doctor who has hospital admitting privileges.

Planned Parenthood and others have argued the Arkansas law is unconstitutional and should be struck down. The fact that federal judges have upheld a similar law in Louisiana bodes well for Arkansas.

Photo Credit: By Brian Turner (Flickr: My Trusty Gavel) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Unhitch From the Ten Commandments? No.

Current Events, Religious Freedom, ,

Last month we wrote about the unnecessary controversy surrounding Arkansas’ monument of the Ten Commandments. You may recall a group parked a satanic statue in front of the Arkansas Capitol Building for a short time to protest the state’s monument of the Ten Commandments.

As a result, more than a few Christians questioned whether or not the state should remove the Ten Commandments monument from the capitol lawn. We have written about why that’s a bad idea.

Today our friends at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview have published a commentary explaining why the Ten Commandments are still important for us today.

John Stonestreet writes,

What’s the only passage in Scripture personally written down by God? If you answered “the Ten Commandments,” you’re right on the money. Exodus tells us that God audibly spoke these laws at Mount Sinai and inscribed them on tablets of stone with His own finger.

Of course, that’s not the only reason the Ten Commandments have a central place in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Christians have long understood them to be the clearest expression of God’s eternal moral character. Not to mention, they played an instrumental role in shaping Western civilization, including forming the foundation of our legal system and our understanding of justice. It’s why Moses and those tablets can be found at the apex of the U.S. Supreme Court. . . .

The moral principles expressed in the Ten Commandments didn’t come into existence at Sinai. They’re part of God’s eternal character which He built into the very fabric of reality itself. Even more, Jesus relied on the Old Testament throughout His ministry and in His teaching, especially when making the moral case for something. The reason, from a Christian worldview, is clear: Whether we’re talking about the moral principles expressed in the Ten Commandments which Christ perfectly kept or the ceremonial regulations of Leviticus which foreshadowed our perfect High Priest, all of the Old Testament is relevant to Christianity.

We need to understand and appreciate the significance of the Ten Commandments — including their impact on our system government and their relevance to us still today.

You can read or listen to John Stonestreet’s entire commentary here.

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