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Republicans want to repeal law used to persecute pro-life Christians

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One of the worst things about secular leftism is their denial of human rights. For a secular leftist, it’s so tempting to want to collect money from taxpayers, then use that money to punish taxpayers who disagree with them. One of the ways that this happened during the Biden regime is when the government used heavily-armed police to pre-dawn raid the homes of Christians.

But the House Republicans are going to do something about it.

This Daily Wire article explains:

The House of Representatives will take steps towards repealing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act this week, a law repeatedly weaponized against pro-life activists by President Joe Biden’s administration.

Lawmakers on Wednesday will mark up H.R. 589, the FACE Act Repeal Act of 2025, which Texas Congressman Chip Roy introduced in January. The bill “repeals provisions of federal criminal law that prohibit conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with persons who are seeking to (1) obtain or provide reproductive health services, or (2) exercise their right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.”

Senator Mike Lee of Utah introduced the Senate version of the bill in January as well.

If you don’t know the names “Chip Roy” and “Mike Lee”, you should. Roy is one of the most conservative Congressman in the House, and an early backer of Ron DeSantis in 2024. DeSantis was the mst conservative candidate for president running in 2024. Lee is one of the most conservative Senators in the Senate. Roy and Lee  were clearly not happy with the Biden administration using government to punish people who disagree with the Democrat party.

The article talks about that:

The move comes after years of work from Roy and his team, who aggressively argued in favor of repealing the FACE Act while the Biden Justice Department used the law to imprison pro-life activist after pro-life activist from 2022 to 2024, often pairing FACE with a felony conspiracy charge to lock peaceful pro-life protesters. President Donald Trump pardoned these imprisoned activists earlier this year.

I blogged earlier about how well Trump has performed for the pro-lifers who voted for him. Pardoning the pro-lifers was one of the most significant actions he took on behalf of his pro-life voters.

It might be worth reviewing the kind of person that Biden appointed to persecute Christians for their not-Democrat views.

This article from Daily Signal tells us all about Kristen Clarke:

Clarke served as president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a left-wing activist group. She also worked for five years at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a leftist group that links abortion to “racial justice.” Both groups have frequently accessed the Biden White House and received large cash infusions from the Left’s dark money network… She cited the far-left smear factory the Southern Poverty Law Center in condemning Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit pro-life and religious freedom law firm, as a “hate group.”

[…]She said that those protesting Dr. Anthony Fauci, the controversial COVID-19 czar and now-retired head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, should be “publicly identified and named, barred from treatment at any public hospital if/when they fall ill and denied coverage under their insurance.”

[…]Clarke had been arrested for attacking her then-husband, Reginald Avery, with a knife, deeply slicing one of his fingers to the bone in 2006. The pair finalized their divorce in 2009. Clarke had the arrest expunged from her record, and during her Senate confirmation, she denied ever having been arrested or having been accused of committing a violent crime. Clarke admitted to her failure to disclose that arrest, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, called for her to resign.

That’s who Trump-supporters were really voting against, when they voted for Trump in 2024. Trump-supporters voters to stop the persecution of Christians by the government.

What about the people who dislike Trump, and can’t understand why Christians would vote for him? Well, they probably don’t know who Chip Roy, Mike Lee or Kristen Clarke are. They know about Trump, because their TVs told them to hate Trump. But Christians and conservatives don’t get their news from watching TV. We monitored stories like the persecution of pro-life Christians, and we voted to oppose the weaponization of Big Government against Christians. We voted for the results we wanted. We did not vote to have happy feelings or to virtue signal.

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Desert Rose is really enjoying her review copy of “The Immortal Mind”

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Desert Rose got a review copy of “The Immortal Mind“, and she loves it. Her mom loves it. And two of her neightbors love it, too. It’s made a huge splash. Although the material is scientific evidence, it’s written in a way that non-scientists can understand. And these are interesting topics to talk about with skeptics, atheists, and non-Christians. Let’s take a look at what’s in the book.

The book is about what the best explanation is for our mental experiences: consciousness, abstract thought, and free will. Basically, what is the “mind”? One view is that your mind is just your physical brain. That’s called “materialism”. Then there is “dualism”, where you are your mind, and you interact with your physical body. Which way does the evidence point?

Here’s the description of the new book:

Many scientists and doctors believe that there is no such thing as the soul. That there is no part of us that persists beyond death. We are not spiritual in any respect. We are made up of cells and tissue, and completely controlled by a material organ in our heads: the brain.

In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Michael Egnor, practicing neurosurgeon, neuroscientist and Professor of Neurosurgery at Stony Brook University, makes the case—based on 40 years of practice and over 7,000 brain surgeries—that science has gotten it all wrong. The human brain is incredible, mysterious, and powerful. But it’s not what makes us who we are. The soul does that.

Drawing on the most important research studies in neuroscience, Dr. Egnor presents evidence that the brain alone does not explain the mind. He explores, using modern neuroscience and his vast surgical experience, how inside every damaged brain there is a thinking, feeling person with a spiritual soul that transcends the brain. He argues that scientists can locate the parts of the brain that control the body or sensations or emotions, but they can’t find the seat of reason or free will. He uses fascinating case studies to show how cutting-edge brain surgery on patients who are awake, how research on conjoined twins who share parts of their brains, on patients in deep coma who are still able to communicate with people around them, on near-death experiences, and on artificial intelligence all make a scientific case for the existence of the spiritual human soul.

Engaging, thought-provoking, and groundbreaking, The Immortal Mind shows here that some aspect of who we are is spiritual and immortal, transcending the physical body. Using science, he proves the existence of the human soul.

You can pre-order the book here.

I know that there are great arguments for the soul in philosophy, like persistent identity over time, or intentionality. But somehow, I just feel that it is more persuasive to talk about the scientific evidence, and that’s what this book does.

When it comes to Creator and Designer, I have 6 arguments that use scientific evidence:

  1. origin of the universe
  2. cosmic fine-tuning
  3. origin of life
  4. fossil record
  5. habitability
  6. molecular machines

What I’d really like is to get a seventh argument added to my list. Another argument for falsifying naturalism / materialism that is based on scientific evidence. Run up the score! 7-0. Sounds like a football game now.

There is a GREAT pre-order goody if you order the book before May 31st. You get a free digital copy of “Minding the Brain“. It has articles by people you might recognize: Taliaferro, Menuge, Farris, Egnor, Marks, Gordon, Habermas! Lots of different topics by different authors, kind of like “The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith”, which is one of my favorite books.

I already bought Minding the Brain on Kindle, but if you like making an argument for the the soul, then it’s a great collection of chapters from some of the best scholars, and the digital version is free if you pre-order “The Immortal Mind”. Let me know in the comments if you have ever done prep to make an argument for the soul.

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Which side of the abortion rights debate is backed by scientific evidence?

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Once upon a time I didn’t know much about the case for abortion rights or the case for the right to life of unborn children. My reason for not reading much about it is that I thought that it was kind of a subjective issue. But, I started a project to read 1-2 books on every conceivable topic, including one on abortion. Lo and behold, it turned out that one side did have the backing of science.

This article from The Public Discourse explains: (links removed)

The following are typical examples—only three of the many, many we could cite. These are from standard texts by embryologists, developmental biologists, and microbiologists:

“Human life begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” “A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo).” Keith L. Moore, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th edition.

“Fertilization is the process by which male and female haploid gametes (sperm and egg) unite to produce a genetically distinct individual.” Signorelli et al., Kinases, phosphatases and proteases during sperm capacitation, Cell Tissue Research.

“Although life is a continuous process, fertilization (which, incidentally, is not a ‘moment’) is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte” (emphasis added; Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Mueller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd edition.

The genetically distinct part is key – this unborn child is has a different DNA signature (a human signature) than either the mother or the father. Nothing will be added or taken away from this new signature as the unborn child grows. It never changes.

More:

These authorities all agree because the underlying science is clear. At fertilization—or, more precisely, when the sperm (a male sex cell) fuses with the oocyte (a female sex cell, more commonly referred to as an egg)—each of them ceases to be, and a new entity, one that is both genetically and functionally distinct from either parent, is generated. This new entity, initially a single totipotent cell, then divides into two cells, then (asynchronously) three, then four, eight, and so on, enclosed all the while by a membrane inherited from the oocyte (the zona pellucida), which then dissolves during implantation, allowing for continued growth in the direction of maturity as a member of the species. Even prior to implantation, however, these cells and membrane function as parts of a whole that regularly and predictably develops into the more mature stages of a complex human body.

How do we know that the result of sperm-oocyte fusion is a new entity, rather than a continuation of the oocyte? We know that a new entity exists because, once the sperm penetrates the oocyte, a completely new trajectory of biological development commences. The biological activity of an oocyte is directed toward successful fertilization; the biological activity of sperm is directed toward penetration of an oocyte. The biological activity of the new entity that results when sperm and oocyte fuse, however, is directed toward nothing less than the development of a mature human organism, distinct from either parent. Further, this new entity’s activities are directed not by instructions from the mother’s body, as some people wrongly suppose, but by its own unique set of instructions, especially the blueprint for development contained in its unique genetic material. The mother’s body recognizes the zygote and then the embryo as an entity distinct from itself. In fact, the embryo must send out chemical signals to prevent the mother’s immune system from attacking it. The embryo also emits chemical signals that induce changes in the lining of the mother’s uterus to enable successful implantation.

If this embryo is provided a suitable environment, nutrition, and protection from deliberate attack, serious injury, or disease, it will develop to the mature stage of a human organism. Thus, from the zygote stage onward this distinct, new organism has all of the internal resources—in its genetic and epigenetic structure—needed to develop itself (or, rather, himself or herself, since in the human sex is determined from the very beginning) to the mature stage of a human organism. At no point after fertilization—implantation, gastrulation, birth, puberty, etc.—does a fundamental change in biological trajectory occur. These subsequent stages of development are simply the unfolding of the zygote’s inherent dynamism toward human organismal maturity. This shows that the zygote already is a human organism—a member of the species Homo sapiens—albeit at an early stage of his or her development.

So, since I like to win arguments with science, I just took the side of the debate that was backed by science. I really hate to lose debates, you know. I really like to cite scientific evidence when I’m debating.

The crime of abortion, it seems to me, is that you are depriving a human being of his or her future, because of your convenience right now. Human beings don’t have the right to take away the futures of other human beings because they want to be unburdened by the results of their own actions. We shouldn’t resort to violence in order to escape responsibility for our own actions. In almost every case, (except to save the life of the mother), killing the unborn child isn’t justified. It’s actually very scary to me that anyone would think that hurting other people was a reasonable response to one’s own diminished happiness. How did we ever get to a place in society when people don’t think that taking responsibility to care for the unborn child is morally better than killing the unborn child? It’s a baby for goodness sake. We ought to be serious about setting up our lives and controlling ourselves so that we never hurt an unborn child.