Foster Care and Adoption Lead to Family Restoration

May is National Foster Care Awareness Month, and many organizations are taking the opportunity to make a difference for a child with foster care and adoption toward family restoration.

“Virginia Adopts: Campaign for 1,000,” is an initiative to match more than 1,000 children in foster care in Virginia with 1,000 adoptive families in an event that will be held at the Executive Mansion in Richmond, Virginia.  Registration for the kick-off event at noon this Friday, May 17 can be found here.  You can find out more about the Virginia Adopts Campaign on Facebook  and on Twitter, or on YouTube.  Learn more about the children in foster care in Virginia who are looking for a loving family and the adoption process at the Virginia Adopts website. One person can change the life of a child in foster care.

Families make such a tremendous difference in the lives of children who find themselves in foster care due to abuse or neglect.  One family in Virginia is making a difference in the lives of eleven children by adopting them from state foster care and raising them in a Christian family.  See about Team Steele from their 700 Club appearance here.

 

Currently more than 380,000 children wait in foster care for a family.  See more about foster care at http://www.fostercaremonth.org/.  Every child deserves the security and love that a family provides. Children need family restoration.  

Gosnell Murder Convictions Illustrate Value for Women, Children and Future Families

Kermit Gosnell was convicted yesterday of 261 criminal counts in his work as an abortion doctor in downtown Philadelphia when he killed babies born alive and recklessly caused the death of a mother who was his patient.

The jury determined that Baby A, Baby B, and Baby C were intentionally murdered while alive, convicting Gosnell of first degree murder, a crime punishable by death in Pennsylvania.  The Washington Post reported on the trial and the convictions on its website.

This was a horrifying abortion-related crime.  The Times reported that media hesitated to cover it because it revealed the gruesome nature of abortion.  They reported that the crimes illustrate the horrors of abortion, how poverty is exploited in abortion, and how race is a target of abortion.  See that article here. 

Regent University School of Law is producing lawyers who will bring about similar convictions of those who murder women and children.  The Gosnell case proves that criminal laws and clinic regulations can work to protect women, children, and future families harmed by abortion.  Indeed, the law is more than a profession - it's a calling.

Women and Children Deserve Protection: Toward Family Restoration in Abortion

Caution: This article contains graphic material.

Senator Mike Lee introduced a resolution last Monday that calls on local, state and federal governments to investigate unsanitary abortion conditions and illegal abortion practices, according to a May 7, 2013 article by Bethany Monk of CitizenLink, which is fully available at   http://www.citizenlink.com/2013/05/07/take-action-support-resolution-calling-for-investigations-of-illegal-abortion-practices/.  She writes:

“The Utah lawmaker is calling on the Senate to protect women and girls from “abusive, unsanitary, and illegal abortion practices.” Lee also condemned the deplorable practices uncovered at abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s Philadelphia abortion center. Gosnell is charged with murdering seven newborns and one pregnant woman. ‘The facts of the Gosnell case are disturbing and heartbreaking,’ Lee said. ‘The lack of oversight at abortions facilities puts women’s lives at risk and leads to the kind of unconscionable practices we have seen recently.’  A 2011 Grand Jury report says Gosnell delivered ‘live, viable babies in the third trimesters of pregnancy — then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors.’  It also documents that Gosnell’s clinic ‘reeked of animal urine,’ and that furniture and blankets ‘were stained of blood.’ Scattered throughout the center, ‘in the basement, in a freezer, in jars and plastic jugs, were fetal remains.’”

This is not how women and children ought to be treated in any medical facility.  Federal action is not inappropriate in light of federal law that upholds protection for women and children even in abortion.  Monk’s article continues:

“Lawmakers must protect women, girls, preborn babies and newborns from situations like this, the resolution explains. It calls any illegal or dangerous abortion practices ‘violations of law and human dignity.’  ‘Congress has the responsibility to investigate and conduct hearings on abortions performed near, at, or after viability in the United States, public policies regarding such, and evaluate the extent to which such abortions involve violations or the natural right to life of infants who are born alive or capable of being born alive, and entitled to equal protection under the law,’ the resolution states.  Co-sponsors of the federal resolution include Sens. Patrick Toomey, Pennsylvania; Marco Rubio, Florida; Ted Cruz, Texas; James Inhofe, Oklahoma; Tim Scott, South Carolina; Roy Blunt, Missouri; Richard Burr, North Carolina; David Vitter, Louisiana; Mike Johanns, Nebraska; John Thune, South Dakota; and John Boozman, Arkansas. ‘The Senate should formally recognize that this is a problem in our country,’ Lee said. ‘We have a responsibility to investigate the causes, review the effects of certain public policies, and determine what we can do to prevent any woman from being subjected to the reprehensible practices again’.”

You may wish to Contact your U.S. Senators and ask them to support the Lee resolution and Congressional hearings into the abortion industry.  You may also Read the full text of the resolution here.  

Legal scholarship on abortion can focus on the protection of women and children, and you may access such work on SSRN at http://ssrn.com/author=183817.

Family restoration requires that women and children be protected, particularly in abortion.

Your Marriage, Family Restoration, and the Watching World

Last week the Governor of Rhode Island signed into law marriage for same-sex partners after majority approval by that state’s house of representatives.  You can read about it and see the text of the bill here.  This marriage decision is an important aspect of cultural change, but so is your marriage and mine, as those around us locally and around the world watch events unfold.

John Piper’s latest book on marriage, “This Momentary Marriage,” highlights how significant marriage is to culture, and yet how profoundly inadequate we can be in fulfilling our responsibilities as a husband or as a wife.  The magnitude and significance of the union is often far beyond what we imagine.  Piper’s book can be found at his ministry's Resource Library.  Some of Piper’s positions trigger vigorous debate (such as remarriage after divorce), but he points out that we need to change how we think about marriage and realize it is not just about us.  Others are watching our marriages. 

Several top Christian scholars have noted the four most important things that you can do about the institution of marriage in our culture, and they all become personal very quickly:

1. Hold tight to the truths of the Scriptures. Do not grow weary.

2. Honor a biblical understanding of marriage by remaining faithful to your respective spouse.

3. Continue raising your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

4. Share the Good News of the Gospel with all people. Be winsome but be bold.

Honoring marriage is not going to get any easier in a culture that misunderstands it as an expression of self and individualism. Rather, a good marriage is going to become more difficult. It is also, however, a defining moment in the history of the church, and we can rise to the occasion to meet it with courage and a spirit of strong conviction.  Focus on the Family has more on this on their website. 

Jesus Christ said in John 17:20-21, “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”  The Lord prayed for our oneness as believers. Relational intimacy is, after all, at the heart of Scripture. This oneness is reflected in marriage, fulfilling our need for intimacy. And it is reflected in the church, to the watching world. A good portion of the watching world is our extended family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and those we serve every day. They watch how I treat my spouse, how I speak to my spouse on the telephone, how I treat him in person. Do I treat him with contempt when he disappoints me, or with respect as the first human target of my charity? The world is watching my marriage, and it is watching yours.

Intimacy begins with God, but marriage provides a convincing demonstration of the power of Christ’s love to enable people to experience true relationship. Your marriage can become a picture of God’s love. In an era of selfishness that is starving for love and intimacy, living in marital oneness with your spouse can be so attractive to the watching world.  True relationship with God leads to true relationship in marriage, and offers a witness to the watching world.  This witness is the foundation of family restoration.