Inside the First North Dakota Pro-Life Conference
On Tuesday, NDFA had the honor and privilege to host the first ever North Dakota Pro-Life Conference at the Heritage Center in Bismarck. In addition to our organization, we hosted:
North Dakota Lieutenant Governor Brent Sanford
Mario Diaz, Concerned Women for America
Christopher Dodson, North Dakota Catholic Conference
Amber Vibeto, North Dakota Conservative Advocates
McKenzie McCoy, North Dakota Right to Life
State Senator Janne Myrdal
Linda Thorson, Concerned Women for America of North Dakota
Jill Chandler, Grand Forks Women's Pregnancy Center
Jody Clemens, North Dakota Post Abortion Ministries
You can click here to see a copy of yesterday’s program.
There was much discussion around the forthcoming SCOTUS Dobbs opinion and the ramifications for North Dakota and its trigger law(s). However, in addition to this topic, the conference focused on how we as Christians might help mothers considering or having just gone through abortions. It was a heartfelt day with information, insights, and incredible stories of God’s grace and mercy.
I want to thank all the participating organizations and the time and effort they put into making the conference a success. It was a fantastic event, and one that we know will continue to grow year-after-year.
Will You Remember?
Today is Thursday, December 9. If your week has been anything like mine, it has been hectic. There is always more to do, but in the midst of all this, Tuesday passed and commemorated something important. Did you remember?
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a surprise attack and bombed Pearl Harbor. It was the key event that precipitated our country entering WWII. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
In the attack, the Japanese air assault destroyed or damaged “nearly 20 American naval vessels, including eight battleships, and over 300 airplanes. More than 2,400 Americans died in the attack, including civilians, and another 1,000 people were wounded”1. It was a profound blow to our country, despite the fact that most of our fleet was not in Pearl Harbor at the time. The iconic quote sometimes attributed to Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve”. He was right.
So why is this important and why do we remember Pearl Harbor on December 7 each year? First, we clearly want to honor and pay respect to the men and women who gave their lives in this event. They gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country. To all of them, we owe a debt we cannot repay.
The second reason to remember Pearl Harbor is simply the preservation of history. The importance of the American people to recall this event is hard to overstate. However, history accounts become distorted over time, or worse, completely forgotten. Indeed, today you can find mainstream media who talk about Pearl Harbor remembrances in disdainful undertones and focus on how it precipitated decades of American revenge on various countries.
Apparently, the concepts of freedom and justice evade them. We must not let Pearl Harbor be the victim of revisionist history or misleading conclusions.
Third, it represents something deeper in our nation’s psyche. We were founded on the concepts of liberty and freedom, and we are committed to protect them at all costs. Pearl Harbor was a challenge to whether freedom and liberty could be preserved in this world. It was a conflict of ideas: tyranny and oppression versus freedom and liberty. We were “all in”.
Finally, it is important to remember Pearl Harbor as Christians. If you look at our logo, you’ll see the words, “Faith, Family, Freedom”. There is a reason for those words, and just as importantly, their order. Faith guides the preservation and thriving of families. Families give rise to communities, communities to societies, societies to governments, and governments to the preservation of freedoms through representation.
The interesting thing about this sequence is that it can be reversed as well. As freedoms are eroded, they have grave consequences for our government, societal bonds and values erode, which negatively affect our families, and ultimately this sequence manifests itself as attacks on our faith. I don’t need to convince you of that reverse sequence, given the past year or two.
I maintain that the freedom we fought for in WWII was fundamentally an existential fight for our faith. This is precisely why we at North Dakota Family Alliance fight for all three. Faith, Family, and Freedom must be preserved if our country is to prosper and remain undergirded by the biblical principles upon which it was founded. They are inextricably linked.
Tuesday may have come and gone for you without a remembrance of Pearl Harbor, and I am certainly not one to cast stones, since I too have sometimes forgotten to commemorate Dec 7. However, I simply ask for this favor: Will you remember Pearl Harbor? Perhaps more importantly, will you remember the flag planted that day which symbolized the defense of faith, family, and freedom? We truly are a sleeping giant, but we can only make a difference if we awaken and stand for what is right.
Dobbs and North Dakota
The Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case (hereafter Dobbs) is all over the media – I’m sure you’ve heard and read something about it by now. However, how important is it really? Can it overturn Roe v. Wade? What are the implications for abortions performed in North Dakota? Read on. We will try to present some answers to these questions in the following Q&As.
What is Dobbs about? The Dobbs case arises from a Mississippi law passed in 2018 (House Bill 1510) which prohibited almost all abortions after 15 weeks – 9 weeks earlier than the Supreme Court’s “viability” threshold of 24 weeks previously established in Roe v. Wade and reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Who is Dobbs? Thomas Dobbs is the State Health Officer for Mississippi. In other words, he represents the state’s interests in this case to uphold their 15-week abortion law.
Are there exceptions in the Mississippi law? Yes. The law contains exceptions for medical emergencies and cases involving a “severe fetal abnormality,” however, it does not make exceptions for rape or incest.
Why is this case important? It is fundamentally saying two things. First, that the reasoning in Roe and Casey was flawed and a law based on viability is unsupported. As they state in their case document, “A viability rule has no constitutional basis, it harms state interests, and it produces other severe negative consequences.” Secondly, they make the case that the Constitution does not protect a right to abortion or limit States’ authority to restrict it.
Could it result in the overturning of Roe v. Wade and stop all abortions in our country? Not entirely. SCOTUS is not likely to decide that Roe v. Wade was entirely wrong and should be thrown out (see Stare Decisis). It is more likely that their ruling could decide that certain aspects of prior case decisions were incorrect OR that states can restrict abortions at their level OR both. For this reason, all abortions will probably not suddenly stop nation-wide, but they could be dramatically curtailed immediately. It is anticipated that a large amount of litigation would follow such a SCOTUS decision, possibly preventing some state actions going into effect until decided by the court system (i.e., enjoined). Note that 15 states and the District of Columbia already have laws in place that would permit abortions even if Roe were overturned.
So what would happen in North Dakota? Don’t we have a “Trigger Law”?Yes, our state has a trigger law, as do 11 other states. The law (ND Trigger Law) states says that if SCOTUS rules in such a way that our Attorney general determines, “it is reasonably probable that this Act would be upheld as constitutional”, then the trigger law would go into effect and abortions would be illegal in North Dakota. It would make exceptions for protecting the life of the mother or if the pregnancy resulted from “sexual imposition, sexual abuse of a ward, or incest”.
What about all our existing abortion laws? Because we have a trigger law that would ban almost all abortions after Roe, North Dakota’s other, most lesser limitations and regulations on abortions currently in law would no longer be necessary.
When will Dobbs be argued before the Supreme Court and ruled on? The case is being argued tomorrow before the Supreme Court. A ruling is not expected prior to June 2022, when most SCOTUS rulings are filed.
Does this relate to the Texas case I heard about? They are similar in that they limit abortions, but they go about it in very different ways. The Texas law bans abortions as early as 6 weeks and leaves enforcement to private citizens, who can sue doctors or anyone else who performs or directly helps procure an abortion. SCOTUS has not blocked the Texas law for now, but has not heard arguments or officially ruled on it, so its future is unknown. Now Dobbs is taking the spotlight. Many other states are looking into enacting similar laws to the one in Texas, particularly if Dobbs is unsuccessful.
What can we do? Pray, and get others to pray as well! Dobbs is significant in the overall mess the court system has made of the abortion issue and its history of bad decisions. It is fundamentally asking for a rollback of Roe and is the most sweeping piece of legislation SCOTUS has seen in quite a while. We pro-life advocates want to seize this opportunity. The legal case has been submitted, the case argued before SCOTUS tomorrow, so now it’s up to us to pray for a favorable outcome.
Final Note: North Dakota Family Alliance plans to host a roundtable in January on Abortion in North Dakota. We will discuss existing abortion laws, extensively address the Dobbs and Texas cases, and focus on what all this means for North Dakota. Presenters will include policy experts from DC to provide context, legal experts on ND abortion law, individuals involved with of ND pregnancy clinics, and others who can provide a comprehensive perspective on this important case. We will give you more details as we get closer. You won’t want to miss this!
I'm Still Thankful
Tomorrow is already Thanksgiving. I’m not sure if that brings warm feelings or dread of the holiday season, but let’s talk about giving thanks right now.
I am personally thankful for many things. First and foremost, I am thankful for salvation in Christ. I am very thankful for a loving wife, amazing kids, and for living in this wonderful state. I am also thankful for Godly men and women who serve us in the state legislature and Congress. And I am very thankful for you, our faithful ministry partners around the state.
As Americans, we have a lot to be thankful for as well. We live in a country founded on biblical principles, which is a huge blessing. We have religious freedom, a society where hard work produces commensurate rewards, respectful dialog happens around contentious issues, Christianity is respected, and societal norms are shifting more toward biblical values every day.
Really? To some extent all those aforementioned items exist and we should certainly thank God for them. However, they are going away at an ever-increasing rate. The ending to “I am thankful for...” on these issues could soon become moot. They could be gone far faster than you or I can imagine.
I wrote the last four paragraphs in 2019 – two years ago. That was before the fateful Presidential election of 2020, before COVID and vaccine mandates, before riots in our cities, before CRT became an abbreviation we recognize.
Before everything.
So, what now? The assault on all we hold dear has never been greater. Nevertheless, we still have much to be thankful for. We live in a country where freedom is still greater than nearly every other country on earth. We have a definite majority of state legislators who respect biblical values and will defend them. Our country has never been more assertive to reclaim our conservative Christian values, meaning that many have been woken from their comfortable slumber and are now engaging in the fight.
I guess the overriding theme here is to be thankful for what we have. Please continue to pray as we together fight for biblical values in the political arena. Please get involved at the grassroots level – run for that school board position, write that letter to the editor. Finally, please support organizations like ours who are fighting every day, when you simply don’t have the bandwidth to do so.
We will be mailing our year-end donation appeal shortly. Please prayerfully consider giving your tax-exempt gift that will be matched dollar-for-dollar up to $20,000 to help us protect our values right here in North Dakota.
I speculated two years ago that our freedoms, ability to express our views, respect for traditional norms that built this country, and other values we hold dear might be entirely gone very soon. Let’s make sure I was wrong.
Why North Dakota?
When I first meet people and they find out our family moved here from another state, the initial question is typically: why North Dakota? I know we North Dakotans are rightfully proud of our state, so it’s not a question of, “why in the world would you choose to live here?” It’s more about curiosity concerning the journey that took us here. And that answer is not a straight line.
My college and university training was in Economics. I had plans to be an economist in the private sector for my entire career, marry this wonderful girl named Ruth, drive a Jaguar, own a beautiful home, work for a Fortune 500 company, and have a perfect little family whose biggest concern was choosing which clubs to belong to. God had other plans, and frankly, I only ever got one of those items I just listed. At least it was the most important one (yes, I’m talking about Ruth).
If there is one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that you have your plans for your life, and God has His plans for your life. If they’re in sync, all is well. If they aren’t, whose plan do you think is going to win? You can go willingly or go after being “whacked in the head”, so to speak, by God, until you come around. I’m Dutch, so I received a lot of whacks before I came around.
I never wanted to work in a nonprofit, certainly never wanted to be part of a “ministry”, didn’t have any interest in fundraising, and didn’t know what policy work was or how to do it. In short, I was definitely not the right person to be where I am today, doing what I am doing. Remember that thing I mentioned about God’s plan?
There have been many twists and turns on our family’s path, as may be true for many of your families as well. We never anticipated them or frankly always wanted them, but they made us stronger, smarter, and most importantly, made us realize that we needed God every step of the way.
During my interview process for this position, Ruth and I scheduled dinner to meet my prospective new boss. He called me up, we decided on a restaurant and time to meet, and then before I had a chance to hang up, he said, “I have one question for you. Why do you want to move to North Dakota?”
I replied, “I never sat down and thought to myself, ‘Wow, I have this great yearning to move to North Dakota.’ But what I have learned over the years is that you go where God calls you. Right now it’s North Dakota, so that’s where I need to be.” In hindsight, I guess that was a sufficient answer, because he hired me.
That answer was actually pretty simple, and it has remained so: “because God wants me here”. Being in God’s plan is not a promise of having an easy life, in fact, it’s quite often the opposite. However, it’s a place of peace. And I wouldn’t trade it for all the Jaguars and fancy homes in the world.