Looking back, Focus on the Family’s Jim Daly said it was “a holy moment” as those gathered in Times Square in 2019 watched Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director, undergo an ultrasound live-streamed on a big screen.
Focus on the Family has hosted the pro-life gathering, SeeLife, every year since then. This year’s event is particularly apropos, as the U.S. Supreme Court is presumably poised to overturn the precedent established by Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that granted nationwide legal access to abortion.
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“Just hearing that heartbeat, it quieted all of Times Square,” Daly told CBN’s Faithwire of Johnson’s live ultrasound. “It was incredible. People were crying, seeing the baby sucking its thumb, yawning after a nap. It was incredible. So we just decided to keep that going.”
After navigating holding the event amid a pandemic, the Focus on the Family leader said he is “looking forward” to bringing the affair back to its pre-COVID standard, replete with speakers and performers like Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, and worship leader Phil Wickham.
Daly said events like these are critical in today’s divided and cynical culture because it can be difficult and discouraging to advocate for life, the unborn, and biblical sexuality in a post-truth era.
“There’s so much going on in the culture right now that is like that,” he explained. “It’s like, ‘This is a hand,’ and people say, ‘No, it’s not.’ And it’s just hard to even have a discussion, let alone a debate, if we can’t agree on some simple truths.”
Daly, 60, went on to reference Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who in mid-May lamented the fact that the federal government offers greater protections to endangered sea turtles’ eggs than it does the unborn.
“We can recognize this in nature for birds and turtles, but somehow, a baby in the womb is not really gonna be a baby; it’s ridiculous,” Daly asserted. “We can’t agree on that truth.”
“I think it really is the blindness of what they want to achieve,” he continued.
Daly also said it’s important in this debate for Christians to disabuse people of the left’s “great misnomer” that those in the pro-life camp are unconcerned about the life of the mother or the life of the child after he or she is born.
That, he said, simply is not the case, noting there are so many churches, Christian organizations, and crisis pregnancy centers helping women financially as well as educationally, teaching them budgeting and basic care skills “at their point of need.”
“I’m excited to debunk that one,” Daly said. “They just don’t know what the church is doing, and they should become better informed, frankly.”
The best way to engage these issues without giving in to anger and bitterness is to actually get involved in the work: help to care for a woman in a crisis pregnancy, walk through tough topics with someone struggling to make sense of their feelings.
“For us, it’s one thing to bark at the culture — let me be kinder, to speak truth to the culture,” Daly said. “It’s another thing to roll up your sleeves and to get involved and that’s what we’re going to need. All of us as believers need to get involved, need to go down and volunteer at the pregnancy resource center in our community, to talk to your pastor about engaging and maybe being a church affiliated with a pregnancy resource center so some of their needs can be met.”
“The church needs to engage, continue to speak truth winsomely, but engage those women where they’re at,” he added.
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