61 Pro-Life Laws Have Been Passed This Year And More – Tune in now for some amazing news on the Pro-Life front! 61 Pro-Life laws have been passed so far this year, Lubbock TX becomes the State’s largest sanctuary city for the unborn and more!

Air Date: 05/07/2021

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

 

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. This is WallBuilders Live, where we’re taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective. You’ve joined us on a Friday, it’s Good News Friday, my favorite day of the week because David and Tim Barton compile all these great news, great, great good news stories from across the nation. And sometimes it feels like there’s not any good news out there, well, you’re just not looking in the right places. We’ve got a lot of good news for you today.

So David Barton, America’s premier historian is with us, Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders, and my name is Rick Green, I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach. If you don’t get enough good news today, and we’re going to bring it to your rapid fire, but if you don’t get enough, be sure to visit our website, wallbuilderslive.com, jump in the archive section there, and there’s more good news. Let’s get started, guys, for first piece of good news.

David:

Well, this is an unusual thing. We were just talking just before we went on air, this is the tallest stack of good news that we’ve had that we can ever remember. I mean, it is stacked up inches and inches and inches and inches high. These are often one page stories or two page stories. I mean, we’re talking reams of paper of the good news. And this is all recent good news. I mean, we’re talking last few weeks, so there’s a lot going on. And a lot of it is actually coming out of the states. A lot of the good news we covered the last four years was Trump has done this or the State Department has done this, or the Supreme Court has done this. But right now the states are just turning out good news just at an unbelievable rate almost, I mean, out of whatever get covered all the stuff we have just having 30 minute programs. But I’m going to start into some stuff on this. And this one right off the top….

 Rick:

Hey, David, wait, before you hit that first one, I got to say what you just said. I mean, most people are thinking there’s no good news because all they see on national media is federal government. There’s a lot of bad stuff happening at the federal level, what you’re saying is, guys, you got to look deeper, you got to look closer, look at what’s happening in the states in the local level. And that’s what we’re about to bring to them.

David:

And by the way, this is good news, if you come from the perspective of conservative, constitutional, biblical. So if you happen to be a progressive this pro-abortion that is thinks the Constitution is gone and the socialism should be in, this is not Good News Friday for you. This is Good News Friday from our viewpoint of a biblical constitutional conservative.

So with that, I’m going to start off with here’s this headline, “State Legislators have Proposed 500 Laws Nationwide this Year to Save Babies from Abortion.” So you have 500 pro-life laws that have been introduced so far this year. We’ve never had a year with that many pro-life laws ever, 500 this year, so that’s averaging 10 pro-life laws a state, even for the super blue states like California that’d be an average of that.

And a lot of them, I mean, they really go far like the one just passed in Arkansas is a complete ban on abortions. It’s like forget the Supreme Court, in Arkansas, there’s no abortions. We’re not having abortions here. And they’re that kind of bold law. So this is not really squishy stuff playing around the fringes. There’s laws dealing with telemedicine, abortion and abortions after heartbeat, the heartbeat bills and abortions based on disability or sex. I mean, just anything you can think of, pro-life laws are going with it.

Now, 500 introduced that’s really good, but are any of them getting passed? Well, we’re still not done with session yet. We’re still well into sessions that have a long way to go. And so far, you have 61 pro-life laws that have been passed so far this year. So 61 pro-life laws, and by the way, these stats are coming from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which is the research arm for Planned Parenthood. So this is the pro-abortion people complaining about how many pro-life bills have been introduced how many pro-life bills are being passed.

I mean, this is really, really, really good news that we’re seeing so much aggressive activity to protect life. And we’re seeing that same kind of aggression on a lot of other stuffs as well. But it’s really good news that we have so many aggressive pro-life bills introduced and already 61 passed and there’s so much time left in the sessions across the different various legislatures in the United States.

Rick:

Alright. So lots of pro-life good news across the country and my guess is, guys, we’re going to have pro-life good news stories for weeks and weeks, maybe months throughout the year because of what you’re talking about in all these state legislators that they’re working on. So let’s move to another area. Unless Tim, what’s your first piece of good news, also pro-life or something else?

Tim:

So yes, I just pulled up a pro-life piece to put it on top of my stack. I have several pulled out for this program. And this one is from Lubbock and it’s Lubbock, Texas, identifying that Lubbock becomes the state’s largest sanctuary city for the unborn. Now we know that Texas as well as many other states have cities that have declared themselves Sanctuary Cities for unborn that they’re not going to do abortion; they’re going to protect children, unborn children at their Sanctuary City.

Lubbock is the largest city in Texas now that has taken that position and the unofficial vote was 62% for and 38% against the measure. But this comes just a year after Planned Parenthood opened a clinic in Lubbock and months after the city council rejected the ordinance on legal grounds and warned it could tee up a costly court fight. So the city council was on in favor of it. But somehow this makes a ballot measure and the people of the city say, yeah, we’re not doing that, we’re a Sanctuary City.

So a very strong position, which also we’ve talked about this. This is why it does matter that people get involved in local elections that you get involved in your city council. Because if your city council or your school board is going a direction that you don’t think is right, you can be one of the solutions to help turn them back in a different direction. So Lubbock now is the state’s largest Sanctuary City for the unborn.

David:

And what was the percentage on that? How did it go?

Tim:

The unofficial vote was 62% for and 38% against the measure.

David:

See, that’s a university town. And that’s really big, because normally in a university town or a capital town, it’s much more liberal than the rest of the state. And so when you get Texas Tech out there and that’s the home of Texas Tech, and you’ve got tens of thousands of students who are living there in the city, that’s really strong to be 62:38 in the university town.

Rick:

I have to get you to point out though, you said largest city, now largest city in Texas to do that, or largest city in the nation? Because you know, all things are bigger in Texas, right? So, of course, we have the largest city that’s a Sanctuary City for the unborn.

Tim:

So in fairness, I have not looked up to see all the other cities from all the other states. In fairness…

Rick:

And we need look, man, I’m sure I’m sure it’s bigger, just because it’s Texas.

Tim:

Okay. So as long as we don’t have any fact checkers, then yes, we will say this for sure is the biggest city that the sanctuary city…

Rick:

To all of our friends across the country, if you’ve got a city that’s past a sanctuary bill for the unborn that’s bigger than Lubbock, we want to know, because we’ll add it to Good News Friday, please send them in.

David:

And by the way, don’t have to worry about any more anyway, Rick, regardless what people send in. As we saw from Washington Post, now that we have a democrat presidency, we no longer need fact checkers, so we’re going to be okay, no matter what we say.

Tim:

Well, I think it’s just they don’t fact check him. I think they will still, yeah. Well and technically, they’re going to keep fact checking, they’re just not going to store the database of what they found. So if you want to go back and look and see what he said in a more recent speech and was he inaccurate on what he said, they’re not going to keep that database because they don’t think it’s necessary anymore to point out where President Biden is wrong. Only if it’s like a Republican, then we’ll keep the database. Yeah, little nuance detail.

Anyway, let’s get back to the good news. And guys, one of the things that we have seen throughout the nation is the escalation in regards to police officers. There’s a video just in the last couple weeks that went viral of a lady being pulled over by an officer. And she just goes off on this Hispanic officer, all kinds of nasty things she says to him and that she and her child fear for their life because he’s a murderer….

David:

And by the way, what struck me more than anything was not the fact that she said all that, the fact that she’s a school teacher…

Tim:

Or at least she claimed to be because….

David:

Well, that’s true, she claimed to be

Tim:

At some point, you wonder, are you trying to leverage this? Because already she’s just terrible in what she’s doing. Her behavior is absolutely terrible. All this to point out that we have seen a lot of really bad behavior toward police officers; and you even have political commentators who have come out saying that I don’t think, that the whole system of policing is as good on any level, we need to destroy it. And there are no good apples in the police force, or if there are, they’re never visible and that’s the problem because they don’t stand up against the bad apples, etc. So we hear a lot of this stuff.

And on our Good News Friday, we’ve highlighted on many occasions where police officers have done some really remarkable things, where they’ve gotten involved in the community, they’re making a difference. And frankly, I mean, guys, we know many officers personally, we have some an extended family, some more, I guess, closely in the family. We know many officers who are really great people who protect individuals and they are willing to lay their lives down for others. And we know even the Bible says greater love has no one than this that he lays down his life for his friend.

That is what so many police officers every single day, when they put on that uniform they are willing to do just like we have honored our military on this program since our existence on WallBuilders Live, we’ve honored our military. We have friends, family, loved ones in the military. We know people that have lost their lives in the military. We appreciate people who put their lives on the line to help us, to help defend our freedom, this nation.

All that being said, we have highlighted many stories of good police officers and I was just really happy over the last couple weeks to see many stories now being highlighted of police officers doing things worthy of recognition, because, again, so often people are talking about there’s not good officers out there, is because they’re not paying attention. Literally, they don’t know officers or not paying attention. So let me just give you one example.

There’s a story of a police officer out of the Mount Vernon Police Department and that is actually up in New York from Westchester County, it’s what this article highlights. And this is something now, has also gone viral. You can get online, you can watch the video because there’s body cam footage, and it shows when this officer gets called to a Dollar Tree, somebody with the Dollar Tree recognize there was a man in there who was stealing from them. And so they call the police and the police show up. And there’s two officers that are there on the scene.

And the first officer that goes up, his name is officer Cartwright, is how he’s identified. And he goes in and he actually asked, hey, did you steal something? And yes, and I, that, it ended up being a homeless man: the homeless man was honest I stole the socks. And so they do a pat down, make sure it’s all that was there. And officer says, you know what, because you’re honest, because you’re not being ridiculous and disrespectful, he says, you just need a pair of socks? And he said, you know, essentially, yes, I need a pair of socks. He said, well, let me get you a pair of socks. The officer offers $15 worth of socks to this homeless man acknowledges I know it’s tough out there. You don’t really know what’s going on. You don’t know where you’re going. You need a good pair of socks, or you need several pair of socks…

David:

And wasn’t it true that the homeless guy had sores on his feet, that’s why he was going after socks? Because he had real foot problems, real difficulties…

Tim:

So there are lots of articles that have been written about this, and I just picked one. This article doesn’t highlight that his feet were sore, but again, there’s lots of articles out there. And that certainly would make sense why are you stealing a pair of socks from the Dollar Tree? Well, you need something for your feet, they hurt, they don’t feel good, something’s wrong. Anyway, the officer ends up buying him $15 worth of socks, wants to take care of him, he says, look, I’m doing this because you’re honest with me. But you need to stop stealing, don’t do this anymore.

And there’s another officer there with them, Officer Velez, and they tell the man hey, if you ever need any help, come to police headquarters. We are here, we want to help you, we’ll help take care of you, whatever the case is. And this is just another really good example of the hundreds of examples we can point to and we’ve pointed to some. We will continue to highlight stories where police officers have done really great things.

This is another example where you see the police from their own pocketbook, right from their own wallet taking out money to help people in need, where they’re doing really honorable and decent things. They care about other human beings. So the narratives that so often we hear in modern culture that all police are bad, that they’re all racist, they’re all murderers, etc, etc, etc, it’s just not statistically true on any level and there are so many good officers in the force.

So for any officer listening, first of all, we really appreciate you. We do pray for you on basically a daily basis. And I’m sure many of our listeners do as well. Thank you so much for your service for what you’re doing. And this could go to all first responders, right, all of our military, all the people that serve and help us. We’re so grateful for you. But police officers especially, we really appreciate you and we know there are so many good officers out there doing things to keep us safe.

Rick:

Yeah, Tim, I just want to echo everything you said, it’s personal, just like is personal with the military with you guys with so many military family members. You know, for me, it’s a brother-in-law that’s a sergeant in Grand Prairie here in Texas. And most of our listeners know someone in law enforcement and they know that this false narrative that has been pushed by the president and others to taint our law enforcement that it’s got to be countered. And so I love it when you share these good stories.

Hey, before you move to the next piece of good news, quick email. I just think it’s encouraging, I mean, I think it’s so cool, and I think it’ll encourage other people to do the same thing. His name is Parks. He said, “Thank you so much for the program on revival in America. I read The American Story back around Christmas time, it was so good, I could hardly put it down.” Now The American Story, folks, that’s David and Tim new book. It is a phenomenal, you get it at wallbuilders.com. But he goes on to say “I’m a chaplain here at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and wanted to be able to share the book with students.” This is great.

He said, “So I bought a case of 32 books and I’ve been giving them away as God gives me opportunity. I recently showed part of America’s godly heritage to one of the Bible studies here on campus. And I told the students if they read The American Story, I would give them a bonus of 50 bucks. The next week, one of the students had already read the entire book, I was out 50 bucks, but that was a great investment. Thanks for all you do.”

Parks, that is the best story I’ve read all week. I love that. I have to admit, guys, but sometimes my dad would pay me like five bucks a book to read when I was a kid. So this actually works. Pay your kids to read books, and they’ll read more books. Here, this guy’s paying people that aren’t even his own kids, but they’re students on campus. And he’s given them the most important book in America right now with all the attacks on America. It’s called The American Story by David and Tim Barton. So guys, you all have to enjoy that, I had to share that with you.

Tim:

Yeah, that’s really fun. And I can imagine kids in college have a lot on their plate for most of them. And so yeah, having a little extra incentive to learn some true history might be helpful, but certainly that’s cool. And kudos to the Chaplain and so, we thank you for what you’re doing and we pray God uses you to make a difference there at Purdue. Those kids certainly need help and need truth. And so it’s great to know that there are people out there helping guide them in that direction.

Rick:

Let’s take a quick break, guys, we’ll be right back. We’ve got more good news for you right here on WallBuilders Live.

AMERICAN STORY

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called The American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that’s just not known or not told today.

And we would say very providentially in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil, and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things, like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not out the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we’re against everything that America was built on, and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There’s so many things attacking America.

Well, is America worth defending? What is the true story of America? We actually have written and told that story starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln, we tell the story of America not as the story of a perfect nation of a perfect people. But the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It’s a story you want to check out wallbuilders.com, The American Story.

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. It’s Good News Friday today. You’ll notice we’re taking fewer breaks this week in the program, getting more content in and sharing as much as possible with you. So let’s get as many good news stories as we can for the rest of our program today. And I think David’s next.

David:

Tim, I think it was a couple of weeks ago you were talking about elections and Florida and how that Florida had been so goofed up for so many years as we’ve do election night coverage. Florida was always a battleground state, always didn’t know where they were going, it’s always later in the night or really early in the mornings when they reported results and you just never knew where it’s going to go.

And then DeSantis went through that election, Governor DeSantis where that he was waiting for weeks to find out the results. When he finally was declared governor, he stepped and said this is stopping. He asked for resignations of all sorts of election officials that came in and passed laws, cleaned up a bunch of stuff.

Tim:

And let’s clarify. Some of the resignations he was asking for were from county clerks or officials over elections in their area. And they were finding ballots three and four weeks after the election was over, after the deadline and they’re counting. Well, we need to recount, oh, we found some more, we found it’s extra box. He said, okay, you guys, if you’re finding ballots three and four weeks after the election, you’re incompetent and don’t need to be there. We need this run more effectively and efficiently.

And so this is part of what he’s doing. This is not a political targeting of people from a different political party that I don’t like. These were people literally who were that incompetent or maybe that corrupt, right, depending on how you look at this where they’re finding a bunch of ballots for his opposition, right. Maybe that were from their political party, that’s unknown. Nonetheless, he came in and said, if you can’t get the job done, then we’re going to find somebody who can. And if it’s taking you three to four weeks after the election you’re still finding ballots, you’re not the right person for this job.

David:

And so as a result of the change he made this last election, Florida was one of the first states in. It was amazing how fast they came in with the results, complete results. We expected to be a battleground state that would go well in the morning, because that’s what it always did. And it’s like by two or three hours after the polls closed, they had all the results in for the state. I mean, it’s a remarkable turnaround. It shows what leadership can do.

And having said that, Florida just passed another election integrity law, and I love the comment from DeSantis. DeSantis said, he said last November, Florida held the smoothest, most successful election of any state in the country. I would say yes, you did. He said, while we should celebrate this feat, we should not rest on our laurels. So here you’ve got Florida actually pass in more things to clean up elections there. And one of the things they did is vote by mail ballot signatures, it now has to match the most recent signature on file with that voter. It can’t be somebody that just came in and signed up that day and said, yeah, this is really me. You have to have something actual on file. So it’s a great voter integrity measure.

And going along with that, Tennessee did a great bill here on absentee ballots. And I don’t think I’ve heard of another state doing this. Maybe it’s out there, I just don’t know about it. But Tennessee, they passed a law requiring watermarks on all absentee ballots. Now why would you request a watermark on an absentee ballot? Because a watermark helps keep it from being counterfeited. We had all these stories this last election of in Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix, they were all these reports of boxes of ballot is being flown in from out of state and taken in and delivered and being counted.

Tim:

Now whether that’s true or not, it’s still unknown. But those were reports coming in and if there’s suspicion that any of that could be true, how do you leave fears that people bring in outside ballots? You put a Watermark on the ballot so it can’t be produced outside of the state, it can only be produced in whatever facility is printing the ballots for the state. And therefore you are ensuring that there’s another level to voter security or election security, because you can’t just print ballots off some random person’s printer somewhere throughout the state or out of the state and bring those balance in to sway the election.

David:

Yeah, and that is the point. Because it even if your ballot is in-state, if it doesn’t have a watermark on it, it’s not a legitimate state approved ballot, is something you came up with. So whether it’s in-state, or out-of-state. So and Tim, you’re right, who knows whether this stuff actually happened or not. There were a lot of reports at various airports, various states, doesn’t matter. This will alleviate that in Tennessee, and that’s a great, great measure. And maybe there was no fraud in Tennessee, but this makes sure there’s no fraud in Tennessee. And it’s a great bill.

Tim:

And it also sends a signal to other states, right. I mean, they’re doing things that hopefully other states will pick up on, a lot of times that happens with legislators across the country.

David:

Yeah, I will say that this session, I have seen that more than any previous session in my history of looking at state legislatures, is that when one bill pops up, like a critical race bill pops up in a state, suddenly, everybody else is doing it. Or when Idaho last session passed, protecting women’s sports, the gender bill saying hey, if you’re a biological male, you don’t come over and compete in women’s sports in Idaho.

Now 26 States did that this year. So it’s just amazing to me to see, because of technology and internet, but also because of conservative philosophy that’s pretty consistent across the country, they said, that’s a great idea, let’s do that. And so I think you’re exactly right, Rick. This is going to be something that other states will pick up, may not be many states this session, but I’ll bet you next session, there’s a lot to do it.

Rick:

Alright, guys, we still got time for some more good news. Tim, what’s our next piece of good news?

Tim:

Alright, guys, this is something that happened in the state legislature in Kansas very recently. And it deals with the Second Amendment. There was a piece of legislation that proposed allowing individuals as young as 18 to be able to Concealed carry their firearm, and the governor vetoed that bill. Well, the governor is a Democrats and the Republicans hold the majority and big super majority of the House and the Senate. And so they came back and they overrode the governor’s veto. And the votes in the House were 84:39. In the senate, It was 31:8.

Now the Senate is interesting, because the makeup of the Senate is that it is 29 Republicans and 11 Democrat senators. So to have a 31:8 means you had some Democrats that actually side on this issue with the Republicans in the House. At least from this article, it doesn’t indicate that there was any swing over from Democrats are joining with the Republicans in overriding his veto.

What’s interesting about this, though, is this is coming at a time when President Biden has come out and really targeted the Second Amendment. He’s pointed out that no Amendment is secure forever, and we can always go back and change Amendments, etc. Which, of course has raised a lot of ire from people saying, no, wait a second, we can go back and change Amendments. Like if you’re saying no Amendment is secure forever, what happens to the 13th Amendment which is what ended slavery in America, right?

So like, we would argue some Amendments should be secure forever. We should not bring slavery back to America. There’s of course, some people I was just pointing out as one of Joe Biden’s misspeaks, whatever. What he has not spoken about is his intent against the Second Amendment, where a lot of people in his administration have targeted very specific firearms, mag capacities, ammunition. There’s a lot of conversations about things they want to restrict and ban and they’re moving forward with that agenda in Washington DC. It’s a very much progressive Democrat agenda right now on the table. And so you’re seeing…

David:

Can I be sarcastic and say that they only want to do that because deer started wearing Kevlar vests.

Tim:

Well, let’s also point out the irony of the people who are saying that we don’t need a wall or a fence in the southern border, put a wall in a fence up around the Capitol, right. The people that are saying that we don’t all need to be armed are the people who are protected everyday by armed individuals, their own armed security around them. So there’s great levels of hypocrisy which also could be viewed as irony unless you’re sad about it, then it’s just hypocrisy. Absolutely, It’s ridiculous, yeah, to the argument that deer don’t wear Kevlar vest therefore you don’t need these high capacity magazines or these dangerous round, etc.

David:

And that was Biden’s argument in his address to the joint session of Congress a couple of weeks ago, was you don’t need these high capacity magazines, deer don’t wear Kevlar vest, as if the two have anything to…

Tim:

Right. The Second Amendment was not written in case the deer one day try to come against the people. The Second Amendment was written recognizing the government and specifically at that time it was the king and taken away God-given rights, etc, etc, etc, we can study history and learn that. The point is that as this has become a hot topic in our nation, you’re seeing some state legislators do things to try to protect the Second Amendment.

But this was an interesting one. Because in Kansas, it’s already constitutional in the state constitution for 21 year olds enough to be able to Concealed carry with no license. So now they’re saying that if someone 18 years or older, right, 18 to 21, 18, 19, or 20, if they want to conceal carry, they also can, but here’s the caveat. They have to complete gun training, go through a background check, and pay the required state fee, which a 21 year olds enough do not have to do.

So I actually, I’m supportive of this in some regards, because I’m totally in favor of people getting trained and learning how to use firearms. This is why so often on the program we talk about go to Front Sight, right. Well, I’ve gone with Rick and the Patriot Academy team many times. I will continue to go and get that firearm training. I love the idea if they’re saying, hey, we want to get these people trained, help them know how to use it. But in Kansas, not only are they protecting the Second Amendment, they’re even expanding those rights of Concealed carry down to 18 year olds. And so kudos to all those state legislators in Kansas who helping make that happen.

Rick:

For not only passing a good bill, but then having the guts to override the governor as well, so that second step. We’ve seen a lot of that, haven’t we guys, where the legislature is not just bowing down whenever the governor vetoes, in Arkansas, how many times they’ve overturned Asa Hutchison, I mean, it’s happening all over the country. But just so much good news you guys are brought to us today. And I know you didn’t even make a dent in your stacks today, so we’re going to have a lot more good news next week. Folks, be sure and visit the website wallbuilderslive.com, you can jump in the archives and get more good news there as well. We so appreciate you listening. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.