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It's Tuesday, August 11, 2026. I'm Albert Moeller, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. We are talking about the issue of abortion today entirely because, as a matter of priority, the governor of Massachusetts put it at the top of the moral list. And that's because yesterday she signed legislation that. That enacts a law by which Massachusetts becomes the 11th state in the union with absolutely no abortion limits whatsoever. So we really need to understand what we're talking about here. We know that there's a basic worldview collision. There is the culture of life, and there is the culture of death and the culture of life. Every single human life is respected from the point of fertilization until natural death. And thus there has to be some kind of extraordinary justification for anything that would come close to the lifeline. And the moral imperative is to save life rather than to take life. And thus something like abortion becomes not only wrong, but unthinkable. But you're also looking here at the fact that on the other side, the culture of death is absolutely enraptured with the understanding of being able to control by personal autonomy one's life so that you can. By euthanasia, assisted suicide, medical aid in dying, whatever you want to call it, or by other things, including the control of what you might define as your sexuality and your reproductive health. That's the term, as a euphemism is used. You can also turn to deny the life of others. And in this case, that's exactly what we're talking about. And when you look at this law that was signed by Massachusetts Governor Maura Healy yesterday in a signing ceremony, by the way. So this is not only legislation that was adopted by the legislature, it is signed by the governor. The governor considered it so important as a matter of personal, personal leadership priority that she held a lengthy press conference and she did the signing in public in such a way as to draw attention to what she had done. Again, the headline. Massachusetts is now the 11th state in the union to allow abortion without any limits. Now, when we're talking about limits, what would the limits have been? In other words, what kind of limits were eliminated by this legislation? Mostly, it would have to do in the state of Massachusetts with limitations on abortion after the 24th week of pregnancy. So as you think about 40 weeks of pregnancy, you know that the Roe v. WADE decision in 1973 artificially brought in this idea of three trimesters each three months long. So 24 weeks is towards the end of that second trimester. And you're looking at the fact that you had in a state like Massachusetts, which has been a very liberal state, very liberal state for a very long time, the blue of blue you've had in Massachusetts, nonetheless, the recognition that there is some kind of status held by the unborn baby that becomes, let's just say, undeniable, because it's evident by the time you're talking about 24 weeks. And this is one of the things, morally we have to confront. The very division of pregnancy into three trimesters was in order to say in the Roe v. Wade decision, Justice Blackmun, going back to 1973, that the state cannot intervene in the first trimester, may intervene in the second trimester with certain qualifications, and can forbid abortion in the third trimester. Now, here is a little thing just to keep in mind. You have the pro abortion people in this country, and they are rabidly, avidly pro abortion. Don't mistake any kind of other language they use. They are pro abortion, period. They make it clear with this kind of move, as we've just seen in the state of Massachusetts, but they also insist that the baby in the womb is morally meaningless when they want an abortion all the way up until the moment of birth. And so we're talking about Massachusetts now having absolutely no restriction on abortion all the way up until the moment of birth. Now, you can understand how the logic gets extended from there. If there is no moral consideration to be given to the baby in the womb minutes ago, why does it all of a sudden have rights and have a dignity of life that is to be respected just after having passed through the birth canal? That is moral insanity. We understand that. It's moral insanity. We have to keep holding up that moral insanity before the world and just shouting, this is moral insanity. But the governor of Massachusetts, Governor Maura Healey, she signed this legislation to great applause. Applause, by the way, from some medical societies and certainly from the pro abortion groups in the state. And that's pretty loud. And so you see at a press conference where they're saying so many people would just congratulate her and thank her in the signing ceremony and in her comments, the governor said there was a medical justification for what she was doing. She said that the moral justification for removing all limitations on abortion whatsoever was to return the issue of abortion to the woman and her physician, period. Now, that's some of the language that was used by the abortion movement going all the way back to the 1970s. This should be a decision between a woman and her daughter. Doctor, that was the word that they continually pressed. That was the argument. And what you have here is that the governor of Massachusetts is more or less saying that's what the legislation she signed did. Now, we just need to note that she goes on saying that the justification for this is that there are prenatal, pre birth diagnoses that are medically devastating that should allow women to terminate a pregnancy. And in some cases, and by the way, these are extremely rare, extremely rare, there can be some kind of threat that is claimed to the life of the mother. What you really have here is unacceptable fetal conditions. And that's just what we're seeing, morally speaking. You have conditions that are diagnosed late, after 24 weeks of pregnancy, and women are deciding on the basis of that fetal diagnosis they want to go and have an abortion. Now, we have to say morally, there are some diagnoses that indicate that the pregnancy itself might not end in a live birth. But the point is here that even as Governor Healy and others claim that as the moral justification, the moral effect goes far beyond that. They already had a situation in which doctors could make a medical judgment and move ahead with the abortion under medical conditions. But the reality is that women were going to other states in order to gain rather unrestricted access to abortion after the 24th week. And also medical doctors were in a situation in which, at least according to what some of these societies are implying, they did not want to have some of their members move ahead with this kind of procedure because of the legal risk that might be involved. That legal risk now evidently taken away. The choice issue just comes up again and again. And we'll come back to that in a moment. The governor said, quote, now they'll be able to make their own choices. They'll be able to get, speaking of women, they'll be able to get the care that they need right here in Massachusetts. Now, the law that I sign is against the context of the moment that we're in and the time in the country. We know that protecting abortion access and reproductive health care has been under fire. We saw it when the Supreme Court overturned Roe and the Dobbs decision back in 2022, the first time a court has ever taken away a right that was given. Okay, now, in worldview terms, this demands our absolute attention. Just listen to the language the Governor used. I'm going to go back to the last part of her phrase, the Dobbs decision. She said that reversed Roe v. Wade represented the first time a court has ever taken away a right that was given. Okay? That language demands our Attention, first of all, what is a right and how is a right given? Now, in this case, what she clearly implies is that the Supreme Court of the United States in January of 1973 in the Roe v. Wade decision, gave Americans a right. Of course, back then, Justice Blackmun and the Court spoke of women having a pretty good idea who a woman was. Now, there are some people, and of course, you can see that even embedded in some of these comments, who actually want to talk about pregnant people. Except, by the way, just note that when there's political support to be had, pregnant women all of a sudden become women. A woman's right to choose just underlines the hypocrisy and the deliberate confusion on the pro abortion side. Okay, the first time a court has ever taken away a right that was given. So the court, that is the Supreme Court of the United States is now blamed for taking away a right that it had given. Okay, so this gets to a basic distinction. What are rights and where do they come from? The most important thing as Christians, you need to understand is that we believe in natural rights. And just as the Declaration of Independence as endowed by the Creator, those natural rights are contrasted with positive rights, invented, artificial rights. Okay, so if you're talking about a right to abortion, let's just say it's not found in the Scripture. The right to abortion is not actually found in the natural law. In fact, the natural law would absolutely condemn the idea of abortion. It's in positive law. It's in the kind of positivistic decision of the Supreme Court majority back in 1973. The point that Christians need to understand is that there is no right to abortion, not in terms of any kind of sensical rights talk, as Professor Maryanne Glendon would refer, or rights language. In other words, rights rightly to be understood are given by God. They are revealed in nature and in the natural law, affirmed also in Scripture. But we're talking here about what's simply declared to be a right. So it does lead the left into a very, very interesting position, because if indeed they believe that rights are simply invented and granted by some authority like a court, then then guess what, dear liberal on the left, if the court can give, the court can take away. The fact is that the worldview of the secular left is that there's this ever expanding discovery of rights. And you say ever expanding. What does that look like? Well, let me just give you some letters and a mathematical sign. Lgbtq. In other words, that plus says we've invented transgender rights. There's going to be more to come. And you can be absolutely assured that the sexual revolutionaries and those who are driven by those ideologies and the lawyers and others who are their fellow travelers and encouragers, they're going to make certain that in years ahead, we're all going to know what they mean by the plus sign. And in some cases, like polyamory, we already know. Just bringing this to a conclusion, this is a very sad, very tragic day for the state of Massachusetts and for the United States of America. We're talking about the 11th state. So more than 20% of our states now have absolutely no restrictions on abortion all the way up until the moment birth. We need to follow the language here. One of the first issues is the reference they continually make to a decision made by a woman and her physician. In other words, no one can scrutinize that morally. That's ridiculous. And then also the choice language that shows up here again, and also you have just the fact that the unborn child doesn't morally register at all. In other words, that unborn child does not is simply not a rights bearing individual at all. By their logic, when does that child become a rights bearing individual? At the moment of birth. One side of the birth canal a human being. The other side of the birth canal just a product of pregnancy. It is interesting finally, by the way, that the same governor, just a matter of days ago signed a welfare act, a family welfare act that included a foster child bill of rights and some other expansions to the law there was about child welfare. The governor said then, quote, every child deserves the opportunity to grow up safe, supported and set up to succeed. And every family deserves somewhere to turn before a challenge becomes a crisis. Notice her language again. This is just haunting. We're just talking about a separation of days. Every child deserves the opportunity to grow up safe. But understand she means every child outside the womb. And evidently no child inside the womb. Well, okay, that leads me to a second issue for our consideration today, and that is the announcement that was made Saturday night by U.S. representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez that she is freezing her eggs. In a statement first posted at Instagram on Saturday night, Representative Ocasio Cortez said to her followers, almost 10 million on Instagram, quote, usually I keep my private life quite private, but I've made the decision to start freezing my eggs, end quote. All right, all right, let's just back up for a moment. Usually she says, I keep my private life quite private. But here she talks about something that we would only know because she tells us, there would be absolutely no public knowledge of the fact she's freezing her eggs if she didn't decide to post to almost 10 million people that she is freezing her eggs. Okay? So even though that is somewhere rightly designated in her private life, she's made it a public matter. And it is she who made it a public matter Saturday night to the entire world, to 10 million people directly, she's freezing her eggs. Now, this comes in the background of what she argued is a context of threats to women's reproductive health and freedom. That's the kind of language she uses coming from President Trump and the Trump administration. So I think we can understand something of the political act that's going on here. The political act is you have this hostile administration. I'm now going to freeze my eggs. Okay, now let's just keep some things in mind because this gets very interesting and there's a lot more to the story. First of all, let's just remind ourselves that at a very young age, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was elected to Congress. That was in the November election of 2018. She joined Congress as a U.S. representative, indeed the member of Congress representing New York's 14th district. She entered into Congress in 2019. And of course, she has very well established herself as a major figure on the Democratic left. She has been associated with the Democratic Socialists of America. Very interestingly, on ABC's this Week program Sunday, she said, yes, she's a member of the chapter in New York City, but she's not a member of the National Party. The National Party, by the way, has often condemned her for not being a member. But nonetheless, she is a Democratic Socialist. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She holds to their goals. And as you see so often on both the far right and the far left, there's some very interesting fractionalism that always happens. But the big thing here, first of all, is the fact that she declared she is freezing her eggs. And she says, quote, there is very strangely a political risk or a political tax that comes along with sharing this information. Well, she's the one who decided to share it. What kind of political tax? I don't know. She said that she did so to show more depictions of women having full lives in every context and every choice. Again, the choice language just exploding everywhere. More on that in a moment. But you'll notice in this, she's making a statement about what she claims is a political context of threats to a woman's reproductive health. Let's just state the obvious. This says Nothing about having a baby. Now, it also says nothing about the fact that she's married, because she's not married. As a matter of fact, she announced that she was engaged to a young man by the name of Riley Roberts. That was back in April of 2022. So go back to 2022. She's engaged, they're still together, but they are not getting married. There are some reports saying that that might be for financial considerations, but as it is, she's not married and she's not talking about having children. Now. She's committing a political act. I'm not saying that freezing her eggs is merely a political act. Doing so privately would be, say, apolitical in this case. But doing it and declaring it to nearly 10 million people, that makes it a political act. And that's what we're looking at here. It does require us as Christians to remind ourselves of what's at stake in egg freezing. You know, it is interesting that there have been some responses to this, including Katie Miller, the wife of presidential advisor Stephen Miller said this is a good thing, at least that she is pronatal. That is to say, she's pro birth. She at some point wants to become a mom in a day in which there are so many who aren't becoming mothers. That in itself is a good thing. The context here is, however, that she's freezing eggs. And there is no reference to marriage here, nor is there reference to how the eggs might be used in a plan for human reproduction in terms of her becoming pregnant. This is where we need to remind ourselves that all the moral issues that are involved in IVF in vitro fertilization come into play here. But you know, right now the big issue is she made the announcement about freezing her eggs to make a political point. This comes at the same time that she's being openly discussed as a front runner. Yes, indeed, frontrunner, it is claimed for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028. Representative Ocasio Cortez. On the Sunday Morning Program, that's ABC's this Week program, Jonathan Karl was moderating. She told Jonathan Karl that she might also consider a run against New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, who's the Democratic leader in the Senate. Now, let's just put all this together. Senator Schumer is the Democratic leader in the Senate, but you have major figures on the Democratic left who are saying that the first thing they will do if they gain ascendancy to the Senate is that they will remove Chuck Schumer, who they say is simply too much a part of the old Democratic establishment, they want someone much more like themselves. Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez might be a very viable candidate in a Democratic primary against Senator Chuck Schumer. It'll be interesting to see if Chuck Schumer, a couple years from now, simply decides he's not going to run for reelection. It would be a very, very tough race. And the move to the left, the great shift to the left in the Democratic Party, is likely to leave not only the Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, behind, but also Hakeem Jeffries, who is the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives and would, with a Democratic majority, presumably become speaker of the House. He, too, is increasingly opposed by the Democratic left. All that is to state the obvious, is that the Democratic left has shifted considerably to the left and appears to be shifting even more week by week. There are a couple of other big issues that really come up because of Representative Ocasio Cortez's appearance on the ABC this Week program. One was when she not only talked about the Democratic Socialists of America and she said, I'm a member of the New York chapter, but I'm not a member of the national body. She also really publicly sided with the Democratic Socialist ideals and opinions. She didn't run from those. She didn't run from several different things, by the way. And I will simply say that I think the moderator of the program let her get away with not answering a good many questions. I don't think. I don't think it's wrong to say that a conservative, I think, would have been confronted more directly on many of the same kinds of questions. But there's one other big thing that came up. At least it was big to me. I found it absolutely interesting. And she was talking about some of the controversies that are now showing up on the Democratic left, and she was just asked more or less whether or not she thinks these figures from the Democratic left can actually be elected. It's one thing to be the winner of a Democratic primary, even in a state like Michigan where you have Abdul Al Said, who is now the Democratic nominee for the Senate. It's one thing to win that Democratic nomination even in a state like Michigan. It's another thing to win in the general election. He's going to have to draw from voters that he has, let's just say, explicitly offended over the course of the race for the Democratic nomination. But the point I want to make is that he, speaking of Al Said, is also associating with figures who are way on the left and Some of them way outside any kind of political norm. Hasan Piker, who has actually said that the United states deserved the September 11, 2001 attacks, it basically said, well, you know, that was taken out of context, et cetera. There is no context in which that makes any kind of sense. But the point is this. You did have an admission from Representative Ocasio Cortez that she herself and those who supported her had advocated some kind of crazy thing. She said this. She pointed to a city councilman there in New York that has this saying, woke one was crazy. End quote. Woke one was crazy. Okay, that's a pretty stunning admission. She's basically now distancing herself. At least she's attempting to distance herself from some of the positions of that so called Woke one, the movement that largely brought her to electoral success and put her in the US House. She was before that a bartender. And so you are talking about something that she is now referring to with at least a little bit of criticism. Woke one was crazy. That's a pretty strong word. She implies, however, that Woke 2 isn't so crazy. I want to say that Woke 1 was absolutely crazy. Woke 2 is even crazier. And by the way, Woke 1 and Woke 2 won't be the end of it. There will be woke three and woke four is another reminder of what's at stake in the 2026 elections. And it's not just in the state of Michigan. We're going to have to be watching what takes place today in the state of Wisconsin, because in the governor's race in Wisconsin, you have another DSA figure. The big story as we watch the results after they come in. With the polls closing tonight in several states, the big story I think is going to be in that Democratic race, the race for the Democratic nomination for governor in Wisconsin. Francesca Hong, the leading candidate, leading by double digits in virtually every poll, holds two positions that I think the average American would find absolutely radical and absolutely nuts. There's an interesting story culturally behind that. We'll be looking at the results and on Thursday's edition of the Briefing, we'll come back with a full analysis. It is unlikely that we will have adequate data in tonight or even tomorrow morning to be able to speak definitively in terms of all these primaries. The states are Alabama. That's for a special seat, a special election. Also in Connecticut, I mentioned Wisconsin, Minnesota and South Carolina. Add Vermont to the list in South Carolina. It's going to be interesting to see what happens in the race for the Republican nomination, and that is because it was to be filled by Senator Lindsey Graham, who died. His sister was appointed by the governor as a temporary, that is an interim senator. She decided she would run in the Republican primary. We'll be looking at that. We'll see what happens there. In the state of South Carolina, interesting things afoot state by state, and we are getting really late in the primary season. As a matter of fact, we are just closing in on several weeks before Election Day itself. In states like Michigan and Wisconsin, the general election race is going to be really intense and relatively short. In some other states, they have known who the basic contenders are, the nominees of the major parties for these major seats. They've known this for some time. But there are going to be some big decisions made today. I want to look at just one other aspect of the statement made by Representative Ocasio Cortez that woke one was crazy. That is said in an effort to provide cover for Democratic leftist candidates to say, oh, I said that just two or three years ago. I don't believe that now. Oh, you know, that was crazy, but I was a crazy young person back then 18 months ago. And so this is the way this is being set up. And I think we're just going to have to watch how this kind of argument develops over time. You know, when you are looking at political change in a political party, like the shift to the left, radical shift to the left in the Democratic Party, one of the things you have to note is that when you are a politician and even if you're just running for office, year by year, you are building up a data trail, you are giving speeches, you're releasing policies, you're engaged in debates, you're making campaign speeches and all the rest. And these days, almost all of that is in effect on the record. And given the digital age, somebody is going to have some of that material, and it doesn't take much skill in order to dredge up just with a simple Internet search. A lot of these things that were said. I think what you see is Representative Ocasio Cortez, whether she's looking at the Senate race or she's looking at perhaps a race for the Democratic nomination for the White House, she's saying, you know, woke one was crazy in such a way as to say back then, you know, I said some crazy things, but I don't hold to some of those things now. The other interesting thing is that that second issue, she didn't say, she really didn't say she doesn't hold to those positions now. She simply kind of dismisses it as woke one was crazy. That is something else we're going to have to watch. If you look at someone like Abdul Al said there in Michigan, one of the big challenges he faces is the statements that he made when he was running for the Democratic nomination. He is openly saying, and Democrats are openly predicting that he will create distance from himself as just a matter of days and weeks in order to gain support from voters who otherwise would be repelled by his ideas. Again, what you have on the Republican side is an awful lot of airtime being bought just to play the things that the other candidate said. We're out of time for today. I'll simply close by saying that when Representative Ocasio Cortez says she's a very private person, but she then tells us she's freezing her eggs, I'll just note that that redefines privacy. I think that we should just brace ourselves for what this very private person is going to divulge next. Stay tuned. Thanks for listening to the Briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmuller.com youm can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.comalbertmohler for information on the Southern Baptist Theological seminary, go to sbts.edu. for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.