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Albert Mohler
It's Tuesday, August 5th, 2025. I'm Albert Mohler, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. The Trump administration has proposed a rules change that would prohibit the Veterans Administration from performing just about all abortions, abortions in just about every circumstance. And this is necessary because of a rule change that came after The Dobbs decision, 2022, in which the Supreme Court reversed the Roe v. Wade decision almost immediately. The Biden administration, in a pro abortion position, it instigated a change that allowed the Veterans Administration a broader authority and permission to perform abortions. Now, we're talking about military personnel and their dependents, and we're talking about the potential of a very large number of abortions. However, some of the restrictions in the legislation did continue. Now, arguably previous legislation would have prevented this move entirely, but this was simply an initiative undertaken by the Biden administration in keeping with its pro abortion. They would have said pro choice, but it's a pro abortion policy. And this rule change is now being corrected by the Trump administration. And for that, we need to be very thankful. This is exactly why electing presidents is so important. It's exactly why electing the nation's chief executive takes on such a huge significance. It is because the president's authority, as it is pressed through the entire executive branch, comes down to such issues as what rules will prevail. Now, there is a system whereby these rules have to be changed, they have to be announced. There has to be a time for public response and discussion. But the Trump administration can see this through, and I would argue the Trump administration must see this issue through. And we need to understand what's at stake here, because we are looking at the issue of abortion, and it's going to come up just about every day in the headlines somewhere, because it is one of the central issues of our time, and it has been ever since the early 1970s. Now, I want to remind you that many Americans would be very surprised to hear that Americans in the 1970s would be surprised to hear that this is an ongoing issue of political and moral controversy. I think most Americans in the 1970s would be flabbergasted, astounded to know that Americans in the third decade of the 21st century are still debating this issue, and very ardently so. And it comes down to the fact that in 1972, when this issue was at least a part of the presidential campaign in 1972, and when the Roe v. Wade decision came down in 1973, I think most people thought the Liberalization of the culture was moving apace, such that this would just be considered the next thing. This rights movement, that rights movement, another rights movement, they're all just unstoppable. It's just a matter of the sequencing of all these things. Furthermore, in the early 1970s, the pro life movement basically amounted to some Roman Catholics and a few others who had really thought through the issue. So if you were to go back to, say, the average evangelical church member in the United States and raised the issue of abortion, I think you would discover that most of them were, were against it, but hadn't really thought it through. On the other hand, it's still not clear how against it they would have been. And I'm gonna argue that that is because in the circumstances, most Protestant Christians, most evangelical conservative Protestant Christians had not thought through the issue. The central issue here is the reality and the status of the unborn child. And the only real pro life argument is one that goes back to the moment of conception, the moment of fertilization, the moment that God says, let there be life. And from that moment onward recognizes this as a distinct human being. This is a human being made in the image of God, a distinct human being, a human person deserving of full legal protection, indeed, demanding full legal protection all along the sequence. Now, I'll be honest, I think there are a lot of people who consider themselves pro life who aren't there, because I don't think they thought the issue through. If you buy into the idea that the fetus at some point becomes a person, and let's face it, increasingly the pro abortion argument says that's at the moment of birth and never before. And so you see in some states right now where a woman can seek an abortion virtually at any point right up until the moment of birth. And you'll also notice that pro abortion advocates are now not backing off of that claim. They're not backing off of the fact that they want that to be the policy. But going back to the 1970s, a lot of evangelicals hadn't thought this issue through. And you see this, I have to say, with shame and with some embarrassment, as relates to my own denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. The Southern Baptist Convention, at least in terms of actions taken by messengers and resolutions adopted, arguably was in a very bad place on this issue. And again, I think it is because in the course of these events, Southern Baptists hadn't thought these issues through. No one had made them think these issues through so long as abortion was a hypothetical and it was collected wrongly, but nonetheless put in a collective of birth control and contraception and all the rest. I think there were just far too many Southern Baptists who were willing to go along with the program until Roe v. Wade came down in 1973. And then there was a massive. It wasn't immediate, but there was a massive awakening of the evangelical conscience in the United States. Now again we have to say with embarrassment, evangelical pro life conviction is not where it should have been in the beginning of the 1970s, but it is encouraging to say that it began to catch up by the time of the late 1970s and the election of Ronald Reagan as an explicitly pro life president, with the Republican party with explicitly pro life platform statements, that was a game changer. And of course, the war is on. The battle's on the culture war over the issue of abortion has not abated since the 1970s. If anything, it is an even deeper divide right now. Now, I will not go into this in great detail today, but it is very interesting to see how many people want to say, well, the vast majority of Americans are in the middle. And in other words, they're vaguely pro choice, they're against abortion in some circumstances, but they don't want to deny abortion in every circumst. But this is where, as a conservative Christian, you need to watch the shape of the argument. Because the shape of the argument is, you know, most Americans are somewhere in a muddled middle. There are some people who are just absolutely pro abortion all the way up to the moment of birth. And there are these other radical people who believe that personhood begins with fertilization, with conception, with the very moment that there is life. And they say the vast majority of people are neither here nor there, they're in the middle. Well, that's true. I just want to tell you a little wake up call here on just about every issue of public controversy. It is true that if you offer people an endless number of choices, they'll take an endless number of choices. If this is supposed to be about their own individual moral expression, then for that matter they can just come up with their own entire worldview. That famously came out in the 1980s with the sociological study in which you had a woman named Shelah who described her own moral position as Sheila ism. So you give people the opportunity to just have an individual moral worldview that is accountable to nothing and to no one. They will. And furthermore, you tell people there are an endless number of perspectives here, you can just choose which one you want. And furthermore, there's also a moral reflex, or at least A political reflex in the American population. And it's not unique to America, but it's very pronounced here in which people, especially when they're answering a pollsters question, they don't want to say I'm totally hot or totally cold. They wanna say, you know, I'm in a reasonable middle. You know, warm is okay. But that's not public policy. And this is another thing to note. When you look at America's political system, you end up with, say in a presidential election, a Republican candidate and a Democratic candidate. There have been some very interesting third party races, but they're only interesting because there are so few interesting third party races. They just don't matter when you get to the electoral College, certainly not in the modern age. And so you look at this and you recognize, okay, this can change the equation only if, say, a third party candidate wins a state and wins the electors of that state. Now a third party candidate can mess up inside the state. You know, for instance, you look at the 2000 election and Al Gore's candidacy in Florida, there is no doubt he was hurt by a third party candidate. But the point is that when you look at a presidential election, everybody knows you're looking at red or blue. And purple just really doesn't have a vote. Furthermore, purple's not policy. It's virtually impossible just to embrace purple as a policy. No, whoever comes up with a policy, especially under the current political situation, it's going to be a blue policy or a red policy. It's going to be a conservative policy or it's going to be a liberal policy. And thus, you see, when you had the Biden administration, you had a blue administration in place. When the Dobbs decision headed down, they changed the rules. Debatable whether they had the right to do so, but they did change the rule to allow Veterans Administration health facilities to perform at least more abortions. And they politicized it themselves by the timing of the announcement and the rule change. And they politicized it themselves by saying this could be particularly important for Veterans Administration health facilities in pro life states, states that restrict abortion. So if they say we're making a big deal out of it, they made a big deal out of it playing to their own base. Okay? But the Trump administration now in place, you have the Red Party in power, the Republican Party. President Trump is following through to undo the Biden administration rule change. It has announced that rule change. We need to remind ourselves what's at stake here. Life and death's at stake. The destruction or the non destruction of Unborn human life is at stake. The complicity of our federal government through the Veterans Administration is at stake. The moral issues here are absolutely huge. Of course, this story is going to be buried in an avalanche of similar news and similar headlines. And by similar, I mean it all looks the same on the newspaper. And so there are going to be all kinds of issues. It will pass from the scene of at least the front pages of newspapers if it ever made the front page. Even with this announcement, the rule change is likely to go through. But just remember, that change, that rule could be changed again after the 2028 election. So this is where pro life Christians have to look at this and say, yes, this is absolutely necessary, and aren't we glad it's happening? This is absolutely what we should expect from our federal government. But we have to Remember, with the 2028 cycle before us, and furthermore, also with the midterm elections in 26, all this is at stake all the time. And here's the bad news for Christians, as we think about our political responsibility here, there is no sign that the warfare over these issues, the battle over these issues is going to stop anytime soon, for the remainder of our lifetimes, so far as we can foresee them. And I realize there are some listening who probably have a much longer lifetime ahead. There is no indication at this point that this will not continue to be an issue. And by the way, it is the left that is astounded. It's still an issue. It is the left that was absolutely certain this is all wrapped up. It was Justice Harry Blackmun, if you go back to the Roe v. Wade decision, who basically said in his own statements that he believed that this reflected a new national consensus and the nation could move on. Guess what? We didn't move on because we can't move on. Okay. While we are talking about similar kinds of policy issues with the federal government, the New York Times recently ran a story many others as well. Headline states, sue over Trump's efforts to end pediatric transgender care. Now, one of the interesting things about this article is that it comes from the New York Times, very liberal newspaper. Everybody knows that they're not really hiding that fact, particularly on their editorial page, but it affects everything in the newspaper. But this is on page A16. Now, sometimes I just feel the need to say, you know, the print edition includes a lot of information you don't find online. So when you look at a newspaper, there is editorial judgment reflected in the format of that newspaper. Now, you might read the same article online, but it won't Tell you the same thing. So one of the reasons why I use print whenever possible is another reason I use print whenever possible. In terms of the print edition, guess what? You can't change it online. You can change just about anything. But there is editorial judgment. So you take the front page of the paper, and as you look at it, someone decides, an editor decides, a member of the editorial team decides what's going to show up on the front page, what's going to be below the fold, what's going to be above the fold, what's going to have the big multi column headline, what's going to have other headlines, what's going to be on the upper left, what's going to be on the upper right. All those are editorial decisions that tells you something. Okay, so my point right now is to say that this article states sue over Trump's efforts to end pediatric transgender care. This is on page A16. That really does tell you something. It's not on page one. It's not on page three. It's below the fold on page A16. Now, this doesn't mean, thus that it's not an important story. It just means that the editorial team there at the New York Times responsible for the copy, what it's going to look like in terms of the print edition, they put it on page A16. I'm not saying that that's where this issue ranks with them. It's where this news story ranks in this particular day. So what's going on here? Joseph Goldstein is the reporter here. And here's how the article begins. Quote, a coalition of states led by Democrats, including New York and California, sued Friday to stop the Trump administration from investigating doctors and hospitals who provide children with medical treatments for gender transition. Okay, very tight lead there. Then. This, quote, the lawsuit filed in federal district court in Massachusetts comes amid escalating efforts by the federal government to put an end to the availability of puberty blockers, hormones and gender related surgeries for transgender adolescents. Okay, this is another issue in which we as Christians have a very urgent stake. And we're talking about the mutilation of bodies of young people, children and teenagers, teenagers in particular. And we're talking about both hormonal treatments, or what are sometimes called hormonal therapies. And we're talking about surgical treatments, sometimes the first referred to as medical treatments, the second as surgical treatments. The Trump administration, and by the way, the president basically sent the signal for this on the campaign trail. This came very quickly in the administration, the executive order that just basically prevents any medical facility receiving in any way federal funds, and that means basically all of them from performing transgender procedures or transgender treatments for pediatric patients. Now, here's one of the horrifying things. This was far more widespread than many people understood. And as a matter of fact, there were many people who were outright just lying about the extent to which this was taking place. And one of the verifications of that comes when you have, for instance, these states coming back and demanding the right to do what many of them had basically insisted they didn't do or only rarely did. There is now ample documentation of the fact that that wasn't true. Now, there's a particular tripwire here, and this is that the FBI has been asking the public to call a tip line, basically, if indeed they are confronted with a doctor or a medical authority in one of these facilities. And again, this covers almost all hospitals right now that was pushing this kind of hormonal treatment or a surgical treatment for what is diagnosed as gender dysphoria. Now, you have to buy into the entire LGBTQ ideology and into the entire construction of these things in order to even use that term, the treatment of gender dysphoria. But let's understand, that's how the transgender movement has been pressing this. There's a very interesting paragraph here, and one of the things I want to say, I want to point out in looking at an article like this is how even the liberal press is hedging its bets these days. Very interesting. Look at this quote, some medical experts have concerns about the long term side effects of puberty blockers and hormones on brain development, bone density, and fertility. Okay. That is not what you would expect to see in an article on this issue, say, five years ago. This has come about because of several developments. Number one, the most important development here is the release of the CAST report. That's a report by pediatrician Hillary Cass in the United Kingdom that was so devastating when it came to both hormonal and surgical treatments that the country basically shut down Tavistock, its infamous clinic for transgender treatment of teenagers and children. And thus, you also had the medical establishment in Great Britain, to a considerable extent, do kind of a u turn on this issue. And inevitably, the same kind of research is going to show up in the United States. Even the Trump administration, early in the second Trump administration, released a report that was a summary of all of this research. But there's going to be more than a summary of this research available. You're gonna see medical centers, doctors, scientists, researchers understand they're gonna have to catalog this and they're going to eventually have to tell the truth. But you also see red and blue America showing up here because of this lawsuit. We are told, quote, the lawsuit places transgender care for children alongside other health services that have been engulfed in legal controversy amid federal efforts to restrict those services, even as some states are trying to allow them. This has happened in fights over what would be those issues, Abortion, medical marijuana and physician assisted suicide. Isn't it interesting how often people on the left say it's conservatives who put all those issues together? Well, guess what, they're moral issues and they line up. That's verified even in this New York Times article. Okay, what states are we talking about here? Will? 15 states and the governor of Pennsylvania is what is said here. But the states include Massachusetts and California and New York. It's blue America. It is interesting that it says here that it's these states plus Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania in his role as governor. Probably a constitutional issue there whereby that distinction is made. But what we are looking at here is a blue state revolt against the Trump administration's restriction here. But let's look at it another way. Morally, what we're looking at here is liberal states actually demanding the right when it comes to children and teenagers, when it comes to minors, when it comes to pediatric care, to furthering the LGBTQ agenda, all the way down to hormonal and surgical treatments for children and teenagers. At the very least, it wants to further those things within the jurisdiction of those states. So what's the argument from the other side? Well, it shows up in this article. And the way it shows up also should interest us. Quote, for some children with gender dysphoria, distress over the mismatch between their gender identity and their birth sex, starting treatments in early adolescence can help them navigate their feelings and identity and reduce depression and distress, experts say. Then listen to this. Other experts question whether starting treatments at a young age might lock in life altering choices before children truly understand who they are, end quote. Okay, so here again you have the conservative argument showing up as the liberal argument was made. And I will simply say, I think in this case the conservative argument is not only the right argument. I think to most Americans it is the self evidently right argument, which is why I think even a newspaper like the New York Times has had in this article to make the position against these treatments very clear. And even when the case for them is made to say, yes, but there are others. I want you to notice the use of the word expert here because this is something we have to watch for all the time. Experts say, and I will tell you as an expert that you should be extremely concerned every time you hear what experts say, because you've got to find out what kind of expertise these experts have and where are they coming from. Because the use of the word expert here, this became very, very clear, especially in the scientific momentum of the 20th century. If you just quote experts, and by the way, even in the social sciences, all of a sudden you had new experts, you had entire fields that didn't exist before. And now it provides an entire army of experts to speak to these things. Many of these experts are activists. And so I just want to give you a general alarm and we repeat this often on the briefing. Experts say can mean absolutely nothing. It can even be a tell, just a signal to warn you, you better be careful what's being said when we're told what the experts say. But let's look at this issue. Certainly there are people with medical degrees, there are people with PhDs, there are people who are active in the field who can make this argument on both sides. But it comes down to whether or not these procedures are going to happen. It comes down to whether or not a teenager might actually be even subjected to radical treatment. And by the way, it says that it might impact their fertility. I won't go into detail, but let's just say that's an understatement. These two stories, as you see, are also related because as I say, they underline the importance of elections. They underline who is president, which administration is promulgating the rules, which administration is going to be bureaucratically through the administration enforcing the rules, even coming up with the exact definitions of the rules. This is something, by the way, that came up in the 1970s on the other side, on the pro abortion side, when you had some of these things that after Roe v. Wade, were kind of just handed to what was then called the Department of of Health, Education and Welfare. The creation of the Department of Education and the Carter administration meant that education was taken out. And it was called then Health and Human Services, HHS rather than hew, but it was handed to hew. And even the secretary at the time of that department, who was a Democrat, really didn't want to get deep in the weeds in defining abortion policy. So it fell to others. And you can imagine what direction those took. And so when you hear expert understand that's one warning sign when you're looking at government policy, there's another warning sign, which is just to remind ourselves that elections have consequences. But it's not just that it's not just elections. The final thought for today is that you can elect a conservative president, a pro life president, but if that president doesn't staff his administration with people of similar conviction and commitment, then it's eventually not going to matter. Matter. It's eventually not going to matter because it is of huge significance who's in these positions. And this ricochets all the way through these federal departments. And this is one of the problems that has plagued conservatives ever since the rise of the challenge of the modern administrative state, how in the world to get control of this thing. Arguably, President Donald Trump has been, let's just say, more energetic in taking on that challenge than any previous conservative or Republican president. And that's why you get so many howls in Washington, D.C. but just remember, in the midst of all of the howls, in the midst of all the headlines, we've talked about two issues today that Christians understand are of primary importance. Primary importance. We're talking about the dignity and sanctity of unborn life. And we're talking about the dignity and sanctity of human beings made male and female and in God's image. These two issues are two of the most important frontline issues we have. And they've arrived just in one single news cycle in this form. It's a wake up call to us. And these issues aren't going to go away, which is why we can't go away either. So thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmohler.com youm can follow me on X or Twitter by going to X AlbertMohler. For more 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.