Engaging the Abortion Issue with Truth and Love – Classic

And our guest today is Brian Fisher, Co-founder and President of Human Coalition. Now that sounds like quite a gathering of folks. What's the Human Coalition all about?

It's 107 staff members in 7 states. It's grown like crazy over the past four years, but God's been very gracious. To date we've rescued 4,166 children from abortion.

But God had other plans. In 2006, my wife and I and our boys moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and I took over the helm of an organization called Coral Ridge Ministries in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

And so, we started testing the idea of using for-profit Internet marketing, buying ads, if you will, so that when a woman would go online and search for an abortion, she would find us instead. And that test was successful. We started sending hurting women into pro-life pregnancy centers and making the phones ring.

And then, in 2007, Dr. Kennedy, the founder of Coral Ridge, passed away, and so I moved to Dallas in 2008. I was the COO of a large marketing agency in Dallas. But God just was relentless in pressuring me to continue that test.

And I wish, Dr. Bock, I had a different story, but I wasn’t that interested in doing the work. I was excited to be back in the for-profit world. My wife was just getting settled in Dallas, the kids were getting settled into school, and I was very busy. And I just could not understand why God would be bothering me, if you could, instead of a number of excellent other pro-life organizations that are out there. I thought the last thing this country needed was another pro-life nonprofit.

But in 2009, I opened up the organization, and on June 22, 2010, we were able to connect with a young woman in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who was going to have an abortion and instead, we were able to give her the option to go into a pregnancy center there. And she came in with her fiancé, and they saw their little daughter on the ultrasound, and they chose life. And today they have a five-year-old little girl.

And I got the call that night, June 22, 2010, from the center saying, "We just rescued the first Human Coalition baby from abortion." And I tell this story a lot. I'm of German and Austrian descent, which means my emotional range is about the size of a caterpillar. But I got off the phone and just wept, because God had condescended not only to save me when I was six years old, but to use me in the act of rescuing a human being from being rippled limb from limb in the womb, and all I had done was complain and very reluctantly become a participant.

So, that's my red letter date. I was converted, if you will, from being a reluctant pro-life Christian to a rabid pro-life Christian, really intent on helping enough families that we see abortion become unthinkable and unavailable.

The organization was very rudimentary for several years, and a Texas family got wind of us and converted us into a full-time organization in 2012. And so, three guys – three business guys started working with Human Coalition full time on February 1, 2012, in my living room on tray tables. And the last four years have just seen that extraordinary growth. And like I said, we now have a 107 folks 7 different states.

And so, from our perspective, that's a huge mission field. But you have to be online. And so, our first iteration of the organization was only online. And then we started a call center in order to help pick up the calls and set appointments at pro-life pregnancy centers.

We serve 21 pregnancy centers across the country, but we now own five of our own. And so, because we're business guys that are running the organization, we measure everything, and we test different ways of effectively communicating with women. And the clinics that we own and operate are now rescuing four to five times as many babies since they've become part of our family compared to before.

And so, when I talk to churches, they sometimes look at me quizzically when I talk about software and metrics and technology and Internet marketing. But Psalm 24:1 says, "The Earth is the Lord's and all it contains, the world and those who dwell in it." And so, we believe that the Spirit is present in the supernatural as well as the natural.

And so, we want to use every available means, whether it be technological or relational to rescue those children. And so, the clinics that we own and operate are now the most effective in the country at rescuing families from abortion.

There's lots of other verses in Scripture which command followers of Christ to be about the business of redeeming and reconciling. But that verse to us is very compelling because it is a command and a warning. It is a command for us to be about the business of protecting innocent life, and it's a warning that ignorance is not an excuse. And it's not the typical Psalm 139 pro-life verse, I get that.

And so, in a culture today, which is largely a culture of death, it really is the Church of Jesus Christ, which is the bastion, the representation of the author of life, and we're mandated to protect it.

We talk about Exodus 1. It's a fascinating passage. You have two Hebrew midwives – Shiphrah and Puah – who are commanded by Pharaoh to kill infant Hebrew boys, and they refuse. And one could argue they lie to Pharaoh about why they didn't do it, and God honors them. God blesses them and gives them families, Scripture says.

And we see Rahab protecting spies lives. There's this constant reminder of God desiring for us to protect innocent life. And obviously, the ultimate example is Christ Himself, who came and sacrificed His own life for ours. So, that's woven throughout all the Scripture, and if we preach the Gospel, we have to also preach, as part of that, our Creator God and the fact that He creates each and every one of us in His image.

And so, you see the value of a fetus, in this text, that allows us to think through the way this budding image of God, creation that God is in the process of forming, how that works. So, these passages are important because they do show this grounding of life from the very beginning, even before birth, as something that people should be concerned about, particularly in a culture, like our own culture, where infanticide, where if a girl was born to a family, oftentimes she was just left out to die, 'cause she wasn’t socially useful. We sometimes think that the situations what we're in are new; they're actually quite old.

I wasn’t a kid person at that point, I certainly am now. But I think my head and my heart connected to where the logical horror of abortion connected to my heart actually holding a tiny infant baby who had no ability to take care of himself.

And that was the catalyst for me just getting educated over the next seven or eight years about abortion and what it has actually done to rip apart the fabric of the American family. You know, 58.5 million Americans killed by abortion since 1973; it's about 2,800 a day. We're still averaging that. It's the leading cause of death in America.

I didn't know any of that. I mean in 1999, I just didn't know. And so, God began educating me. And so, by the time He called me into this work full time, I think he had taken me through a crash course. And that education continues today. I still have a ton to learn.

And because of that business background, we have developed a formula, if you will, that actually articulates how we can end abortion in cities, by reaching enough women and saving enough babies. And that's how we're growing now in our ministry, because there's such a hunger, in major cities across the country, to see abortion ended and to have a strategic plan which can be measured and evaluated is a huge blessing to many churches.

And, of course, there are pregnancy centers all over the country, that's exactly what they want to do. And so, they find us because we will provide them essentially with the Internet marketing to go find women in their area at risk to abort, and we provide them call center support. We'll actually set the appointments for them. And so, all that they have to do is meet with the clients and do the ultrasounds and provide long-term care for them so thought we can save those babies. It's a great relationship.

But in Plano, we have software developers, Internet marketers, statistical analysts. We have sociologists. We have people who are focused on how to help women make that choice for life in a way that serves them well.

And because all of our data is collected on a very large software platform, we have the ability to test different ideas. One idea we just tested here in Texas, we changed the color of one of the counseling rooms. We developed some tests in the area of atmospherics. Atmospherics is basically how do nonverbal factors influence our decision-making?

Every time I walk interest Best Buy, I'm a victim of atmospherics. Right? The lighting is great, and the colors and the layout of the product all suck me in. Well, our decision-making processes are done in the same way even in an issue as serious as life. And women tend to be more highly impacted by atmospherics than men.

We realized that a woman who was going to abort and does, her primary emotion is anxiety. The woman who is going to abort but then chooses not to, her primary emotion is calm. So, what sort of things could we create that give her a sense of calm so that we can serve her better?

And so we call it the "blue room test." The renovated room gave us a 15 percent increase in our effectiveness at counseling for life.

That comes to a surprise to many people, but when you pull out the numbers and the data, and you realize that we can, in fact, dramatically improve the number of at-risk women that we speak with, and we can dramatically improve the number of babies that we rescue, and we can dramatically improve the Church's involvement in this work practically, the message starts to resonate. Whenever I speak, I say, "As a Christian, it's a tricky balance, but on one hand, we have to be as aggressive as possible to rescue every family that we can from abortion. On the other hand, we have to be as aggressive as possible at extending the grace and forgiveness of Jesus Christ to the tens of millions of people who have aborted a child."

Both those things have to happen in the life of a Christian. It's a difficult balance, and frankly we don't always get it right. But by my estimation, there are probably 60 million adults today, in America, who are the parent of an aborted child, and that is another tremendous mission field for the Church.

So, I have the privilege of addressing both of those issues when I move around the country. When I'm at home, in Plano, I spend a good amount of my time casting vision and frankly setting our two- and three-year plans up and getting the team ready to go to the next level. And we're opening up new cities; we're in Atlanta. So, I spend quite a bit of time there.

It's an absolute joy. Could I have ever predicted in a million years that this is what God would have me do? No. It's hard work, and it's not very popular in many cases. But when you can see 4,100 children whose lives have been protected and preserved because of what God is doing, it makes all the difference in the world.

What happens to those children, first of all, and then secondly, I imagine you have some stories about some of the women who've decided for life as opposed to aborting a child?

But really, when you see a mother who was in a very insecure crisis situation, come into a system of care, where we will link arms with her, and not only walk with her through the crisis, but walk with her until she's stabilized, it's amazing. It's the hands and feet of Christ in a very practical application.

The vast majority of women who choose life choose to parent. Some choose to place for adoption, but it's actually pretty rare, because abortion is really seen culturally as the last form of birth control. And so, the situations that you might envision as being worthy of adoption are not as plentiful as you might think. Many women have the ability and the wherewithal to parent this child. And those that do place for adoption have wonderful experiences with that as well.

Probably one of my favorite stories, and it's just from the last two weeks, is that our clinic in Pittsburgh, a woman came in. She wanted to have an abortion, but she was willing to come in and speak with us. And she saw her baby on the ultrasound.

She thought she was about five weeks pregnant. She was 16-1/2 weeks pregnant with her little son. And she's married. She has two children already, but both she and her husband are out of work, and they're flat broke. And so, she said, "I can't afford the child."

And we hear that often. And so, our team up there said, "Well, look, if we can help you put your résumé together, if we can connect you with a job placement service, if we can help you receive health insurance and get on food stamps, is this a situation where we can keep the child?"

And she said, "Yes." And she chose life.

Now, later that week, one of our staff members sat with her for three-and-a-half hours in the Welfare Office. And when the Welfare Office tried to give the client the cold shoulder, our advocate said, "We're waiting until you help us." And they walked out of that office with health care and food stamps and a résumé. So, that story will be yet to be continued. But the woman felt secure. She felt as if somebody had stood in the gap for her.

You know, in many cases, people who are struggling don't have the strength to advocate for themselves. They need somebody to stand in the gap and get it done for them. Here she would have been lost for another 30 days without some basic necessities, but it was only because of the intervention of Becky, our caregiver, that she was able to get taken care of.

So, women need food. They need maternity housing; sometimes they need drug and alcohol abuse counseling. Lots of different needs that a woman might have, it is really incumbent on us, as followers of Christ, to go the extra mile with these hurting people.

And so, we vet those organizations. Some of them are church, some of them parachurch, some of them civic. And then we bring the best of breed of those services together, and our designing care program is for clients that need them. Not everybody – not every client needs them. And that way, the client knows that there is somebody who is working on their behalf to alleviate their pain.

We actually built a formula and a way to measure – you know, Dallas is an example. We now know what percentage of churches in Dallas are actually engaged in some meaningful work to end abortion. That team's job is to build relationships with pastors and priests and church leaders and drive a deeper engagement in protecting innocent human life. So, we have our pastoral team.

We have our fundraisers. We have attorneys. This work requires substantial legal work.

But I couldn't be prouder of the team. It's 107 people who get up every morning and work in some of the most desperate, dire situations in a very unpopular space. I mean let's face it, we're never gonna be given awards for the work that we do here on this Earth. And to have 107 people who are committed to that and jazzed by it and want to see babies saved, and want to see families transformed, it's just a very special team.

So, what would you say to someone who's basically trying to figure out, "All right, so, what might be a next step for me?"

So, my exploration into that suggested that in order for a layperson or a church leader to really become a positive force in their church to engage them is to get educated. The basic facts of what abortion is and what it has done to this country are, by and large, unknown. And we don't get convicted emotionally until we have the facts. Right? We have to – or a story or something that moves us.

In my case, it was just studying the issue and understanding the degree to which it's impacted the American family. But for others, it's a relative who's aborted a child. And they have seen the devastation that that's wrought on their family, and they want to save other families from that devastation.

In some cases, it's the statistics of our own cities, how many children we're losing each year in major cities across the country. But get educated. There are wonderful resources out there that can start the process of that, of education, and then share that. Get into the small groups, get into a Sunday school.

I'm teaching a Sunday school in my class right now about abortion. We provide training. We provide a Pro-Life 101. It's a three-hour course that can be done at one time or spread over three weeks that give the basics the history of abortion, what the Bible says about abortion, and what we can do to end it.

And then it's really connecting with folks in the Church who God is calling. And this is pivotal. You know, candidly, if the senior pastor does not view this as a pivotal issue, it's an uphill battle. And I'll just be shooting straight about that.

We don't escape that just because the child is small and not seen. And whether you're the father, or the mother, or somebody who coerced the mother, or a relative who was pushing for abortion, we have to come to grips with what does it mean to be responsible for taking the life of another human being. And it impacts people in different ways.

Look, there will be many, many women who say, "I had an abortion, and I'm better for it." That exists. And I'm not here to debate that. What I'm here to say is there are millions of women who have aborted and suffered and regret it. And had somebody stood in the gap for them when they had that abortion and said, "I'll help you through this so that you and your child can live –"

We have numerous people on staff who are parents of aborted children. And the men, several men on staff, would be the first to tell you that they are forgiven. They know Christ has redeemed them. They have repented, but it still hurts, and it's gonna hurt until they go to glory and they meet their child.

So, this gets back to a sexual ethic and how do we define that in America today, but if we really want to end abortion, you must stem unplanned pregnancy, which means we have to get back to defining what a proper, healthy family, in the context of biblical marriage is.

And the demographics outside of that differ by city. So, we work in Memphis. The vast majority of women who are at risk to abort there are African-American, underprivileged. Here in Dallas, it's a mix of white/Hispanic in the Grapevine area who are not necessarily underprivileged. The abortion demographics tend to reflect the area in which we're working. In Miami, largely Latin American by in the thousands. Miami is one of the top five abortion capitals in the country.

So, that's important for churchgoers and Christ followers to understand, because it is very possible to minister to people who look and act like you, who are also dealing with either having – had an abortion or at risk to have an abortion.

Scott Klusendorf wrote a phenomenal book, and I recommend it to anybody because it's highly readable and just extremely well done called The Case for Life. The Case for Life, Scott Klusendorf. You can get it on Amazon. It is probably the best pro-life apologetic I've ever read, and I've read most of them, because he accurately describes how to defend human life, whether you have a Bible or not, whether or not you're talking to believer or not.

And so, for example, one of the arguments that you heard, "My body; my choice," is the reference to what is growing inside the womb is not actually somebody else's body. Well, of course, medically it is somebody else's body –

And Klusendorf walks through the four major arguments that can be applied philosophically. Science completely backs up the pro-life position, and I think the Bible obviously does. And so, a little bit of education, a little bit of training – Human Coalition offers it. Klusendorf's book is great – arm you to where you can disarm any pro-abortion argument. They are all built on lies and fallacies and misinformation, and a little bit of truth goes a long, long way.

I came into the task force knowing a little bit of theology, but knowing zero of the science. And what was interesting was the scientific material that we were reading that talks about how scientists define the beginning of life and when life begins, that kind of thing.

And although there is a spectrum there, it's very interesting that our laws have not caught up with where the science is on this. Even the looser definitions of where life begins, because it's pretty clear that you're dealing with an independent entity, all of whose base functions of life reside within that entity from a very, very, very early point on, long before where our law allows abortion to take place so that when you combine the scientific with the moral and legal elements, there is very clearly a line that has been long past –

There's another law on the books called Laci and Connor's Law. You might recall that Laci Peterson was murdered by her husband Scott in San Francisco. Her body washed up in San Francisco Bay, along with the body of their unborn child Connor. He was charged with double homicide. So, he did not have the right to kill Connor, but Laci did. Same gestational age of the child. And Bush passed a law that made – I think it was 65 acts of violence against an unborn child, at any stage of development, illegal except abortion.

So, you have one law that says that unborn life from any stage of development should be protected from violence, and you have another law that says, "That's not entirely true; we can kill that life at any stage of development." That quandary presents a moral dilemma which any legal scholar or frankly any commonsense person would say, "This is ridiculous, and it makes no sense." And furthermore, it propagates the idea that the value of the preborn child's life is somehow determined by the mother and not by other institutions.

And yet, what I'm – what I was reading and the science says, no, actually all – we continue to protect a baby after it's born because it's dependent on parents in order to survive, but we regard that somehow as life, and where we are in the womb is somehow not. And that – and it's very inconsistent. And as I said, all the scientific elements that make that person an independent entity are in the person while they're in the womb.

One final question and we're rapidly running out of time. If a church wanted – is motivated to do something, one, what do you advice and, two, how do they contact you.

And two is to absolutely reach out to us, 'cause we can provide the resources and the training to do that at [email protected]. And if they're already involved, they might financially support a pregnancy center; that's awesome. They might provide post-abortive healing Bible studies; that's awesome. The might provide tangible ways of helping women in crisis pregnancies; that is awesome.

There's a lot of techniques; there's a lot of things that are being done that frankly are not the best use of time. And that's where we can provide substantial help and counsel just because, frankly, we've seen most of what goes on.

Well, our time is basically gone, Brian. I want to thank you for taking the time –