Penna Dexter
The recent off-year election was not a good one for the pro-life movement. One big disappointment was the vote on Ohio Issue 1 which creates a constitutional right to abortion in what has been a pro-life state.
The 57 to 43 percent vote, in favor of Issue 1, opens the door for legal late-term abortions and the negation of parental rights and health and safety protections, which Ohio pro-lifers have worked for decades to attain.
In 2019, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed a heartbeat law which banned abortion after embryonic cardiac activity is detected — normally at about 6 weeks gestation. The law has been under a court challenge ever since.
The 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade returned responsibility for abortion policy to the states. That should have smoothed the path for enactment of Ohio’s heartbeat law. But instead, a coalition of abortion industry lobbyists and far-left organizations launched a ballot initiative, Issue 1. They spent $35 million branding the pro-life movement as “extreme.”
Direct-to-voters ballot initiatives allow out-of-state actors to bypass elected bodies. Carol Tobias, President of National Right to Life warns that the rise of such initiatives risks making state legislatures obsolete.
One shocking statistic regarding this vote is that 24 percent of self-described “white evangelical or born-again Christians” supported Issue 1.
One would have hoped churches all over Ohio would have prepared congregants for this vote. But Family Research Council’s Joseph Backholm says, “Many churches don’t want to be divisive, so they choose to say nothing,” which leaves the impression that “it really doesn’t matter what Christians think about abortion.”
It does matter.
Author and cultural commentator Rod Dreher says we must not “fool ourselves into thinking that we can sustain a civilization without a religious foundation.“
It appears many Christians need help getting moral clarity on the sanctity of human life. Churches must step up.

Kerby Anderson
I have been reading the latest book from Michael Lewis, Going Infinite which is about Sam Bankman-Fried (often referred to as SBF). Lewis was thinking about the topic of his next book when he took SBF on a hike in the Berkeley Hills. He knew he had the subject for his book when SBF told him that his financial goal was “infinity dollars.”
Lewis had unprecedented access to a crypto king worth billions who walked around in cargo shorts and limp white socks. SBF also practiced “effective altruism” and spread lots of money around to companies and political campaigns. CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin called him the “J.P. Morgan of crypto.”
After writing most of the book, Michael Lewis had a problem. He didn’t have a third act. Then the SBF company FTX declared bankruptcy, and he was now being compared to Bernie Madoff. He had his third act, which now appears to be coming to a conclusion.
Earlier this month, a jury found SBF guilty on all seven criminal charges. Damian Williams (US Attorney) declared after the trial that, “Sam Bankman-Fried perpetrated one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.” He went on to add that, “While the cryptocurrency industry might be new and the players like Sam Bankman-Fried might be new, this kind of corruption is as old as time.”
The lesson in all of this is “buyer beware.” Celebrities in nearly every field of endeavor invested in SBF’s company. The FTX logo was on the Miami Heat arena and on the uniforms of baseball’s umpires. SBF operated a crypto casino with tokens that were unregistered securities, yet only a few expressed their concerns.
We now know how the third act ended.

Kerby Anderson
The world has always been a dangerous place. But those dangers are accentuated due to erroneous assumptions about war and foreign policy. Jakub Grygiel highlights three foreign policy illusions.
“The first is that leaders are responsible for wars and these countries are our rivals only because of their bad leaders.” One example can be seen in the statement by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who placed the blame of the Russia-Ukraine war on Vladimir Putin. “One man chose this war. And one man can end it.” But a recent poll showed that three-quarters of Russians support the war.
“The second illusion is that international organizations and global governance can overcome contentious national and regional politics.” President Franklin Roosevelt believed the Soviet Union would behave better once it joined the United Nations. Western leaders hoped China would also be more responsible after joining the World Trade Organization. That has not happened in either case.
“The third illusion is that greater trade and wealth produce peace.” Nations proposed a naïve principle of “change through trade.” The US hoped trade with China would make that country more peace-loving.
Nations engaged in trade in order to gain advantage over their commercial partners. In many ways, trade fosters a desire for power. As nations grew economically, they also grew militarily so they could protect their commercial interests.
These significant conflicts between nations cannot be changed through leadership changes nor through international organizations nor through trade. Conflict between nations can be checked or even defeated, but that comes from military power.