Transcript: Why We Must Rally to End Abortion

Rep. Jonathon Hill gave the following speech at the Rally to End Abortion at the South Carolina Statehouse on May 4th, 2021.

I can't tell you how much it warms my soul to see you here! It really does.

I'm State Representative Jonathon Hill. I serve House District 8, which is Western Anderson County. I serve upstairs in the House chamber. And, we're going to be getting started—the house legislative session convenes at noon. We'll talk to you a little bit more about that in a minute. But thank you, first of all, for being here. My wife, Amanda is here somewhere. Raise your hand—she's over here somewhere—there she is. She's very much part of everything that I do.

I just want to explain why we're here, why I asked you to be here. I don't often ask people to come to the Capitol.

In fact, this is the only time since taking office. It's the only time in the last seven years, I've actually done something like this, and there's a reason for that.

But, you know, I've been on a personal journey. I have over the years, become more and more vocal, more and more active, on the issue of life, on the issue of ending abortion, on the issue of ending abortion funding. And you know what? I can't do it by myself.

You know, this event began to take shape almost immediately after I stormed out of the House chamber at the end of the heartbeat debate, throwing papers in the air. And, you know, of course it outraged the media. It outraged the Speaker of the House. And I can't for the life of me figure out why they can't muster the same moral outrage for the slaughter of the unborn!

And so I said, it's time for us to organize. It's time for us—unless the people of South Carolina, especially God's people, especially God's church—if we don't demand an end to abortion into abortion funding, who's going to do it?

Now. I want to just hit on four things that are, that are driving this for me, and I hope will drive you as well.

First of all, it's become more and more apparent to me that destroying human life is really so much more dreadful and so much more serious than even we have acknowledged.

God created the entire universe. Nothing God created makes sense until you understand that man is the focal point of all of God's creation. Everything God made—the universe, the atmosphere, continents, oceans, plants, sun, moon, stars, day and night, the tides, birds and the fish, the land animals, humans (and you ladies)—God created all of this for humankind.

He created human beings for a purpose, as part of a grand plan that he came up with. Mankind is the crown jewel of God's creation.

Psalm 8:3-8 says, "When I consider your heavens the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained, what is man that you take thought of him and the son of man, that you care for him. And yet you've made him a little lower than God and crowned him with glory and majesty."

Those who hurt mankind received the most severe rebuke and the most severe judgment from God. Jesus said in Luke 17:1-2 "It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to him through whom they come! It would be better for him if a heavy millstone be hung around his neck, and that he would be cast into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to stumble." How much more would that be true of those who slaughter the unborn, and who advocate for the slaughter of the unborn, and who justify it, and who excuse it? How much more is that true?

How dare we destroy what God himself foreordained! Romans 8:28-30 says: "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God..." And most people stop right there! Have you read the rest of it? The rest of it says "to those who are called according to his purpose. Those whom he foreknew, He predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brethren. And these whom he predestined, he called, and those he called, he justified; and those he justified, He glorified." How dare we destroy those that God foreordained!

Folks, it's not just murder. It's not just wrong to kill babies because they feel pain. It's not wrong to kill babies because they're sweet and they're precious and they're nice. And it's not even wrong to kill babies because they're like us and we all started as babies—all of those things are true.

It is wrong to destroy human beings that are unborn because God made them.

It's not just murder; it's sacrilege against almighty God. We will be judged for what we do.

Second, the purpose of just law is to make human beings repent, not to make human beings reform.

We need to understand that the laws that we make in this chamber upstairs will not be followed. Our purpose here is not to end or eradicate abortion by force of government law by the hand of man. Only can do that.

The purpose of just law—and yes, law must be just—the purpose of just law is to lead us to Christ.

Not one of us can keep the law, even the law that we make up for ourselves. The Apostle Paul said in Romans 2:1-6: "Therefore you have no excuse, every one of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself, for you who judge practice the same things. And we know that the judgment of God falls rightly upon those who practice such things. But do you suppose this, O man, when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to each person according to his deeds."

It is high time that my colleagues in these chambers upstairs begin to understand these words and fear God.

And it is high time that we the church call on them to fear God. Before that can happen, we ourselves must fear God.

Saul Alinsky, an abhorrent man, wrote a book by the title "Rules for Radicals." Rule #4 was this: "Make opponents live up to their own book of rules." He goes on to say, "you can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian Church can live up to Christianity."

Now the only person who ever did live up to his own rules paid the price for our inability to do so. That was none other than Jesus Christ Himself. Romans 3:21-26 says, "But now, apart from the law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe (for there is no distinction), for all have sinned"—and that includes us here today—"all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God. But we have been justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed, for the demonstration I say of His righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus."

Doing justly is prerequisite, folks. It is prerequisite to understanding and preaching the Gospel. It starts with our laws being just. It starts with us speaking accurately.

What is the just and righteous law of God? Micah 6:6-8 says "With what shall I come to the Lord and bow myself before the God on high? Shall I come to him with burnt offerings with yearly calves? Does the Lord take delight in thousands of rams, and ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my rebellious acts, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" And folks, there's no amount of supposedly pro-life legislation, there's no amount of Wednesday morning Bible studies that happen in this chamber that can make up for the fact that we dishonor God with our laws and with our practices.

It occurred to me the moment I was getting in my car, feeling a weight in my soul, driving to the Capitol, knowing that we were about to vote on a bill that pretends to be the strongest pro-life bill in America, the "Heartbeat Bill"—which Mark going to talk about a little bit more in a minute—so many problems with that, that I can't even address right now. But it occurred to me as I got in my car and was reflecting on how many of my Republican colleagues want to look like they're pro-life, but have no interest in ending abortion. I got in my car and it dawned on me. Many of them think they're doing nothing wrong. They don't think they're doing anything wrong. And that's because we, the church have failed to do justly. It starts with us folks. And this ends right here, right now.

There's a third thing we need to understand if we're going to end abortion. And that is that we the people are responsible for every unjust law. We, the people are responsible.

Here's a little civics 101. What does the Preamble to the Constitution say? "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." It starts off with "we the people" and it finishes with "do ordain and establish the Constitution of the United States." We made this thing. This is without a doubt the highest law of the land. We are without a doubt the highest political authority in the United States of America. Did you know that? We the people are! Not the President, not the Supreme court justices, not Congress. Us!

If our laws are unjust, whose fault is that? If our laws are unjust, whose responsibility is that?

Jesus said in Mark 12:17, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." This passage is not primarily saying you need to go pay your taxes. No, what Jesus was saying is don't render to Caesar the things that are God's!

That's what Jesus was saying. And who is Caesar, by the way? It's not the President. It's not Congress. It's us. It's we the people. We are Caesar in the United States of America. It's high time we start acting like it. This is what Jesus was saying: only God deserves our undying loyalty only God.

When Jesus says slaughtering the unborn is wrong, then we shouldn't tolerate unjust laws that allow for the slaughtering of the unborn! We shouldn't tolerate politicians that say it's okay to slaughter the unborn, or to slaughter some unborn. It's not okay. We've got to stop that.

It's our fault that abortion remains legal today. This ends here, this ends now in our hearts and minds.

Finally, it's time for God's people to show by deeds of repentance their loyalty to God.

We can have prayer meetings. We can go to church. We can raise funds for crisis pregnancy centers. We can even go out and stand in the gap at the abortion mills and try to turn mothers back from murdering their babies. Some of you do that, and I thank God for you. I'm inspired by you.

Folks, we have many things to repent of. We need to repent of funding abortions with our tax dollars. For many years now, our state legislature has passed budget after budget after budget that funds abortion in two specific areas. The first area is in family planning services under Medicaid. These are federal funds, which the state chips in and matches some with state funds and runs this through Medicaid and provides all sorts of health services. One of those is family planning, and that's contraceptives and counseling and all sorts of things like that. It's not supposed to go to abortions, but guess who gets to be a family planning provider? Planned Parenthood. Our Governor since 2018 has called on this legislature to pass a budget that refuses the federal family planning dollars and restricts the state family planning dollars to not go to planned Parenthood. And my colleagues have refused to do so. That's a problem. Now I and several others in the legislature are working on ending that. And we're going to ask you to go upstairs shortly and talk to your Representatives and ask them to do something about this.

The budget just came back over to the House from the Senate. As of today they're sending it back to the drawing board. Thank God. It needs to go back to the drawing board, with abortion funding in it. That gives us one month to work on this. It's coming back out for a vote in the House on June 8th, so we have a month for all of us here to talk to our Reps about that. And I hope you'll do that today before you leave. But it also means we have a month to grow our ranks. It's going to take numbers. Politicians care about numbers because you know what numbers means votes.

You can't assume that just because someone says they're pro-life or says that they're Republican means that they're going to go along with this during the budget debate. On March 23rd, two of my Republican colleagues—one of them is from my own county (Brian White), and another is from this area (Rep. Micah Caskey), both went out of their way to make speeches defending why we should be funding abortions. It's not okay, folks. It's not okay.

We got to repent of making exceptions. It's wrong to kill babies using any method! Not just partial birth abortion. It's wrong to kill them before 20 weeks, not just when they feel pain. It's wrong to kill babies before a heartbeat is detected. It's wrong to kill babies that were conceived in rape and incest. It's wrong to kill babies because they're babies! That's why it's wrong.

We got to repent of injustice, of unequal protection for the unborn. We haven't been willing to address the fact that mothers know what they're doing, and that it is murder. You may not want to call it that, but that's what it is. When the Roe v. Wade decision was being formed, one of the justices, Justice Blackmun, asked the piercing question that we need to ask ourselves today: "If the fetus is a person, may the penalties for killing it be different?" The answer is absolutely not! So I filed H.4046.

After the "Heartbeat Bill" sailed on through and got signed by the Governor, it forced me to reckon with, "well, what should we be doing? How do we fix this?" And so I studied are our laws, our abortion laws, our murder laws. I collaborated with some folks and came up with H.4046.

That bill does several things. It calls abortion murder. It removes all exceptions. And it says, we're not waiting on the Supreme Court. You know what? We've been waiting for decades. It hasn't happened. It's not gonna happen until the states stand up. It's not going to happen until the church stands up. We've got to repent of injustice, of unequal protection for the unborn.

We got to repent of excuses. One such excuse that I had personally reckoned with is that someone told me (and for time I believed) that "it's better to let the ladies lead on this." And I see a lot of ladies here, but I don't see one lady in our legislature that's here helping me on this issue. Where are the ladies?

Another excuse that we've believed is the courts are gonna overturn it. No, they're not. Not until they're threatened with irrelevance. And let me tell you something, they're going to say all kinds of crazy things about my bill. Like, it's a bill to create a civil war or something. No, if we can defy the government on REAL ID like South Carolina did for a decade, if other states can defy the federal government on marijuana, if North Dakota can defy the federal government on planned Parenthood funding, so can we. So can we.

And the final thing we need to understand is it's time for us to repent of our inaction. There are times when if you fall on your face before God, He will rebuke you because it's not a time for prayer: it's a time for action. Just like he told Joshua after the defeat of Ai. Joshua falls on his face before God, and he says, "God, how could you let this happen to us?" And God says, "Get up off your face, for there is sin in the camp."

We know what we need to do. We have the tools to do it. Why aren't we doing it? It's time for us to repent by acting.

Now there's so many things that I need. I need you to go out and tell every one of your friends and neighbors. Tell your Pastor. Tell your Sunday school folks. Tell your families. Come back, help us get petitions signed. Contact your legislators. Ask them to co-sponsor H.4046. Ask them to remove all funding for abortions, and all exceptions for abortions from the state budget.

It is time for us to act!