Unplanned — Part 1

One is examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints from a biblical perspective viewpoint when Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism research ministry since 1979 Mormonism research ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's viewpoint on Mormonism welcome to this additional viewpoint on Mormonism on your host will what you are founder and director Mormonism research ministry with me today is Eric Johnson. My colleague at MRM. You're probably aware that on the weekend of March 29, a new film was released titled on planned. It was about Abby Johnson who was the director of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan Texas and I might mention that Brian Texas is a college town so you would think that Planned Parenthood would have a lot of potential clients in that particular area and that's one reason why Planned Parenthood also has clinics in the inner city. They are targeting a certain people group.

In fact, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood was certainly a you Janice.

I think she was definitely a racist and she was trying to get rid of minorities because that was her worldview and for some reason I don't know why other than outright sinfulness. There are some in our country that seem to elevate Margaret Sanger almost to the position of sainthood, but she was not a good person.

Unfortunately will anyway you might be asking why are we even talking about this today and Eric you saw the film with Terry. I went with Tammy and we saw the film. We did not see it at the same time and we came away with our own perspectives on the film, but there is a connection to Mormonism and I will be getting to this, but what was your overall impression of the film. I thought that the information that was provided by having people see what a fetus really is because we talk about clumps of cells you hear people talk about mother's choice in they don't understand the real reason why we are against abortion, and we certainly are from others were certainly for the people that you have to make tough decisions when they don't have money or they will feel they have the ability to take care of what is going to take place in the next months as they have a child, but I think when we see the sonograms there and we see what a baby looks like, and it has the same parts that all of us had when we were at that stage and that and so the idea that this is a human being with its own unique DNA has its own heartbeat has its own eyecolor even its own sex. It could be male in the mother is female so this is not the mother's body. I thought the film did a good job of showing that in a way that was dramatic and was a true story about Abby Johnson, who was at the time I believe the youngest director of the Planned Parenthood clinic and what she experienced there. I think was good for us to see because I had never seen that perspective before. There were a lot of things that I saw in the film that I was actually kind of pleased to see there were some things I thought were perhaps even a bit embarrassing. And what I mean by that is, there is a scene and I don't want to give any spoilers to anybody who has not seen the film, but did show a group of Christians on the other side of the wrought iron fence that separated the street or the sidewalk from the clinic parking lot and it did show some angry faces. There was a guy dressed up like a Grim Reaper that was mentioned in the film and another angry man with a Bible saying some derogatory things of name-calling, calling the girls in the yellow vest Twinkies and things like that which is cut really all that serious but still there's there's name-calling. There and I could tell you that having spent hours and hours and hours in front of an abortion clinic. When I lived in California. I never really experienced a lot of the angry people that the film try to portray but I thought it was good because certainly that does happen, and I liked how the film brought out that there was also at the same time, another group of Christians that were showing a more compassionate demeanor towards the girls that were going into the parking lot and that I liked in the reason why I like that is because we face that same kind of stereotype when we are on the streets trying to talk with Latter Day Saints. I have had Mormons write me personally accusing us of doing things out on the streets that is very sensationalistic that we would not be engaged in.

We are not engaged in the sensational when we are out there on the streets. Certainly we are wanting to engage in the educational and if a Mormon thinks perhaps that by me bringing out my replicable plates that that sensational. While I would be glad to debate that with them. I'm just trying to show some part of Mormon history, which is difficult for me as an individual to believe, but I was glad that it showed that there were two groups of people who seem to have the most effect according to the film were, of course, the ones that had more compassion for the girls that were unfortunately going to go through an awful procedure that was going to change their life forever.

I I like the contrast there. I'm glad they did not make a big issue of what they felt would be the bad examples.

But they certainly focused on. I think the group of people who were sitting at better example for those of us who do evangelism in the public setting we get accused a lot. As you mentioned of people saying what why do you hate us, why are you protesting. Even if you just hold up a website sign that goes to one of the websites that we have your considered to be angry and just not somebody who they want to deal with but you have to check your attitude when you do go out and try to do any kind of evangelism, whether it's in an abortion clinic or whether to go out to what we do at Mormon LDS Temple open house openings or or we go to pageants and other things like that.

We have to check our attitude because it's easy to get to the place where you become the Grim Reaper's and you start screaming at the people. These are not our enemies.

The Bible talks about how it's a battle not against flesh and blood, but it's against spirits and principalities. This is a spiritual warfare and so the people are not the enemies. Those girls even the workers at Planned Parenthood. This movie showed very well were not the enemies. There was something greater there and II think that when we understand that were were battling a spiritual warfare were going to hopefully have a lot of compassion for the people that we are sharing, you mentioned the scene where they were showing some of the workers.

The females that worked in the clinic and that was another thing that I was pleased about it did not go out of its way to dehumanize the people that work there now is much as I disagree with them as much as I think they're offering a horrible, horrible service that, unfortunately, unless they repent of this they will definitely be judged for their complicity in the murders of unborn children.

Still they are blinded by their sin and it didn't focused on them as being bad people.

Okay doing bad things, which certainly they were doing bad things, but you have to understand folks a lot of those people volunteer and a lot of people that work at these clinics they really think they're doing as it said in the film.

One girl said I feel I'm doing God's work right as horrible as that comes across to us. That is what I'm sure a lot of the people that work there actually think we see it in the political realm think they look at it as being a moral thing and not something that's detestable in the eyes of God. So I was kind of pleased with that that it didn't go out of its way to dehumanize and because I personally, I think that would be unnecessary. I would hope that more more people would be able to watch this film and give it a fair shake. I was saddened by the fact that they gave it an R rating and this is why if you give it an R rating automatically Mormons won't go right. And this is a problem within Mormonism. Folks don't think that they are exempt from this and working to talk about this because I think the Mormon church is way off when it comes to their position on abortion. But because they made it an R rating. Mormons are not supposed to go to R-rated movies how that is certainly a man's classification and that is a man's restriction and I think it should be judged on an individual basis. There certainly some more movies. I would never want to go see and I wouldn't is a Christian. If you haven't seen this movie, we are recommending that you do and if you're worried about that R rating. I would say that you would see more at 9 o'clock on television on many of the stations that are available in your home, then you will see here there was a low there was not room hard cussing. There was a few words thrown around, but not much. There was no sex. There was nothing that I would say that I've seen many PG-13 movies that this movie had anything more. So is the blood may be that they didn't like and there were some scenes that were hard to watch but let's just be honest folks.

Abortion is a messy procedure of life is at stake here and I think it's a very serious thing. So I think they were appropriate and how they did the scenes to show what it would be like because they did not show real scenes of the baby being aborted but what it looked like was that it was made me cringe when I watched it because this is a real thing happening thousands of times every day in clinics all over the United States listen to one Christian talk show host described this and he was talking about the R rating on it and he made a very good point pieces. If nothing else, the motion picture Association of America, the MPA, who gives these ratings to various films. He was saying. At least they seem to admit that abortion is violent and it certainly is. It's violent, you know, only half of those who enter an abortion clinic come out alive while I was a very powerful scene was when they had done the DNC abortion and they had violation, encourage, and they had to take the body parts and put them back together and and it certainly looks human. Yes, in a very minuscule way. But there were hands and feet, and they had to make sure each of those parts was taken out because of one part was left in the mother's body. There would be infection in a terrible thing would happen. I think that was part perhaps for me. One of the most powerful scenes and now again you might be wondering why, if we are program that deals with the doctrines and history of Mormonism. Why are we discussing the film. It has to do with the atrocity of abortion. I do believe it's a scourge on our country its terrible scourge. But why the connection.

Well, I think, as I mentioned earlier there were some connections as to how the Christians were portrayed in the film and how we as a ministry are often portrayed by Latter Day Saints and we would certainly cringe at some of the behavior that we seen out on the streets and we would hopefully not engage in any type of behavior like that. But there's a bigger reason why I wanted to talk about this and that is the Mormon position on abortion. I was wondering if a Mormon was to watch this film, what would they be thinking you have to understand folks in Mormonism. They believe that all of us as human beings are the literal offspring of God the father and a heavenly mother.

If anything, you would think the Mormon church would be in the forefront of condemning this atrocious act. But no, we'll see that it's