Through intimidation, online censorship and government action, Christians and pro-life advocates increasingly are being persecuted for speaking up for their beliefs.
Pro-life doctors and nurses are being told to get out of their profession if they refuse to abort unborn babies. Pregnancy centers are being vandalized with rocks thrown through their windows and graffiti painted on their walls. Pro-life displays are being stolen and set on fire. And pro-life advocates are facing death threats, assaults and censorship online.
One of the latest examples comes out of Finland where a pro-life Christian politician is being investigated for a “hate crime” after she shared a Bible verse on her Facebook page.
Faith Wire reports Christian Democratic MP Päivi Räsänen recently criticized the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, of which she belongs, for participating in a LGBT pride event in June in Helsinki.
“How can the church’s doctrinal foundation, the Bible, be compatible with the lifting up of shame and sin as a subject of pride?” Räsänen wrote on Facebook underneath a photo of verses from Romans 1:24-27.
“Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error,” Romans 1:26-27 state.
The Helsinki Police Department received complaints about the post and decided to investigate Räsänen for an alleged “hate crime,” according to the report.
“The pre-trial investigations have yet been completed. Police will provide more details once the investigations have been completed or presented to a prosecutor for consideration of charges. There will be no further comments prior to that,” Officer Pekka Hätönen told the Helsinki Times.
Räsänen said she is not worried about herself, but she is concerned about freedom of speech.
“I am not concerned on my part, as I trust this will not move on to the prosecutor,” she wrote on Twitter, Reclaim the Net reports. “However, I am concerned if quoting the Bible is considered even ‘slightly’ illegal. I hope this won’t lead to self-censorship among Christians. Rom. 1:24–27.”
According to Faith Wire, she also faced harsh criticism in 2013 for saying that Finland protects animals more than it does unborn babies.
LGBT issues are a matter that even many pro-lifers disagree on, but suggesting that a religious person be criminally punished – or kicked out of a job – for expressing their beliefs should be disturbing to us all.
In America, abortion activists are openly telling pro-lifers not to enter the medical field unless they are willing to abort unborn babies. They also criticized President Donald Trump’s administration for defending the conscience rights of a pro-life nurse who says her employer, a Vermont hospital, tricked her into helping abort an unborn baby against her convictions.
LifeNews depends on the support of readers like you to combat the pro-abortion media. Please donate now.
And in Ireland, the government is demanding that doctors abort unborn babies or help their patients find someone who will.
Meanwhile, giant online media companies continues to censor pro-life advocates. Facebook recently allowed two abortion activists to label a post from the pro-life group Live Action as “false news.”
Across the country, LifeNews has documented a rash of disruptive, harassing and violent incidents this year, including a pro-life display that someone set on fire in a building at Western Washington University in May.
Religious freedom and free speech are foundational rights that, like the right to life, are being eroded in our culture. This backslide is dangerous. Unborn babies lost their right to life in 1973 in America when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade. Now many “progressive” abortion activists are trying to chip away at our right to free speech and religious expression as well.
