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The Virginia abortion bill failed, but the time for indifference is over

January 31, 2019
Stephen Kent

Young Voices Contributor

There are moments of clarity in all of our lives, and hopefully you experience such a thing more than just once. On Wednesday afternoon, driving to my home in Raleigh, North Carolina I was listening to a recap of the week's news on the radio. What I heard was that a lawmaker in Virginia had brought forward a bill to expand abortion access and remove restrictions on the procedure currently in place in the state. The reporter said "you'd expect this sort of legislation in New York or California, but it seems out of character for a state like Virginia."

My fingers tightened around the steering wheel.

Audio played of Kathy Tran, a delegate from Fairfax County, explaining the substance of the Repeal Act to her colleagues on the floor. I don't know what about this moment or this bill drew out such a strong reaction from me. After all, the state of New York just passed a very similar measure only a week ago and I went on with my day.

RELATED: The slippery slope of abortion just fell off a cliff

My vision blurred and stomach tightened. Something was wrong and could feel the most subtle shockwaves going up my arms to my neck. Discomfort. Rapid breathing.

I got through the next stop light and pulled over the car. Turned it off and just sat there for a few minutes, focused on my breath. I have never experienced such a thing. It was clarity. The realization of a lie.

If you're reading this, you likely know the backstory. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam recently joined WTOP radio in Washington D.C. and was asked about the abortion bill dubbed the Repeal Act, which had been causing a stir in the state for the better part of a week. One of his answers was:

If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that's what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.

The bill, sponsored by Delegate Kathy Tran of Fairfax County, would allow women to get abortions up until the point of birth — if their physical or mental health are considered at risk. To put a fine point on it, Tran was questioned about her bill earlier this week and expressed that it offered "no limits" on when the abortion could be carried out, including when the the mother is dilating and about to give birth. It reduces the number of doctors required to approve termination from three to one, and it lowers the bar significantly for the severity of the health risk. Now we are talking about the impairment of mental health in addition to the mother's physical health. What does that even mean?

Well, vaguery is the point. Something I didn't see coming in the abortion debate, but pro-lifers probably saw a million miles back, was that this was always headed toward the realm of the subjective. The first time I had the slightest thought that the case for abortion might expand to having virtually no boundaries, was when the discourse on college campuses began to blend mental and physical harm into a single thing. It's strange, but an op-ed in the New York Times in 2017 titled When Is Speech Violence? was actually my first hint. The piece described the science behind stress, and how challenges to the nervous system in the form of hurtful or abusive speech can cause long-lasting physical harm. I remember thinking to myself about the talking point "in cases of physical harm to the mother…" and then moved on with my day.

On the question of abortion, I've failed the test each time that I can think of, for a litany of reasons that boil down to cowardice.

I believe in God. I believe God tests us daily in our lives. On the question of abortion, I've failed the test each time that I can think of, for a litany of reasons that boil down to cowardice. My wife and I are the proud parents of an 8-year old girl. She's the light of our lives and brilliant — and I will likely never forgive myself for how I reacted when my college girlfriend, now wife, came forward as pregnant. I was a 20 year old "pro-life", Republican, fair-weather Christian and she was my liberal girlfriend who didn't see the world my way on just about anything. My thought process then was, obviously she will "handle it" and this will go away. So with my head down, I asked her if that was her plan, and it most definitely was not. The idea quite offended her, and she left.

I failed the biggest test of my young life. I like to think I made it right by subsequently stepping up and forming the family I now have and cherish. It took a lot of work on both our parts. But after that, my view on abortion changed to match my previous failure. I decided I was pro-choice, because how I could I champion the right to life when I turned away from it in my moment of being tested? This new view shielded me from another layer of shame, that of hypocrisy. Gradually, other pressing issues led me away from being conservative to being a libertarian, an identification I still hold and believe to be correct. Abortion is still very much in debate in libertarian circles and has been for quite some time. Whereas it is settled for conservatives and progressives, I found comfort in the hand-wringing and uncertainty of libertarians on the question.

In order to detach myself from the outcome of America's abortion debate, I had to assume three things. First, that there was sincerity in the argument that the survival of the mother was of utmost concern to the pro-choice crowd. Second, that the valid debate over when life begins wouldn't be allowed by courts to extend past the time of birth. Third, that while late-term abortions are generally rare and unpopular, the legality of the practice was not going to extend beyond the most progressive corners of America.

The quick rise and fall of the Repeal Act in Virginia unravels all these things I taught myself to believe about the abortion debate. That it had boundaries, that it was about people trying to defend life in exceptional circumstances — both on the side of advocacy for the unborn and the women carrying them. It's simply not true, and I see that now. The radicalized left in 2019 supported by a new wave of true believers who consider physical and mental harm to be entirely subjective concepts, is not going to stop expanding the religion of "choice". Governor Northam made it clear in his admission that the fates of children could be decided on after the fact of their birth. This wasn't a slip-up or miscommunication, it was the mask slipping on an ideology of death that has been mainstreamed. I just didn't have the courage and clarity to confront it.

You could say I may have just had a panic attack. I would say it was given to me — and thank God for it.

Sitting on the side road with the keys in the ignition, I wondered if this is what being convicted by God feels like. I've prayed for countless years for the spirit to move me in the way it moves some members of my family when all I've ever felt in my faith is silence.

You could say I may have just had a panic attack. I would say it was given to me — and thank God for it. Kathy Tran and Ralph Northam revealed that the sidelines are no longer where I belong. My hope for moderation and wisdom from public officials has not stopped the worst ideas on abortion from being realized and spread. Eventually, more state legislatures will be faced with similar bills that blur the lines of what defines harm. David French wrote in the National Review that the onset of anxiety, depression, fear of postpartum will soon be tried as reasons for young life to be terminated — and he is right.

I'm joining the movement to defend the sanctity of life. If you've been on the sidelines too, I hope you'll join me.

Stephen Kent (@Stephen_Kent89) is a friend of the show and host of Beltway Banthas, a Star Wars & politics podcast in D.C.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump’s secret war in the Caribbean EXPOSED — It’s not about drugs

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The president’s moves in Venezuela, Guyana, and Colombia aren’t about drugs. They’re about re-establishing America’s sovereignty across the Western Hemisphere.

For decades, we’ve been told America’s wars are about drugs, democracy, or “defending freedom.” But look closer at what’s unfolding off the coast of Venezuela, and you’ll see something far more strategic taking shape. Donald Trump’s so-called drug war isn’t about fentanyl or cocaine. It’s about control — and a rebirth of American sovereignty.

The aim of Trump’s ‘drug war’ is to keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

The president understands something the foreign policy class forgot long ago: The world doesn’t respect apologies. It respects strength.

While the global elites in Davos tout the Great Reset, Trump is building something entirely different — a new architecture of power based on regional independence, not global dependence. His quiet campaign in the Western Hemisphere may one day be remembered as the second Monroe Doctrine.

Venezuela sits at the center of it all. It holds the world’s largest crude oil reserves — oil perfectly suited for America’s Gulf refineries. For years, China and Russia have treated Venezuela like a pawn on their chessboard, offering predatory loans in exchange for control of those resources. The result has been a corrupt, communist state sitting in our own back yard. For too long, Washington shrugged. Not any more.The naval exercises in the Caribbean, the sanctions, the patrols — they’re not about drug smugglers. They’re about evicting China from our hemisphere.

Trump is using the old “drug war” playbook to wage a new kind of war — an economic and strategic one — without firing a shot at our actual enemies. The goal is simple: Keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

Beyond Venezuela

Just east of Venezuela lies Guyana, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map a year ago. Then ExxonMobil struck oil, and suddenly Guyana became the newest front in a quiet geopolitical contest. Washington is helping defend those offshore platforms, build radar systems, and secure undersea cables — not for charity, but for strategy. Control energy, data, and shipping lanes, and you control the future.

Moreover, Colombia — a country once defined by cartels — is now positioned as the hinge between two oceans and two continents. It guards the Panama Canal and sits atop rare-earth minerals every modern economy needs. Decades of American presence there weren’t just about cocaine interdiction; they were about maintaining leverage over the arteries of global trade. Trump sees that clearly.

PEDRO MATTEY / Contributor | Getty Images

All of these recent news items — from the military drills in the Caribbean to the trade negotiations — reflect a new vision of American power. Not global policing. Not endless nation-building. It’s about strategic sovereignty.

It’s the same philosophy driving Trump’s approach to NATO, the Middle East, and Asia. We’ll stand with you — but you’ll stand on your own two feet. The days of American taxpayers funding global security while our own borders collapse are over.

Trump’s Monroe Doctrine

Critics will call it “isolationism.” It isn’t. It’s realism. It’s recognizing that America’s strength comes not from fighting other people’s wars but from securing our own energy, our own supply lines, our own hemisphere. The first Monroe Doctrine warned foreign powers to stay out of the Americas. The second one — Trump’s — says we’ll defend them, but we’ll no longer be their bank or their babysitter.

Historians may one day mark this moment as the start of a new era — when America stopped apologizing for its own interests and started rebuilding its sovereignty, one barrel, one chip, and one border at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Antifa isn’t “leaderless” — It’s an organized machine of violence

Jeff J Mitchell / Staff | Getty Images

The mob rises where men of courage fall silent. The lesson from Portland, Chicago, and other blue cities is simple: Appeasing radicals doesn’t buy peace — it only rents humiliation.

Parts of America, like Portland and Chicago, now resemble occupied territory. Progressive city governments have surrendered control to street militias, leaving citizens, journalists, and even federal officers to face violent anarchists without protection.

Take Portland, where Antifa has terrorized the city for more than 100 consecutive nights. Federal officers trying to keep order face nightly assaults while local officials do nothing. Independent journalists, such as Nick Sortor, have even been arrested for documenting the chaos. Sortor and Blaze News reporter Julio Rosas later testified at the White House about Antifa’s violence — testimony that corporate media outlets buried.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened.

Chicago offers the same grim picture. Federal agents have been stalked, ambushed, and denied backup from local police while under siege from mobs. Calls for help went unanswered, putting lives in danger. This is more than disorder; it is open defiance of federal authority and a violation of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

A history of violence

For years, the legacy media and left-wing think tanks have portrayed Antifa as “decentralized” and “leaderless.” The opposite is true. Antifa is organized, disciplined, and well-funded. Groups like Rose City Antifa in Oregon, the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club in Texas, and Jane’s Revenge operate as coordinated street militias. Legal fronts such as the National Lawyers Guild provide protection, while crowdfunding networks and international supporters funnel money directly to the movement.

The claim that Antifa lacks structure is a convenient myth — one that’s cost Americans dearly.

History reminds us what happens when mobs go unchecked. The French Revolution, Weimar Germany, Mao’s Red Guards — every one began with chaos on the streets. But it wasn’t random. Today’s radicals follow the same playbook: Exploit disorder, intimidate opponents, and seize moral power while the state looks away.

Dismember the dragon

The Trump administration’s decision to designate Antifa a domestic terrorist organization was long overdue. The label finally acknowledged what citizens already knew: Antifa functions as a militant enterprise, recruiting and radicalizing youth for coordinated violence nationwide.

But naming the threat isn’t enough. The movement’s financiers, organizers, and enablers must also face justice. Every dollar that funds Antifa’s destruction should be traced, seized, and exposed.

AFP Contributor / Contributor | Getty Images

This fight transcends party lines. It’s not about left versus right; it’s about civilization versus anarchy. When politicians and judges excuse or ignore mob violence, they imperil the republic itself. Americans must reject silence and cowardice while street militias operate with impunity.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened. The violence in Portland and Chicago is deliberate, not spontaneous. If America fails to confront it decisively, the price won’t just be broken cities — it will be the erosion of the republic itself.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

URGENT: Supreme Court case could redefine religious liberty

Drew Angerer / Staff | Getty Images

The state is effectively silencing professionals who dare speak truths about gender and sexuality, redefining faith-guided speech as illegal.

This week, free speech is once again on the line before the U.S. Supreme Court. At stake is whether Americans still have the right to talk about faith, morality, and truth in their private practice without the government’s permission.

The case comes out of Colorado, where lawmakers in 2019 passed a ban on what they call “conversion therapy.” The law prohibits licensed counselors from trying to change a minor’s gender identity or sexual orientation, including their behaviors or gender expression. The law specifically targets Christian counselors who serve clients attempting to overcome gender dysphoria and not fall prey to the transgender ideology.

The root of this case isn’t about therapy. It’s about erasing a worldview.

The law does include one convenient exception. Counselors are free to “assist” a person who wants to transition genders but not someone who wants to affirm their biological sex. In other words, you can help a child move in one direction — one that is in line with the state’s progressive ideology — but not the other.

Think about that for a moment. The state is saying that a counselor can’t even discuss changing behavior with a client. Isn’t that the whole point of counseling?

One‑sided freedom

Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor in Colorado Springs, has been one of the victims of this blatant attack on the First Amendment. Chiles has dedicated her practice to helping clients dealing with addiction, trauma, sexuality struggles, and gender dysphoria. She’s also a Christian who serves patients seeking guidance rooted in biblical teaching.

Before 2019, she could counsel minors according to her faith. She could talk about biblical morality, identity, and the path to wholeness. When the state outlawed that speech, she stopped. She followed the law — and then she sued.

Her case, Chiles v. Salazar, is now before the Supreme Court. Justices heard oral arguments on Tuesday. The question: Is counseling a form of speech or merely a government‑regulated service?

If the court rules the wrong way, it won’t just silence therapists. It could muzzle pastors, teachers, parents — anyone who believes in truth grounded in something higher than the state.

Censored belief

I believe marriage between a man and a woman is ordained by God. I believe that family — mother, father, child — is central to His design for humanity.

I believe that men and women are created in God’s image, with divine purpose and eternal worth. Gender isn’t an accessory; it’s part of who we are.

I believe the command to “be fruitful and multiply” still stands, that the power to create life is sacred, and that it belongs within marriage between a man and a woman.

And I believe that when we abandon these principles — when we treat sex as recreation, when we dissolve families, when we forget our vows — society fractures.

Are those statements controversial now? Maybe. But if this case goes against Chiles, those statements and others could soon be illegal to say aloud in public.

Faith on trial

In Colorado today, a counselor cannot sit down with a 15‑year‑old who’s struggling with gender identity and say, “You were made in God’s image, and He does not make mistakes.” That is now considered hate speech.

That’s the “freedom” the modern left is offering — freedom to affirm, but never to question. Freedom to comply, but never to dissent. The same movement that claims to champion tolerance now demands silence from anyone who disagrees. The root of this case isn’t about therapy. It’s about erasing a worldview.

The real test

No matter what happens at the Supreme Court, we cannot stop speaking the truth. These beliefs aren’t political slogans. For me, they are the product of years of wrestling, searching, and learning through pain and grace what actually leads to peace. For us, they are the fundamental principles that lead to a flourishing life. We cannot balk at standing for truth.

Maybe that’s why God allows these moments — moments when believers are pushed to the wall. They force us to ask hard questions: What is true? What is worth standing for? What is worth dying for — and living for?

If we answer those questions honestly, we’ll find not just truth, but freedom.

The state doesn’t grant real freedom — and it certainly isn’t defined by Colorado legislators. Real freedom comes from God. And the day we forget that, the First Amendment will mean nothing at all.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.