We recently had the chance to catch up with our friend, Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director turned pro-life advocate. We discussed the pro-life movement, how the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) is impacting the abortion industry and what we can do to help women in crisis.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length:

What’s your take on abortion as “essential” during this time?

I’ve been involved in the abortion fight one way or the other for over 20 years. I’ve never in my life seen the abortion movement in such a frenzy as they are right now. I’ve talked with many other pro-life leaders across the country who have been in the fight even longer than I have, and they’re saying the same thing. There are so many people that are not able to access abortion as easily as they have been, and it is throwing them into a state of panic.

It is truly evil, in a way that I don’t think we get to see that often, this push for abortion. I’ve been getting emails and messages from these women abortion supporters sort of taunting me, saying, “Just wanted to let you know, Abby, we have a busload of women scheduled to go out of the state of Texas to have their abortion in New Mexico or have their abortion in Oklahoma.” They are proud of themselves; they are renting 15 passenger vans, 12 passenger vans, loading up and filling these vans to capacity, taking them over state…

Christian singer and worship leader Charles Billingsley is crediting the grace of God for healing him from the coronavirus and for keeping his family healthy after a three-week ordeal that saw him face possible death.  

“My doctor told me … ‘If you weren’t in half decent shape you’d be dead,’” Billingsley told the Rick and Bubba radio show this week. 

All total, his bout with the coronavirus lasted 24 days. He began feeling symptoms the evening of March 27, the same night he enjoyed an anniversary dinner with his wife. Thinking it was only a low-grade fever, he golfed the next day and took part in online church services Sunday, March 29. By that night, his fever had risen. 

He isolated himself. For the next week, his fever was around 102-103 degrees.

“And somehow, someway, by the grace of God, my family stayed negative the entire time,” Billingsley said.

But Billingsley was far from healthy. In fact, his condition grew worse after that first week, and he was admitted to the hospital.

“My blood work and stuff was just off the charts,” he said. “… This is a cruel, cruel virus. It attacks you neurologically and physically.” 

He spent two nights in the hospital. On his final day, he said the doctor told him, “Your blood work [is] actually worse today than it was yesterday.” She gave him the option of leaving and going home but warned him his…

World Food Program (WFP) chief, David Beasley, cautioned that “multiple famines of biblical proportions” could occur in the coming months, estimating that some 300,000 people could potentially starve to death daily because of coronavirus shutdowns.

On Tuesday, Beasley warned of the famines in a video conference with the United Nations Security Council as he described COVID-19 as “the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II.”

BBC News reports that the number of people at risk of starvation can increase from 135 million to 235 million. Countries that are “affected by conflict, economic crisis and climate change” are at increased risk of falling victim to starvation, the WFP says.

“If we can’t reach these people with the life-saving assistance they need, our analysis shows that 300,000 people could starve to death every single day over a three-month period,” Beasley said.

Beasley proposed $350 million in funding to set up a hub that would function as a logistical hotspot to keep humanitarian aid supplies moving. He also asked for “swift and unimpeded” humanitarian access to communities at high risk of starvation.

“If we don’t prepare and act now — to secure access, avoid funding shortfalls and disruptions to trade — we could be facing multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months,” he said.

It was reported in the Global Report on Food Crisis…

NEW DELHI, April 24, 2020 (Morning Star News) – Tribal animists in central India who demolished a pastor’s house and drove him and his family out of their village in March seriously injured him in an assault this month, he said.

After beating, choking and pelting pastor Lalu Kirade with a stone in the April 3 attack, the tribal villagers in Khandwa District, Madhya Pradesh threatened to destroy his vocal chords as one of the assailants put her foot on his throat, he said.

“They had sprung on me like a pack of wild dogs,” Pastor Kirade told Morning Star News. “They told me to call upon my God to come and rescue me.”

Among the assailants was the man who began the assault on him in March for refusing to abandon Christianity, identified only as Laxman. In the most recent assault, the six men and two women of one extended family ambushed the 29-year-old pastor as he returned from a grocery shop near the yard where his family is living under the open sky three miles from his former home in Bilood village, he said.

They hit and kicked him, pulled his ears, dragged him by the hair and uttered profanity about Christianity and Christ, the pastor said, besides robbing him of rupees equivalent to US$51.

“The money was given to me as help during this [new coronavirus] lockdown period – it was all that I and my family had to survive upon,” Pastor Kirade told Morning Star…

With her famous mother back in the news again thanks to a new Hulu series, Anne Schlafly Cori is doing her best to help the public separate fact from fiction. 

Cori is the daughter of Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative leader who led a movement of women in the 1970s to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment after it appeared headed for easy ratification. The proposed amendment to the Constitution would have guaranteed “equality of rights” under the law on “account of sex.”

The new nine-part Hulu series, Mrs. America, follows the cultural battle between Schlafly and the feminists of that era, including Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. Cate Blanchett plays Schlafly.    

Although Schlafly was a person of faith, the series largely ignores this element of her life.

“The truth is that her philosophy came from her deep faith, and everything she believed was because of her Catholic faith,” Cori told Christian Headlines. “… Her faith was central in informing every decision she made. The series scrubs her faith out of it.”

Schlafly brought together people of different faiths – evangelicals and Catholics, for example – to form the Stop ERA Movement and the Eagle Forum, an organization that still exists. Cori is its chairman. 

“It was quite a revolution and what started the pro-family movement,” Cori said. “These people had not been in politics before and had really…

A Mississippi city at the center of a row about drive-in churches has revised its policy on the issue. The Greenville City Council has clarified that the unique format of worship gathering – which has been employed by churches to protect congregants from spreading COVID-19 – is permitted providing that car windows remain fully up.

Mayor Errick D. Simmons was forced to make the revisions after the Department of Justice threw its weight behind a church that sued the city over the restriction. On April 8, around 20 members of Temple Baptist Church gathered in their vehicles were shocked to be accosted by police officers and cited with $500 fines for their behavior. Though the fines were later rescinded, the furor over the case – and what it means for First Amendment rights – continued.

Ryan Tucker of legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which has been representing Temple Baptist, thanked the city for “dropping its unconstitutional ban.”

“Public officials are right to care about public health and safety during the coronavirus crisis, but they are wrong when they treat churches more harshly than others in government orders related to it,” Tucker said in a statement.

“We commend Greenville for dropping its unconstitutional ban, which prohibited drive-in church services but allowed similar types of activities, such as eating at drive-in restaurants. That…

(RNS) — A conservative law firm launched a “ReOpen Church Sunday” initiative this week, calling on churches to begin gathering in person again despite reports of the deadly novel coronavirus being spread during worship services.

The campaign is organized by Liberty Counsel, which created a website for the initiative encouraging Christian leaders to begin holding in-person worship the weekend of May 3 — just days ahead of the National Day of Prayer on May 7.

“There’s a lot of practical ways that churches can begin thinking through the process of reopening and, at the same time, protecting the health of all of its participants in the community — and then giving other alternative options,” Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, told Religion News Service.

Staver’s campaign suggests churches take a phased approach, allowing some worshippers to gather in person while maintaining social distancing but also providing options for people to participate from their cars or, if they belong to an at-risk population, at home via livestream. The campaign’s website also contains a list of suggested safety measures, such as sanitizing worship spaces and checking temperatures at the door.

“We’re encouraging this to begin the process of reopening, not to fill the sanctuaries to maximum capacity,” he said.

Staver, whose group also represents a Florida pastor recently arrested after continuing to…