With little warning but great fanfare, U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders swept into Austin, Texas on January 21, 1994 to preside over the Grand Opening of yet another Planned Parenthood franchise. The Austin American Statesman printed a color photograph of Mrs. Elders sermonizing from the pulpit of a Methodist church in full regalia as if she were born to be there.

Joycelyn Elders has made many memorable comments in her tumultuous tenure as America's leading health care voice. Several have made godly people cringe and tremble for the future. But her comments in Austin were perhaps the most offensive to God-fearing Americans. "It is time for ministers to stop moralizing from the pulpit and get out here and help me save the children," she instructed the receptive throng.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with helping to save children as Mrs. Elders claims to be interested in doing. The problem is her plea for ministers of Jesus Christ to stop doing what Christ and his apostles have instructed them to do (Titus 1:3). Another problem is that Elders restricts her compassion for children to those who have escaped the womb. Children who are still developing toward birth are deemed unworthy of her love and offer of salvation.

Webster's dictionary defines "moralize" as "to give a moral quality or direction to; to improve the morals of;  verb, to make moral reflections." Joycelyn Elders apparently has looked out over the landscape of America and decided the problem is that we just have too much morality. How dare this woman enter any pulpit and endeavor to tell preachers that they are hurting America and specifically our children by trying to guide them to God. How could anyone possibly contend that our problems descend from too much morality? Drug abuse, gun violence, teen pregnancy, divorce  too much morality and preaching caused these problems? This is the same myopic vision that banished prayer, God and the Ten Commandments from our schools in the 1960s. Things sure have improved since then, eh, Mrs. Elders?

The dirty little secret, Joycelyn Elders doesn't want us to know is that she is simply tired of preachers getting up on Sunday and standing for the moral standards of the Bible which she so vehemently opposes in her work. Her command reflects an obvious agenda to silence the godly opposition to her destructive and immoral direction for this nation. "Preach the word," Paul told young Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:2. God's word is moral (2 Pet. 1:3) and so we must disappoint Madam Surgeon General.

Elders indicated a restriction on her tremendous love for children later as protesters had gathered to show disapproval of her pro-abortion stance. The protesters expressed curiosity that one so dedicated to "saving the children" also enjoys seeing thousands of them butchered each year in their mothers' wombs. Mrs. Elders ordered the protesters to "get over their love affair with the fetus!" She naturally made this statement on friendly ground  Planned Parent-hood is actually a euphemism for the Center for the Distribution of Condoms and Abortion Advice. Mrs. Elders hopes that soon "every child is a planned and wanted child." This is a good example of the seemingly harmless and sanitized phrasing of the anti-life crowd. Her agenda in plain English: any child that is accidentally conceived, even by married parents, should be killed. We would trust that, unlike the tax hike, this policy would not be retroactive, or else many of us would have to answer to Mrs. Elders. God knows and loves the soon-to-be-born (Ps. 139). He gives them senses  eyes and ears  at early developmental stages. He gives them vital organs  a heart and lungs  long before they are actually born. They feel pain and suffer greatly when their mother opts to murder them. I dare say that God loves the children even more than Joycelyn Elders purports to (Ps. 127:3). Why not let them live? No, abortion is never an easy decision. But it is never a good one, either.

Our Surgeon General is now the leading force behind expanding sex education to include children from kindergarten age on up. She intends to make condoms free and accessible to all the children whom she loves so much. As head of the Arkansas Department of Health prior to the 1992 election, Mrs. Elders showed her love for schoolchildren by ordering a shipment of defective condoms be delivered to a school even though she knew they were damaged. I suppose she reasoned that defective condoms were better than no condoms at all. After all, she loves the children. Elders has expanded her role in the schools by demanding that health textbooks that once taught about hygiene now include graphic references to homosexuality so that her dear children may be free to choose that disgusting path (Rom. 1:26-27) if it appeals to them.

Her recent bombshell about legalizing drugs to reduce the crime rate certainly is in her children's best interest, now isn't it? I suppose she was just considering the welfare of her own son who was arrested for drug possession that same week, though. Mrs. Elders is somehow blind to the destruction wrought by addictive substances. The children she claims to love are experimenting with drugs at earlier ages than ever before and are consequently suffering more incarcerations and more homicides than previous generations who were exposed to the lethal teaching of "Just say no." "Generation X," as many pundits call the children, is in for a bumpy ride if Joycelyn Elders gets her way with it.

Guardian of Truth XXXVIII: 6, p. 5
March 17, 1994