This boy, Walter, lives only a few minutes after his mom, Lexi Fretz, miscarries the 19-month-old at an American hospital in 2015. (Photo F2 Photography by Lexi, LiveAction.org)
Without doubt the influence of Christianity on Chattanooga makes it a remarkable city in which to live and prosper and raise one’s family.
The influence of the Bible and the gospel message spreads in many areas of private and public life in the city.
By David Tulis / Noogaradio 92.7
Chattanooga is counted in the annual Barna survey of Bible-minded populations as the leading city in the 50 united states as caring about the Word of God. Chattanooga is known for the mildness of its civil authorities, the limits on its corruption in public works, its free market educational sector, its welcoming ways among visitors and tourists, its care for the environment and capital creation, and the relative lack of despair among women of childbearing age.
However, in the hearts of residents in neighborhoods, workplaces, apartment blocks and retail stores there is grief. Levels of despair are so great as to lead Hamilton County moms to kill 151 boys and girls before birth in the most recent year for which records are available, 2015.
In these grisly numbers, still, there appears a picture of how a sovereign God is extending grace to the city and its people.
Mildness of slaughter data
State government in Tennessee carefully and dilatorily records the slayings of 9,113 tots, part of Republican and Democrat support of abortion as a health industry practice subject to regulation — and all in league with pro-life groups that have given up calling for abolition.
Statewide, non-white babies are slain at a rate nearly four times greater than white babies. Black babies and babies of other races perish in 4,465 surgeries compared to white babies, who perish in 4,210 procedures. The number of babies slain privately by abortifacients adds hundreds to the total, but no record exists.
Among women residing in Hamilton County 151 boys and girls are destroyed by mom and doctor. Since Christians put the Chattanooga Women’s Clinic out of business in April 1993, women have had to travel to Atlanta, Nashville, Knoxville and the Tri-Cities to destroy a baby. That inconvenience has helped bring children to birth centers such as that at Erlanger Medical Center rather than to such baby abbatoirs as Knoxville Center for Reproductive Health Inc.
God’s grace on Chattanooga is seen in difference in the rates of what Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration calls ITOPs, or intentional termination of pregnancy. In the city’s mildness and sweetness, its ITOP rate is much less than the state’s, and much, much less than that in Memphis.
Of all races, Hamilton County’s rate is 1.9 babies per 1,000 population. Statewide, the rate is roughly 6. People in the rest of Tennessee are three times more in despair than in Chattanooga, and three times more deadly in their premeditated acts against babies. Women in Shelby County slew 2,780 babies at a rate of 12.1 people per 1,000 population. Memphis is 63 percent majority black.
The abortion industry, following the eugenic ideas of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, has always had a special favor for blacks and the poor.
River City grace amid our just desserts
According to 2016 census data, 6.65 million people live in Tennessee. It has four big cities — Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga. The counties surrounding these cities — Shelby, Davidson, Knox and Hamilton, respectively — have 2.43 million residents, or 36.55 percent of the population. Two-thirds of Tennesseans live in the countryside or smaller towns.
The rate of killings among non-white babies in Hamilton County is close to the rate of whites. Black and other nonwhite moms kill 48 babies at a rate of 2.2 per 1,000 people; caucasians kill 100 babies at a rate of 1.7. Significantly, racial disparities here are less than that statewide, with whites and nonwhites destroying unwanted heirs in near-equal measure.
Hamilton has 5.37 percent of the state’s population, but accounts for 1.65 percent of the babies destroyed.
The report is bleak. But God gives the people in the River City 3x the grace He gives to Tennesseans overall, and six times more than to those in the shadow of the Memphian pyramid along the Mississippi River. And for that, we should thank Him.
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