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Friend, Welcome to the Friday Five! Every Friday we share our top five articles, stories, and quotes for you to read and share with your friends and church families. 
1. NC VALUES: 👣 20 weeks,
and we’re just getting started
For over 50 years, our state’s law has limited abortion to 20
weeks. However, in 2019 Planned Parenthood file suit to overturn the
law and establish in North Carolina that abortion can be performed on
demand for any reason up to birth. Judge Osteen, citing Roe v. Wade,
enjoined the 20-week limitation and ruled that abortions could be
performed in NC up to the point an unborn baby is “viable” outside the
womb, somewhere around 24 weeks.
Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Osteen acknowledged Roe’s recent reversal by rightfully lifting the injunction against the 50+ year old law. Praise the LORD, abortion past 20 weeks is now officially banned in our state. Gruesome late-term abortions are once-again forbidden in our state, which resonates with the NC values of the majority of people in our state. However, this is just the beginning. In addition to being your advocates to all of our NC legislators, we are also working hard to advocate for your values to the culture via the media. In the past 24 hours, we have conducted interviews and have been featured in publications such as CNN, CBS17, the Charlotte Observer, the News & Observer, and many others. While often such publications are hostile to pro-life perspectives, we have labored to ensure your pro-life views are given fair representation.
  2. ADF: NC Values signs on to ADF-written “The Promise to Parents” letterWe have recently added our signature to a letter drafted by ADF courageous parents, highlighting community organizations, and honoring elected officials for their efforts to protect the fundamental rights of parents to direct the education, care, and upbringing of their children.
3. ARIZONA: Governor
Ducey, parents, kids celebrate the most expansive school choice
initiative in the nation
Earlier this week, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey “joined families,
educators and community leaders to celebrate Arizona’s successful
effort to ensure every Arizona student can attend any school of their
choosing.” “With ESAs open to all students, Arizona solidified its
position as the gold standard for educational freedom.”
We’re hoping that by electing a veto-proof pro-values majority in the Fall, North Carolina can join them in being a bastion for school choice.
4. WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Who will raise children? Their parents or the bureaucratic experts?“The fight over school choice is really a battle over a basic question: Who will raise our children? If parents can choose how and where their children are educated, they are effectively determining how their children will be raised. Education not only affects economically useful skills, such as literacy and numeracy, but also shapes the character of young people by emphasizing certain values and role models. Parents have long recognized the importance of education in character formation, which is why historically, they had large control over who taught their children — and over what they were being taught. But in recent decades, the role of parents in determining the education of children has increasingly been displaced by a professional class of experts. The fact that these experts have pushed schools through a revolving door of failed educational fads, from whole language reading instruction to open classrooms to Common Core, has done nothing to diminish their confidence. This time they have it right, we’re told, so parents just need to get on board and hand their students over. The experts don’t just want to dictate how to teach dry academic content, though; they also seek to impose their preferred values on children regardless of parental concerns.”
5. NATIONAL REVIEW: The
U.K. Turns Its Back on Transgender Ideology
"By the spring of 2023, Britain’s state-run transgender youth clinic will shut its doors for good. NHS England announced it was closing the Tavistock gender-identity clinic last month after an independent report concluded that it was 'not a safe or viable long-term option' for gender-confused young people. The report, conducted by the former president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, found that patients were 'at considerable risk” from clinicians’ “unquestioning affirmative approach.' Soon after, a London-based legal firm announced a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 1,000 families whose “children and young adolescents were rushed into treatment” and, as a result, 'suffered life-changing and, in some cases, irreversible effects.'"
 WEEKLY PRAYER: LIBERTYLORD, you have blessed us with a spiritual liberty that is so wonderful and beyond description, that it can only be understood through experiencing a life-giving relationship with Christ. However, we also recognize that in your grace, you have blessed our country with a political liberty that enables us to openly proclaim the experience of a life lived in the freedom of the Gospel. LORD, as individuals and as a nation, may we never take the inalienable right of religious freedom for granted. Right now our country has faced a rapid increase in the number of attacks made against this cherished right. We have seen groups across our public arena increase in boldness and frequency their smears against religious liberty. They claim it is bigotry, when we know it is the security of the greatest of all possible loves. Be with your people and our country as it continues to protect the constitutional right protected by our nation's Founders. Be with legislators and the Supreme Court, as they determine through their actions the protection of this particular and fundamental freedom. “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery." (Galatians 5:1) "For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another." (Galatians 5:13) "Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God." (1 Peter 2:16)
Sincerely, North Carolina Values Coalition
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