Last year the state of Washington began requiring all health plans that cover maternity care to cover abortion procedures also. This year the Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Cedar Park Church challenging the statute as unconstitutional on religious-freedom grounds. No doubt the lawsuit will run its course over many months, as lawsuits do.

Meanwhile, take note of the incredible array of pro-life ministries offered by the above-mentioned Cedar Park Church, which is a Christian church in the Assemblies of God denomination. The church runs programs for single mothers and women facing crisis pregnancies, as well as mentoring groups for foster families and prospective foster parents. These programs can be found in some larger churches. But Cedar Park Church has more, much more. They offer:

• an embryo-adoption service, connecting couples who wish to adopt with couples who have used in vitro fertilization and have left embryos in cold storage
• an annual service to pray for infertile couples (and over the years more than a thousand children have been born to those families)
• a summer camp for children in the foster-care system
• a funeral home and a mausoleum with a crypt for families who have lost an infant or had a stillborn child, to entomb the child at no cost

Jay and Sandy Smith lead Cedar Park Church. “Everything we do, I think, is pro-life,” Jay says. The evidence supports him. No one can accuse the Smiths or their church of merely talking the talk and not walking the walk. One hopes the federal court can see Cedar Park Church’s holistic pro-life approach. When Jay says, “We are opposed to being participant in abortion,” he also has a strong track record of how the church has put its money where its mouth is. (For more info on the lawsuit, see Alexandra Desanctis’s July 10 article in National Review.)

Many Catholic dioceses offer ministries similar to those listed above, however scattered across their geographical areas, and of course the Church offers the fullness of truth. That is not in dispute here.

If any readers know of a single church or parish fully manifesting its pro-life commitment like Cedar Park Church does, please email me and I’ll share the news.