January 22, 1973
The nation waited with bated breath, to discover the Supreme Court's decision on one of the most stunning cases in the history of the United States.
Up until that era, the question of human life and its sanctity was rarely debated. I'm not saying it wasn't taken for granted or abused or destroyed. The taking of another human life is as old as Cain and Abel. Abortions have been taking place for thousands of years and the methods used have been varied. Anything from poisonous plants to forceps to salting the womb to a myriad other absolutely abominable practices have been utilized.[1]
It’s nothing new.
Laws were created to prevent abortions and to allow them.[2] Both sides had legal arguments regarding the right to a woman’s life, the child’s life, health, exceptional cases of incest and rape, etc. The point is, abortion is not a modern concept and it’s been fought against and defended on all continents since the fall of man.
It’s ironic, you know. One of the very first acts of Creation involved breathing life into a human being. The very name ‘creation’ invokes visions of Life. Even the fictional Dr. Frankenstein creating his monster claimed that he’d given life to the mass of organic matter on his operating table.
At 8 weeks after conception, the tiny little being in utero has a heartbeat. I know. I’ve seen those four chambers pump at 150 beats a minute, two different times in my womb as I watched the ultrasound screen to confirm that yes, I was really with child. I find the complexity and wonder of conception so completely mind-boggling and so absolutely amazing. Two human beings come together and in the middle of sin and death and hell’s curse, they create something so pure and so innocent—so untouched by corruption and decay. Until they leave the womb, there is no active dying process—it’s ALL life.
And by God’s amazing, creative grace, my own body—already in a slow, invisible dying process—is able to sustain and nurture that life.
Today is January 22, 2013. It’s been forty years, since a single, pregnant woman sued the state of Texas for its strict laws concerning abortion. Up until then, most states had treated most active forms of abortion as murder or at the least, a felony.[3] Able to be prosecuted by the law. In MOST of the country’s minds, abortion was the taking of an innocent life, and it was a crime. Same as murdering a child of three or a geriatric adult. It didn’t matter that the infant in utero could not, in some stages, survive outside of its mother’s protective womb. It was still murder.
I could go into all the inconsistencies of the case. How the pregnant woman had two children prior to this third pregnancy, how she claimed she’d been raped in order to get a doctor’s orders for a hospital or ‘safe’ legal abortion, how she eventually rescinded that claim, stating she’d lied about the rape. How she gave birth to the child anyway, but the Supreme Court still ruled in her favor. How she gave up that child to be adopted on the advice of the local attorney assisting her and THEN continued to press the charges.
The point though, is that in 1973, this country’s highest court decided that the woman’s right to her own body were more important than the child’s right to life. Not only did that decision spit in the face of the Declaration of Independence, (ALL men are created equal…endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…LIFE, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness[4]) but it spit on the Creator’s face as well by declaring HIS creation to be unworthy of life.
I have to ask a question. Why do we mourn those victims of school massacres and terrorist attacks and wars? Why do we grieve when loved ones perish in accidents or nature’s fury or viral epidemics? What’s the point of grieving for ANY loss of life—natural OR unnatural—if we don’t even believe LIFE and the Creation of Life is sacred?
Today, the President lauded Roe v Wade while pussyfooting around with words like ‘minimize the need for abortions’ and ‘support maternal and child health’ and ‘reduce unintended pregnancies.’ Just like he does any other controversial topic. A whole lot of rhetoric and kissing up to the masses and I bet his speechwriters had a field day with it.
I agree with ONE thing he said in that speech…that the government shouldn’t be involved in the private affairs and rights of its citizens. (Which is another topic around the subject of hypocrisy…but I won’t go there because it makes me too angry to logically and rationally discuss it on this blog)
The government DOESN’T have the right to interfere with whether or not abortions can be done. That is the decision of each individual. It’s also our individual decision whether or not we want to pull the trigger on another person. What the government DOES have a duty to do, is protect the rights of EVERY last human life under its care. That’s why, the moment a finger pulls a trigger to end another life, the moment that life bleeds out on the floor, the law has the responsibility to make that murderer pay. (I am not talking about gun accidents or cases where the death was not intentional or planned…whole other ball of wax, though the killer SHOULD still make restitution in some way, shape, or form) Restitution is a Biblical and it is a Constitutional principle.
So who makes restitution for the unborn? Who is paying the price for the unborn child murdered in ways that Hitler and his Third Reich were punished for in the Nuremberg Trials? (They called it experiments, most life-supporting humans call it torture and murder)
Don’t get me wrong. I believe in the power of forgiveness and the healing power of God’s grace covering all of our sins. I believe that the doctors and nurses who perform abortions CAN be forgiven. I believe the mothers who abort their babies CAN be forgiven. I am not callous and unforgiving. They are human beings too. I am a human being who sins daily.
I also know I don’t want to keep on sinning.
Unborn does NOT mean Not Human. Those phrases are not synonymous and we have enough technology to even SEE that now. The settlers called that proof of life ‘quickening.’ That happened right around the time the baby’s heart beats for the first time. We don’t even need THAT proof though. We argue that it’s just a bunch of cells, that until birth, it’s not really a human being. My daughter, my son, were human the moment conception began. Every last strand of DNA, every last programmed attribute and genetic puzzle piece was known by the Creator even BEFORE conception.[5] At the moment of conception, He breathed LIFE into that new human being.
So Mr. President and others who celebrate this Roe v Wade ruling as some major achievement in human history, I say this:
You are no better than those who stood by and allowed Hitler, Lenin, Mussolini, and the hundreds of other mass murders to commit those wretched crimes. You do not value human life, or you would value it at ALL stages of its development. You weep over the school massacres and you use your politics and power to wield the killings like a weapon against your opposition. You mourn for those victims of terrorist attacks and use them to start your own personal wars. You wax poetic about the sanctity of human life, the evils of slavery, the horrors of war (or your speechwriters do).
Then you praise the achievements of a base and evil court of law who has accepted and ALLOWED the mass murder of nearly 56,000,000 human lives in the last forty years.
Don’t you DARE tell me that you value the sanctity of and right to life. Don’t you DARE tell me that THOSE innocent lives didn’t count. Don’t you DARE tell me that you are mourning the loss of LIFE in the tragedies that have occurred around our nation.
You “mourn” THOSE innocents.
Who is mourning the 56,000,000 innocents who have lost THEIR lives at the cruel and callous hands of others?
I cannot even begin to shed that many tears, but I will spend the rest of my life trying.
I will mourn them.
