One of our nation’s more controversial laws has been at the center of recent debate over the Supreme Court nominee whose hearings began this week. The concern of many is that if the Supreme Court “goes conservative,” it may mean an end to abortion on demand.
We won’t relitigate the battle here, but you don’t have to be an attorney, or even have a legal mind, to know the difference between the right to life and the right to end life. It is a yawning moral chasm, the Grand Canyon of popular culture.
Aside from the political implications, there are moral and common sense barriers one must crash in order to get to the place where abortion is a “right.” Perhaps the most obvious: If you strike and kill a pregnant woman, you will be charged with two counts of manslaughter, not one. Why? Because our own laws say that you ended two lives, not one. No one questions this unborn child’s “right to life.”
The second is subjective, but just as real, and that is the untold devastation that remorse has caused in millions of women and the fathers of the children. Serving on the board of a crisis pregnancy center for eight years brought this home to me in a stark way. I can tell you that no amount of rationalization erases this trauma from a sensitive conscience.
Third is the background and operation of the agency ironically called, “Planned Parenthood.” Do a little research and you will discover its early stand on eugenics and how it has helped catapult abortion to a multi-billion dollar industry. Money talks, big money shouts.
Finally, there is the breathtaking hypocrisy of our culture’s championing abortion rights on the one hand, and being outraged by cruelty to animals, on the other. We run ads against animal atrocities and raise money for “No-Kill Animal Shelters.” We campaign for unwanted pets to be rescued rather than euthanized. Mercy and adoption for puppies but not babies? Something doesn’t compute.
People say, “Don’t be political!” But politics is first and foremost about laws and the people who make them. Laws are about what is right and what is wrong, and right and wrong are biblical categories. Believers are to be salt and light to a decaying and dark culture. Can we do that by being silent?
Others say, “But there are more issues than abortion.” True, but none more basic to what it means to be human. Still others say, “But it’s the law!” Also true, just like the “right” to own another human once was the law.
Babies and Puppies.
God created both. Shall we not protect both?
“You created my inmost being;
You knit me together in my mother’s womb. . .
Your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.”
Psalm 139:13, 16