May They Rest In Peace – The Unborn Millions

Today is the 39th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision of the Supreme Court legalizing abortion in all 50 states, rendering unenforceable numerous state statutes prohibiting the taking of an unborn life.

While there have been innumerable legal, moral and social arguments over the preceding years objecting to this unjust court decision (and I do not argue against them) the one point I seldom see made is this: Have we lost all sense of history and what it teaches us? Is the past literally irrelevant to us in modern political and social thought?

Read the history of Western Civilization. Read about ancient Roman and Greek societies. Read about how prevalent abortion was back then, and how it led to infanticide, and how it concurred in time with sexual mores at odds with family stability and security.

Even an atheist, or someone totally caught up in a relativistic moral philosophy will admit, if history is read honestly and integrally, that abortion had no merit or benefit to social or family stability. Abortion was the product of social and familial decline. It was a toxic influence. The Christian church fought vigorously against it for these reasons, as well as on moral grounds, and they were victorious in removing abortion from a position of acceptability to one of prohibition. The Church changed culture and history, elevating prenatal and perinatal life to a position of dignity.

Ours is the same task today. It is a challenge to culture and conscience, both of the individual and of the nation.

I was listening recently to a 1965 NBC Meet the Press interview with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. During this interview, Dr. King so impressively explained, in the context of the civil rights movement, how the conscience of the nation was to be confronted with the moral, political, and social injustices experienced by black Americans of the time.

Pro-life Americans are faced with the same challenge: to keep putting forward in the face of the nation’s conscience, the injustices rendered to our unborn citizens. They are being abused and killed every day. This cannot stand in a just and civil and moral society.

Let us pray today for all the untold millions of our children who have died since 1973 due to abortion.

Likewise, let us renew a sincere effort to reach out to every woman experiencing a distressing pregnancy and provide her and the child’s father with the where-with-all to welcome and love that unborn child given to them.