The Duty of Individuals
For if God . . . did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly . . . (2 Pet. 2:4, 5)
Have we followed Noah, preaching righteousness against the bloodguilt we live amidst? Or rather, have we participated ourselves in the wickedness by paying for a surgical abortion, encouraging or sympathizing with others who have paid for one, or using an abortifacient drug regimen or hormonal birth control?
God’s hatred of the bloodshed of innocents is repeated many places in Scripture, but the shedding of the blood of one’s own little ones is a particular horror. There is no more terrible pollution of the land:
They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons,
And shed innocent blood,
The blood of their sons and their daughters,
Whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan;
And the land was polluted with the blood.
(Ps. 106:37–38)
At its core, abortion is an act of idolatry. Sacrificing one’s own children must necessarily be the most intensely religious act. Sacrificing one’s own child is the bloody confession of faith in demons. It is a denial of faith in the only true God who closes and opens the womb. It is a denial of faith in God’s provision for His own and the blessings He sends them. It is a final irreversible declaration concerning one’s own child that God is wrong in His creation.
But prior to this horror, what can be said about lust? Lust permeates the Christian church and home, the Christian computer and phone. Christian men and women tend their idols, consuming the naked flesh of strangers. God will judge us for this.
Many reading this paper have somberly nodded along up to this point, reassuring ourselves of our innocence. We haven’t killed our own children. We’ve protected them. We haven’t paid for an abortion. We haven’t committed adultery. We haven’t even used the Pill. But even in such cases, we lack knowledge of our own lust and the ways it contributes to the sin of abortion among the idolatrous objects of that lust.
We also lack understanding of our responsibility for our neighbors. We may object that we can’t be held accountable for what wicked men and women do, but responding this way, we demonstrate our normal thought process is the denial we are our neighbor’s keeper. Do we not feel the weight of the example Noah should be to us today in his preaching of righteousness to his own neighbors?
Abortion is the violation of the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” The Westminster Larger Catechism expounds on what this commandment requires of us positively:
All careful studies, and lawful endeavors, to preserve the life of ourselves and others by resisting all thoughts and purposes, subduing all passions, and avoiding all occasions, temptations, and practices, which tend to the unjust taking away the life of any; . . . just defense thereof against violence . . . ; comforting and succoring the distressed, and protecting and defending the innocent.232
God deals with men representationally and corporately. God judges nations for the sins prevalent among them. Even if there are people of God today who have not participated directly in the sin of abortion, we cannot claim clean hands and hearts. We live in a nation committed to the bloodshed of children, and God is just to judge our nation corporately, showering His holy wrath upon us all.
When the day comes when God’s judgment falls upon the bloodshed of our nations, will there be men of God among us we have seen and heard stand and preach as righteous Noah preached righteousness to his own generation?
Male Leadership in Fighting Abortion
In modern discussions of abortion, it is not uncommon to hear the claim that men should keep silent on the issue. Since men can’t get pregnant, the argument goes, the issue doesn’t pertain to them. Abortion is a deeply personal issue for women, and men have no right to tell women what to do with their bodies.
To the contrary, murder is everyone’s business—particularly men. It is the nature of the male of the species to guard and protect life. Men are the first ones we expect to step up and protect a woman who is being beaten, a child who is being slapped around, a black man with a rogue law enforcement officer kneeling on his neck, a mentally handicapped person who is being mocked, or a homeless person being beaten up by a gang of punks. In the same way, it is men we expect to step up and protect little babies from being aborted. It is a glorious fulfillment of his nature for the male of the species to do so.
But what about when women oppose them doing so? What if even pro-life women try to shush men working to defend the babies, saying things like:
No woman about to have an abortion is going to listen to any man’s warnings.
Men don’t understand the difficulties women face during pregnancy. Let us do the talking.
One of us made a habit of picketing a Planned Parenthood abortuary in his city with his young daughters some years back, and one day an angry woman from the abortion side of things walked up to him and, having asked if he was married and where his wife was (“at home taking care of our other children”), she rebuked him: “You should go home and take care of the children yourself, and let your wife do the picketing!”
Initially, the man thought, “That’s a good point. Why am I here, and not my wife?” But almost as quickly, the truth of God’s creation order hit him and he responded to her, “Defending life is the man’s job. My wife is home taking care of our other children, and that’s what God has called her to do.”
Readers likely are shuddering. Was this man trying to be as offensive as he possibly could be? Why on earth would he take such a volatile situation as an opportunity to start an argument with the woman over what men should do and what women should do? It was only going to infuriate the woman, and how does that help?
It’s interesting, then, to record here that his response left the woman nonplussed. It didn’t anger her more, but it seemed to take the edge off her anger. She was silent for some seconds, seemingly wondering what to say. Then she uttered something like “Oh” almost under her breath, and wandered back inside.
Who was it who raised this matter of what is man’s and what is woman’s work? It wasn’t the pro-life man, but the pro-abortion woman. The man simply answered her question by calmly testifying to the biblical truth that God has called man to defend women and children.
In truth, such arguments are not peculiar to the work opposing abortion. They permeate life today in the home, church, and society. Men are told not to take leadership of anyone but themselves, and even in their leadership of themselves, men are warned to submit to the women of their lives so they will be kept from their naturally bad inclinations and desires. Never mind women’s equally bad inclinations and desires—we’re talking men here, and everyone knows they’re a piece of work.
It may well be true that, given our track record, men today lack any moral authority. And certainly Christians should not ignore strategic concerns. But shall we turn from our distinctly male calling to defend the vulnerable and rescue the perishing? Remember righteous Job’s description of his own godliness:
I delivered the poor who cried for help,
And the orphan who had no helper.
The blessing of the one ready to perish came upon me,
And I made the widow’s heart sing for joy.
I put on righteousness, and it clothed me;
My justice was like a robe and a turban.
I was eyes to the blind
And feet to the lame.
I was a father to the needy,
And I investigated the case which I did not know.
I broke the jaws of the wicked
And snatched the prey from his teeth.
(Job 29:12–17)
The duty of man is clear. God’s fatherhood is written into human society. That fatherhood is present from the individual household up to the kingdom, from the newly married husband up to the king or president. God places men in authority and holds men accountable for themselves and for those they are in authority over. Just as God dealt with Adam and Eve, so He continues to deal with us today. Yes, being made equally in the image and likeness of God, women are moral agents alongside men, but as Adam was responsible for Eve and the race in his Fall, so God to this day still requires each man to answer for those under his care, starting with his wife and children. The husband and father is to guard and protect his wife and children. The first chapters of Genesis could not reveal and demonstrate this fundamental truth of God’s creation order with greater clarity.
Deliver those who are being taken away to death,
And those who are staggering to slaughter, Oh hold them back.
If you say, “See, we did not know this,”
Does He not consider it who weighs the hearts?
And does He not know it who keeps your soul?
And will He not render to man according to his work?
(Prov. 24:12)
Consider the understanding of our fathers who fought, bled and died to win and defend life. They knew it was the man’s job, though the cost was great. Will we honor those men, putting wreaths on their tombs while refusing to protect lives today?
Men must recognize the slaughter of the little ones is no “women’s issue.” It is a justice issue. It is a murder issue, and bloodguilt hangs in the balance.
Of course, we do not deny women can and should also be Christian witnesses standing against abortion. Yet Christian men have the greater duty. Christian men must lead the opposition to this great wickedness.
Christian Witness at the Killing Places
One weakness of the church in our time is the tendency believers have to think godliness simply consists of keeping our own hands clean. Note our habit of focusing on the first half of the following command given by the Apostle Paul to the church in Ephesus, while neglecting the second half:
Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them. (Eph. 5:11)
It is not enough to avoid the unfruitful deeds of darkness. We must also expose them, which is quite costly by comparison. Naming the sin of abortion “murder,” “child sacrifice,” “slaughter,” “genocide,” and a “holocaust” elicits hostile responses such as:
Don’t you dare tell me what I can and can’t do with my own body!
Jesus said judge not lest you be judged. I thought you were a Christian!
Keep your religion out of politics.
Why don’t you shut your mouth!
It’s possible to hide while keeping oneself from wickedness personally, but it’s not possible to hide while exposing wickedness. Yet the God’s command is not simply to have nothing to do with the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but rather to expose them.
So how do we do this? What are we to do as individuals living in this bloodthirsty land? How can we expose this shameful deed of abortion done in darkness? How do we awake the sleepers and help them arise from the dead (Eph. 5:14)? These are difficult questions, and the application will necessarily differ country by country, state by state, city by city, church by church, and person by person.
Some of us live in red states, some blue states. Some congregations have an abortuary in their city, some don’t. Some churches have a strong ethnic or denominational commitment to fruitfulness which trains husbands and wives to accept however many children God blesses them with, while other churches made up of a more transient membership and lacking a strong ethnic element are largely middle-class families intent on limiting their fruitfulness. Their priority is not fruitfulness, but a superior education and the socioeconomic improvement of their family. Obviously, the first sort of family will need little exhortation to turn away from killing their children while the second will be sorely tempted so that witness against the bloodshed of infants will necessarily begin within the church herself.
Outside of the church, each locale has unique factors that inoculate the populace at large against abortion; or oppositely, promote it. Some of our cities and towns are within the former manufacturing centers with a heavy Roman Catholic presence, while other cities and towns live in the shadow of large research universities. Some of us work in the fields of medicine, education, and law, and we see thunderheads on the horizon. We easily anticipate special challenges coming toward us which will likely jeopardize our ability to work in our current job field. We know there are growing ethical conflicts that may soon become unavoidable. In fact, it is a simple and necessary observation that some fellow believers are set apart to bear heavy responsibility in the fight, while others are not.
Again, it is imperative that we make gentle and charitable assessments of brothers and sisters in Christ as we head into the future conflict over abortion, but also a host of other moral and ethical conflicts resulting from the wickedness of our cultural repudiation of Christendom and resultant reversion to paganism. We may have two physicians in our congregation, one working in trauma and emergency care and the other in obstetrics and gynecology, and one of them will soon be denied hospital privileges while the other will continue to work in that same hospital. One of our lawyers might practice family law and find herself brought up before the state bar association’s legal ethics committee while another has a practice in probate law and is able to avoid most ethical conflicts.
Context is a much-abused word in mainstream evangelical culture, but context does matter—-personal, familial, educational, provincial, spiritual, and otherwise. We do not forget that one of the most important personal contexts of all is our own particular weaknesses, temptations, and sins. For example, some men may not be fit to protest at an abortuary because they are hotheaded. Some men are guilty of sexual sins which open their public protest against abortion up to charges of hypocrisy from their wife, children, church, or the community at large. Some women who have suffered sexual abuse might be cautioned to stay away from the scene of our present holocaust, since it might be too harmful to them emotionally. Some women have had many abortions, and having come to faith in Christ and repented, they might be particularly effective in public protests, while other women who mourn their inability to have any children thus far might be tempted to sinful anger and bitterness.
Showing up at the killing fields and protesting remains a fundamental way of protecting those without a voice. Asking the counsel of their pastors and elders, Christians ought to consider whether they are called to this ministry. The weapons we have from God are powerful for tearing down strongholds so that when Christians show up at the killing fields, darkness is put on notice and sometimes individual children are saved from death.
Those who do become engaged in public ministry at these killing places need to be aware of the dangers. While we are promised the gates of hell will not prevail against the church, this does not mean the church and her people will not suffer the hatred and attack of pagans drowning in their bloodlust. Exposing the deeds of darkness is always a dangerous work.
Other dangers arise, not from others, but ourselves—dangers such as pharisaism, spiritual pride, bitterness, and parading our righteous deeds on social media. We must not become proud in our work of public witness. But for the grace of God, we would be the ones walking into the abortuary.
We particularly need to avoid giving ourselves over to disappointment. People will reject our plea, leaving us vulnerable to becoming jaded. We will want every member of our church to show up and protest with us, and when they don’t, we will be tempted to condemn those who, in our judgment, have no good reason for their absence.
Whatever form of witness we choose, we must keep in mind that the abortion “clinic” is no longer the main place of killing. Today, that place is hidden. The evil deed is done in complete privacy. It is done silently there behind the bathroom door of our homes—and not just the homes of worldlings, but also our own homes and the homes of our brothers and sisters in Christ. Today, our child sacrifices are done in our own homes so that no one will know when we commit our murders. No one ever catches a glimpse of the lifeless bodies of little ones murdered by their mothers there at home.
Often these murders are hidden by the mother even from her own husband—the little one’s father. We mention protesting outside pharmacies alongside protesting outside Planned Parenthood abortuaries because of the prevalence of over-the-counter drugs in killing our unborn children today. Increasingly, the main killing place is an individual woman’s conscience and her bathroom. Exposing this darkness requires entirely different tactics than the tactics used for decades in protests outside surgical abortuaries.
As the battlefield shifts, we need to do the work of informing ourselves and others concerning the abortifacient agencies of what are falsely labeled “contraceptives.” Not simply the obviously abortifacient mifepristone-and-misoprostol regimen, but stealth agents such as the Pill and Plan B. We need not present ourselves as one more internet expert. It’s enough for us to know and communicate the basics to others, taking special care to counteract the lies of the media and medical professionals who assure women that their drugs are absolutely not abortifacients.
As we do this work, we should speak from humility, remembering Scripture’s warning that “we all stumble in many ways” (James 3:2).
Christian Witness on the Job
In opposing abortion in our individual callings, the tactics we use must be tuned to the present context. Increasingly, the movement of abortion from surgical and public to chemical and private will require a retooling of our methods. Some older methods of witness may still have some utility, but others will no longer be useful. Still, each calling has its own unique contributions to make.
We need pro-life state legislators, particularly as Roe v. Wade is overturned and the battle is returned to each state. We need physicians who will warn their patients against abortifacient drugs. We need pharmacists who will inform their customers. We need physicians, physician’s assistants, nurses, and pharmacists who will decline any involvement in the bloody trade in poisons that kill the preborn child; who will declare to their ethics committee that, still at this late date, they retain medicine’s historic commitment to the Hippocratic Oath:
Neither will I administer a poison [pharmakon] to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.
We need judges who use every tool at their disposal to end this genocide perpetrated against the little ones. We need writers to produce Uncle Tom’s Cabin for the unborn. We need artists to depict the horror visually. We need musicians to compose songs233 and symphonies234 lamenting our lost little ones. We need drivers to transport needy mothers to their ultrasound. We need carpenters, drywallers, and painters to build homes for poor families.
We need soldiers in every last job and calling who will fight using the weapons of God:
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. (2 Cor. 10:3–5)
Christian Witness in the Public Square
The Old Testament repeatedly records God’s people giving themselves to bloodshed, particularly through child sacrifice. If 1 and 2 Corinthians teach us anything, it is the vulnerability of God’s people to the temptation to ape the culture around them, making the sins of their pagan neighbors their own sins also.
What a betrayal of our Lord Jesus who resisted Satan’s temptations to go along to get along. To “fit in.” God commands us to be “blameless and innocent, children of God above repraoch in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom [we] shine as lights in the world” (Phil. 2:15). Our citizenship is not here on earth, but above in heaven. Fixing our eyes on our Lord and setting ourselves on pilgrimage to His heavenlies, we will no longer fear man, nor will we be ashamed of Him and His words. With respect to this gross and bloody horror of baby killing, we’ll be intransigent in our opposition to the act itself, as well as to those covered in its blood. Fearing God, we will not fear man:
Abortion and euthanasia are . . . crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection. From the very beginnings of the Church, the apostolic preaching reminded Christians of their duty to obey legitimately constituted public authorities (cf. Rom. 13:1–7; 1 Pet. 2:13–14), but at the same time it firmly warned that “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). In the Old Testament, precisely in regard to threats against life, we find a significant example of resistance to the unjust command of those in authority. After Pharaoh ordered the killing of all newborn males, the Hebrew midwives refused. “They did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live” (Exod. 1:17). But the ultimate reason for their action should be noted: “the midwives feared God.” It is precisely from obedience to God—to whom alone is due that fear which is acknowledgment of his absolute sovereignty—that the strength and the courage to resist unjust human laws are born. It is the strength and the courage of those prepared even to be imprisoned or put to the sword, in the certainty that this is what makes for “the endurance and faith of the saints” (Rev. 13:10).
In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to “take part in a propaganda campaign in favour of such a law, or vote for it.”235
Still, recognizing our subordinate earthly citizenship, we must call our elected officials to defend life by stopping any and all abortions. Further, we must vote accordingly. Further still, as citizens of a democratic republic, we have obligations past generations of Christians did not have, most notably the obligation to create and advance policies through our elected representatives. This is a tool ancient Israel did not possess, nor did God’s people possess it under the reigns of Herod or Nero. With democracy comes individual responsibilities. The bloody condition of our Union came about not through hostile foreign takeovers, but hostile domestic betrayals of God’s law and our Constitution by our elected officials. Harry Blackmun wrote the abominable ruling in Roe v. Wade, but it was two Republican presidents, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, who promoted him to the Supreme Court of the United States, while Christians stood by, either unaware or in support.
Yet the awakening of the (especially Protestant) Christian conscience did bear political fruit. It was Republican president Ronald Reagan who initiated the “Mexico City” policy prohibiting taxpayer money from funding abortions overseas. And it was also Ronald Reagan who nominated Antonin Scalia to the Court, and subsequent Republican presidents’ appointments which have resulted in SCOTUS being willing to impair or overturn Roe: Clarence Thomas (George H. W. Bush); Samuel Alito (George W. Bush); and Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett (Donald Trump).236 Indeed, attacking Roe by reclaiming the courts is a strategy born over forty years ago,237 which only now has borne its most visible fruit—and it has largely been Christian electoral calculus that has made that strategy bear fruit. So votes do matter, and though politics must never be our final hope, the Christian who neglects his democratic responsibilities abdicates his authority delegated him by God.
For centuries, Scripture was the bedrock of Christendom’s rule of law, such that there was broad agreement concerning that law’s fundamentals, and those fundamentals transcended political sectarianism. The heart of those fundamentals was the law’s duty to protect the vulnerable—those at the margins of society because of poverty, handicap, age, race, or lack of citizenship.
That time is gone. The Democratic party now holds as its most sacred principles its commitments to promote sodomy, to deny God’s creation of male and female; and, worst of all, its bloodthirsty pursuit of the death of preborn children, even to the point of rabidly demanding this slaughter be subsidized by every last taxpayer.238 Back in 1973, a third of Democrats opposed abortion, but now, pro-life Democrats are extinct.
This is not to extol the Republican party. Republicans did not begin to oppose abortion until the 1980s, and still today, many who vote Republican deny the preborn have any right to life under our Constitution. Yet if hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue,239 we must honor this tribute the Republican party keeps paying to the law of God by producing party platforms which claim to be “pro-life.”
How do Christians determine who gets their vote?
Read World magazine, emails from Friday Fax240 and National Right to Life, Personhood Alliance, Operation Save America, and/or Catholic Vote. Read the blog posts and listen to the podcasts of orthodox Protestant pastors and elders. Read news from a variety of sources, including mainstream media. (Reading mainstream media will keep us informed concerning our enemies’ strategies, a highly effective form of espionage.) Vote in every election you’re eligible for, and vote knowing which candidates are determined to end our present genocidal holocaust. Don’t vote for a county dogcatcher if she’s not pro-life.
Get rid of judges who traffic in the blood of infants. And if, like us, you have a hard time keeping up on the various candidates, find a brother or sister in Christ who has kept up, and circulate their recommendations within the body of Christ.
Once the election is over and our rulers have taken office, bear witness in behalf of the little ones at times set aside for the public to address their rulers. There are Christians in some cities who have worked to get their local government to pass sanctuary laws that abolish abortion in their city. State legislators, too, provide times for meeting with their constituents. Allow your children to write their state legislators, respectfully requesting that they outlaw abortion.
Indeed, much good work has been done recently at the state level. Legislators in states such as Texas, Mississippi, and (most notably) Oklahoma have done good work in bringing down Roe and striving to end legal abortion. If you’re in a state that hasn’t done so, push for this to happen in writing, through calls, and at the ballot box. And if you are in a state that’s taken even small steps in this direction, thank your officials who have had a part; and keep encouraging them to press on. Remember the downfall of Roe represents only the beginning of the work.
Some of us will even run for office. Yet our purpose here is not to outline every way in which a Christian can meet his obligation as a citizen, but rather, to exhort Christians to do what is good and right for each of us in our own particular situation.
What about the Babies of Pagans?
Some Christians speak and write, suggesting Christians chill out over the pagans aborting their own babies, and should just concern themselves with not killing their own children. But this is, in fact, what pagans have always done.
Brothers and sisters, let us not commit the sin of Cain. We are our brother’s keeper.
True, we must not participate in the unfruitful works of darkness, but the godly alternative to this is not to withdraw from society, but to expose those deeds and to reprove those committing them. Do we really feel no compassion and recognize no obligation to rescue those little ones being murdered?
Like Job, we are to take responsibility for “widows and orphans in their distress” (James 1:27). The Apostle James places this injunction upon us, and it is not simply widows of the Christian community he is referring to. His day was similar to our own. Men and women were killing children without any slightest remorse. This was the context in which the church became known for saving the baby girls exposed on the hillsides—girls born to the very pagans who persecuted the Christians rescuing their little ones.
Why such concern among the early Christians? Didn’t they realize their actions failed any cost-benefit analysis? Didn’t they know demography was on their side because they were the ones allowing their children to be born and live? Didn’t they know the future belonged to Christians?
Yes, but they also remembered their heavenly Father sends rain upon both the just and the unjust. The children of pagans are not simply objects of punishment, but fellow men made in the image of God. They are children of His hand (Acts 17:28), and therefore proper objects of Christian compassion.
We must never turn a blind eye to the slaughter of the preborn, especially those who belong to the pagans around us. They too bear the image and likeness of God. They are our neighbors, and we are commanded to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
Dedication to Life in the Face of Congenital Anomalies and Disabilities
Information from diagnostic testing for birth defects and genetic abnormalities is often a blessing. It helps fathers and mothers prepare spiritually and mentally to care for their child and allows nurses and doctors to spring into action upon the child’s birth. Yet, because of the heartless ease with which life is disposed of today, it is the general expectation that hardship will be avoided at any cost so that positive tests often lead parents to kill their child. This tendency is particularly awful when we consider that the best diagnostic methods—maternal blood screens,241 fetal echocardiogram, ultrasound, chorionic villus sampling,242 and amniocentesis243—often give false positives.244
When a fetal anomaly is predicted, fathers and mothers face immense pressure to “terminate the pregnancy.” The very fear of caring for a child with structural or genetic abnormalities may lead to the temptation to kill the child. Add the counsel of parents, friends, and doctors to that fear, and many parents become convinced killing their child is the only humane option. No one’s reminding them how often the results of the screening tests are wrong.
Even if diagnoses could be made with 100 percent accuracy and a particular diagnosis is troublesome, is it not a fundamental of Christian faith that each child in the womb is God’s creation? The presence of an extra or mutated chromosome, the lack of a limb or an eye, the deformity of an organ or blood cells—none of these eviscerate any son or daughter of the image and likeness of God.
The real question is whether or not we are willing to accept from God both prosperity and adversity (Eccles. 7:14). Whether we recognize it is God who sends us handicaps and deformities:
Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes him mute or deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? (Exod. 4:11)
Any defect of any child does not in any slightest way negate the image of God in him, nor does it negate his absolute right to be defended against those determined to kill him. The difficulties of our lives do not justify murder, whether that murder is committed by ourselves or another.
Westminster Larger Catechism, question 135.↩︎
See Michael Card’s 1984 song, “Spirit of the Age”:
I thought that I heard crying coming through my door.
Was it Rachel weeping for her sons who were no more?
Could it have been the babies crying for themselves,
Never understanding that they died for someone else?A voice is heard of weeping and of wailing.
History speaks of it on every page:
Of innocent and helpless little babies,
Offerings to the spirit of the age.No way of understanding this sad and painful sign;
Whenever Satan rears his head, there comes a tragic time.
If he could crush the cradle, then that would stop the cross;
He knew that once the Light was born, his every hope was lost.Now every age has heard it, this voice that speaks from hell:
“Sacrifice your children and for you it will be well.”
The subtle serpent’s lying, his dark and ruthless rage;
Behold, it is revealed to be the spirit of the age.Soon all the ones who seemed to die for nothing
Will stand beside the Ancient of Days.
With joy we’ll see that Infant from a manger
Come and crush the spirit of the age.One example of such is David DeBoor Canfield’s “Sighs and Sorrows,” Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano (1987; rev. 2010), a work protesting abortion.↩︎
John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, § 73. The concluding quote is from Declaration on Procured Abortion, § 22.↩︎
On the other hand, Republican presidents have also been responsible for a number of disappointments on abortion: e.g., Sandra Day O’Conner, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter.↩︎
As but one example, the Federalist Society, an organization that advocates for originalism in constitutional interpretation, was founded in 1982. In recent elections, Republican candidates (especially Donald Trump) have made a cornerstone of their platform a commitment to choosing judges that are approved by the Federalist Society.↩︎
From the 2020 Democratic party platform:
We believe unequivocally, like the majority of Americans, that every woman should be able to access high-quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion. We will repeal the Title X domestic gag rule and restore federal funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides vital preventive and reproductive health care for millions of people, especially low-income people, and people of color, and LGBTQ+ people, including in underserved areas.
Democrats oppose and will fight to overturn federal and state laws that create barriers to reproductive health and rights. We will repeal the Hyde Amendment, and protect and codify the right to reproductive freedom.
“Achieving Universal, Affordable, Quality Health Care,” Democrats.org, accessed June 21, 2022, https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/achieving-universal-affordable-quality-health-care/.↩︎
François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, no. 218.↩︎
This publication is by the Center for Family and Human Rights, covering life and social policy issues at the United Nations and other international entities.↩︎
These analyze fetal DNA in the mother’s bloodstream.↩︎
A piece of the placenta is removed and tested.↩︎
Amniotic fluid from the area surrounding the baby is withdrawn and tested.↩︎
Maternal blood tests are frequently used to screen for Down syndrome, trisomy 18 and trisomy 13. The Mayo Clinic reports that 15 percent of women receive a false negative and 5 percent receive a false positive for Down syndrome (“First Trimester Screening,” Mayo Clinic, https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/first-trimester-screening/about/pac-20394169). More recently, these non-invasive prenatal screenings (NIPS) have been used for other genetic micro-deletions. A 2017 study concluded that the false positive rate for the detection of some of the micro-deletion syndromes could be as high as 90 percent (Henna Advani et al., “Challenges in Non-invasive Prenatal Screening for Sub-chromosomal Copy Number Variations Using Cell-Free DNA,” Prenatal Diagnosis 37, no. 11 [November 2017]: 1067–1075, https://doi.org/10.1002/pd.5161). Even the New York Times found this news troubling (Sarah Kliff and Aatish Bhatia, “When They Warn of Rare Disorders, These Prenatal Tests Are Usually Wrong,” The Upshot (blog), New York Times, January 1, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/01/upshot/pregnancy-birth-genetic-testing.html). A 2014 study in France determined that ultrasounds yielded a false positive rate of 8.8 percent and a misclassification rate of 9.2 percent (Anne Debost-Legrand et al., “False Positive Morphologic Diagnoses at the Anomaly Scan: Marginal or Real Problem, A Population-Based Cohort Study,” BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth 14, art. no. 112, March 24, 2014, https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2393-14-112). Chorionic villus sampling (CVS) and amniocentesis are generally recommended only after an abnormality is indicated by means of less invasive maternal blood tests or ultrasounds. Neither of these methods is foolproof: “A false positive rate was reported to be 3.6% for early amniocentesis and 8% for mid-trimester amniocentesis” (Zarko Alfirevic, Faris Mujezinovic, and Karin Sundberg, “Amniocentesis and Chorionic Villus Sampling for Prenatal Diagnosis,” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2003, no. 3, https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD003252). Both CVS and amniocentesis can lead to the death of the baby in the womb; for pregnant women at least 35 years old, the risk of the baby dying from amniocentesis is the same as the risk of the child having, for example, Down syndrome (Susan Pauker and Stephen Pauker, “Prenatal Diagnosis—Why Is 35 a Magic Number?” NEJM 330, no. 16 [April 21, 1994]: 1151–1152, https://doi.org/10.1056/nejm199404213301610). For CVS the rate of the baby dying after the procedure was around 2.5 percent (Laird Jackson et al., “A Randomized Comparison of Transcervical and Transabdominal Chorionic-Villus Sampling,” NEJM 327, no. 9 [August 27, 1992]: 594–598, https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199208273270903).↩︎