
Bernie Diaz, January 18, 2023
Prolife Christians like myself should be on top of the world, doing cartwheels and heading to our nation’s capital this weekend for some kind of celebration as the coming Sanctity of Life Sunday will be observed. This upcoming SOLS will not be just any observance of the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States.
Although this year marks the 50th anniversary of that day, to borrow then President Roosevelt’s WWII phrase, “that will live in infamy,” a day that has brought about well over 62 million deaths of the unborn in this nation over the last generation and change, we now have a new anniversary date to amend to Roe, which gives those that believe in the inherit dignity and sanctity of every human life made in the image of God, cause for thankful celebration, as well as somber reflection.
First, we somberly reflect on that day, January 22nd, 1973, when the Supreme Court of the United States released one of its most controversial decisions in our nation’s history. They not only overturned nearly two centuries of federal precedent and a century and a half before that of our colonial history’s law, but over four millennia of world history in which abortion was regarded as a shameful and murderously illegal act by virtually every civilized nation known to mankind.
Fast forward to our new post-Roe era, me and my fellow pro-life pastoral colleagues and ministry leaders still mourn over the fact that statistics reveal that abortion was the leading cause of death worldwide for the fourth year in a row, as the number of abortions nearly quadrupled the number of deaths from infectious diseases – like COVID-19, in 2022.
Yes, cancer and heart disease are not the leading causes of death in the U.S. but abortion is, which produces more victims per year, than nearly both of those health-related issues combined. Tragically, a database that keeps track of numbers related to health and the global population in real-time, reports that 44 million plus preborn children lost their lives last year to abortions worldwide.
That number measuring just one year of abortion mortality, represents seven holocausts – seven, in the number of those that were extinguished by the Nazi’s during WWII.
Thus, there has been and remains much to mourn over when we think of the legacy left by the Roe decision over these last 50 years. There is a time to swallow the bitterness of what our country’s moral and sexual revolution has wrought in devaluing human life. Indeed, Roe codified our current culture of death manifested from modern infanticide (the extinction of preborn Down’s Syndrome babies in Iceland) to euthanasia, or as more commonly known, “Medically Assisted Suicide.”
However, the prolife community of millions in America do have reason to celebrate and more importantly to thank and praise the God of glory for his grace – common and otherwise, for his merciful answer to prayer in sovereignly moving by his providence the current Supreme Court to overturn Roe, with the Dobbs decision this past June 24th, 2022.
Rightly and at long last, Justice Samuel Alito in summarizing the high court’s opinion bringing a breath of sanity to the debate, wrote: “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.” Justice Clarence Thomas said that the court’s decision in Dobbs, rejected Roe’s “fabrication of a constitutional right to abortion.”
To that, I say, Hallelujah and praise the Lord! Even though the jubilee acknowledgment of Roe this year, is met with both cause for concern and joy (the sweet) of Dobbs, which has returned the citizen’s right to determine the fate of abortion back to the people, legislatures and courts of our 50 states.
The Bitter and Sweet
Roe is no more and the states decide
It is a sweet thing indeed that Roe is no more as the federal law of the land (for now). The constitution of the United States with respect to abortion is once again being interpreted correctly, as per it’s most plain and natural face-value reading as its authors intended.
For the first time in 50 years, American states have begun to restore a degree of rights for the unborn with laws restricting abortion with and without exceptions. As of a month ago, eighteen states were now protecting life at the moment of conception and another four at the detection of a fetal heartbeat (usually between five to six weeks of gestation).
Bitterly, twenty-one states do not protect the unborn and allow abortion on demand- for any and all reasons throughout a term of pregnancy. Some unfortunately and demonically inspired in my view, have taken to enact laws that allow for the taking of the life of born children from botched abortions (i.e., California and New York). That horrendous view has infected members of the U.S. congress as evidenced by the failure of the Republican sponsored, ‘Born-Alive Act’ to be passed this month.
That bill which would have further ensured protection for babies born during a failed abortion by calling for swift medical attention to the victim. Incredibly and unfortunately unsurprising to me, was rejected by every representative of the Democratic party that voted.
That’s right, the congressional leaders from this country’s party of death, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Shummer supported by the White House, labeled the proposed bill to be both “extreme” and “anti-choice.” In other words, the Democratic Party of the United States has said in essence, it is right to leave children born alive in botched abortions to slowly suffer and die in the name of ‘choice’ and to come to their defense would be just too ‘extreme.’
As one observer of the vote noted, “Lord have mercy.” Or as the word of God reflects upon a nations that is led by “debased minds” (Romans 1), and in a world where God will pronounce a curse, or “ Woe, to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet (Isaiah 5:20).”
It is sweet in that the relatively short post-Roe world of Dobbs, a countless number of human lives are being saved and abortion mills are being closed or dealing with economic hardship. According to a news source, Texas has seen a dramatic drop in abortions over the past six months since the Dobbs decision was issued. Reportedly only three abortions were reported in that massively large state in August of last year and maybe as many as 50,000 preborn lives there have been saved this year to date since last summer.
Pro-lifers should celebrate that sweet win!
Let us also keep in mind that pro-abort activists and advocates will not go down without a fight in our post-Roe world. The side of death won a half-dozen voter referendums in states which would have further regulated and restricted abortion in last November’s mid-term elections.
Furthermore, the left influenced the FDA (Federal Drug Administration) to approve the mainstream distribution via prescriptions and mail-orders of the chemical abortion drug, mifepristone (RU-486) which is the first of a two-drug regimen, which literally starves the life out of a preborn baby in the womb, which is then expelled (a dangerously horrific type of miscarriage) by the drug misoprostol.
This new ‘coat-hanger’ form of abortion which puts the mother’s life at risk (so much for abortion being about the “woman’s health”) has now become the most common form of abortion today, accounting for a little over half of abortions in the U.S. and will be sure to grow in popularity, particularly as more abortion centers shutter their doors and greater pharmacy access is granted for it. That tastes bitter.
Christian response to the bittersweet
- Thank God for the wins (Dobbs), plead for his grace and mercy in the losses.
- Vote for and support pro-life legislation and candidates for office.
- Be prepared to rhetorically fight for the faith when attacked by pro-aborts and support religious liberty policies which ensure freedom of pro-life and gospel speech.
- Support pro-life para-church ministries and organizations striving to combat abortion and the orphan crisis with the hope of the gospel and alongside the love of the local church.
- Support crisis pregnancy resource centers and clinics that are serving and saving over 800,000 lives per year with your time, talent and treasures not already committed to your local church.
- Lovingly and graciously lobby your church pastor and leadership team to embrace the kingdom, pro-life cause as the justice issue of our times. What greater issue can there be than the cause of life?
Let us remind ourselves that the post-Roe struggle against abortion can and must be fought and that the results will remain bittersweet on this side of God’s glory and heaven on earth.
This battle in our culture war must be fought with the truth presented in love by our side. We must argue as the “Father” of the modern, pro-life movement Francis Schaffer did, that “You cannot be faithful to what the Bible teaches about the value of human life and be in favor of abortion.”
Schaffer was right and the word of God puts it best as I prepare to preach my special, Sanctity of Life Sunday sermon:
Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work? (Proverbs 24:11-12, ESV)