Reflections on 40 years of Roe vs. Wade--Part 4

If abortion is America’s national sin, then none of us are clean, none of us are exempt. We all have participated either actively or by standing on the sidelines. We have allowed our culture to divorce sex from marriage and sex from children, with a whole host of consequences, not least the destruction of fifty-four million innocent lives. The shows we watch, the movies we see, all encourage a culture that makes abortion possible, even necessary. We have unthinkingly accepted contraception, forgetting that abortion and contraception goes together; you cannot have one without the other. We have allowed other issues to take priority; we haven’t held our leaders accountable for this evil, especially our so-called ‘pro-life’ leaders. And on the most basic, personal level, we have failed to give pregnant women the support that they need, especially those in crisis situations.

God loves life, and He uses people like you and me to protect and preserve it. We are on the front lines, and we are called upon to speak. The patron saints of life are Shiphrah and Puah, the Hebrew midwives found in the first chapter of Exodus. These courageous women stood up for life, defying Pharaoh in word and deed. “The midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.” They obeyed God rather than men, their bold stand is an example to us all. We are called on to stand for life, to support life, to speak up against evil. We pray for forgiveness for our silence, our inability or refusal to stand up for life, and Christ’s blood covers that sin, as it even covers the sin of abortion itself. Then, forgiven and redeemed, we speak boldly for the most vulnerable among us.