No human right is more basic than the freedom to live. With all of the violence, destruction, and death in our world, the womb ought to be the safest of places—a sanctuary. But, not satisfied with external violence, as we have done with many good things, taking matters into our own destructive hands, we have re-purposed and distorted the womb into a torture chamber, a killing field, a sanctuary of death.
We express appropriate moral outrage at Stalin’s slaughters, Hitler’s holocaust, ISIS’s religious cleansings, and other deadly atrocities, yet barely notice the more than 56 million missing Americans, untimely ripped from their mother’s wombs. We say that we value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but ignore the weakest and most vulnerable among us, denied the most basic of rights—their first breath of freedom. These hard truths do not synch well with our ideals of American exceptionalism.
As Mother Teresa said, “Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use violence to get what they want.” True, a proper love for God and our fellow humans would never have allowed this senseless slaughter of the innocents. We have accepted abortion. We have accepted violence. We have accepted death. We have narcissistically worshipped ourselves, our unrestrained materialism and successes, rather than God. Why? Because children are far too often viewed not as a beautiful God-imaged precious gift from our creator, but rather an inconvenient truth, standing in the way of our empty American dreams. We have been weighed in the moral balance and have been found wanting.
How did this happen? We have “killed” God and, with Him, truth, morality and justice have died. If God is dead everything is indeed permissible and is now being permitted. Employing a macabre Darwinian “survival of the fittest” approach, we have coldly dispatched our own offspring as an inconvenient truth, easily erased and forgotten.
More ancient stories reveal that each human has profound eternal significance. We are intentionally created in God’s image, designed to be in relationship with Him. This old story teaches us that every unique person matters, having great value to our father—that our highest and best purpose is to love the Creator and to love other humans. Observation reveals that, like our ancient parents, we have fallen far short of our purpose, have turned away from truth, and have acted in contradiction to it. Abortion and our tolerance of death are surely symptoms of this deeper problem: unrestrained rebellion and sin.
The once bright light of our shining city on a hill is being covered with a shroud of darkness and death. My prayer for America, as we acknowledge 42 years of legalized genocide resulting in 56 million deaths, is that we would turn away from ourselves and our sin and back to God, back to truth, back to justice. That is the hope for America and the hope of finally bringing to a full stop the savage slaughter of the innocents among us.
— by Dean R. Broyles, Esq.
Broyles is a constitutional attorney serving as the President of The National Center For Law & Policy (NCLP), an organization fighting to promote and defend religious freedom. Copyright© The National Center For Law & Policy. Reprinted with permission.