The real war against abortion. . .

For a long time many of us believed that the war against abortion was fought on the level of law and before an invention of a constitutional right.  Then came a change and the legal underpinning of the abortion cause was undone at the level of our highest court.  But nothing really changed.  The technology had marched quietly along and abortions were less the domain of medical procedure than they were a pill popped into the mouth and forgotten about.  We won the wrong war.  We should have been fighting for the hearts and minds of all Americans.  Instead, we were worried about nine in black robes.

Here we are celebrating another anniversary of some of our best legal minds getting it absolutely wrong while we have forgotten to instill and maintain a culture of life that beckons to the soul of an entire nation.  Abortion is not about a law.  Abortion is about the sanctity of life, the cheapening of that life by pills that mask the reality of death and about efforts underway to extend the same callous indifference to life's mystery to those already born.  Whether euthanasia or assisted suicide, the fight against abortion has lost the hearts and imagination of most folks.  It simply is not what people think and even Christians are no longer shamed by the mountain of death that has become normal.  That is our problem.  Abortion has become normal like taking a pill for a headache.  It has become so normal that the same legitimacy given to life has been sanctified in the culture of death.  From Illinois to New York, governors are proudly pushing the agenda of death to make it quick and easy to do for the living what pharmaceuticals have done for the child in the womb.

Sadly, I had no idea as a college age young man what it meant when abortion was rendered legal by the devious manipulation of law and in the name of what was a woman's right.  Only now am I realizing that the energy marshaled against that court decision should have been accompanied by a mass movement rekindling the fire of life against a cause of death.  Now we find ourselves at a time when hardly any Christians push back against what was never conceived of at the decision handed down on January 22, 1973.  Life is ours to do with as we please.  Or is it?  Are we the powerful who define what is life and what is not, what is life worth living and what is not, when it is okay to choose death over life and when that right became more profound that the mystery and dignity of life itself?  Or have we become the weak who stand for little more that expediency and who will gladly risk moral uprightness rather than stand against the wave of public opinion that has made all of this messy stuff normal?

I have no idea how much gun laws play into the mass violence that plagues our land but I am pretty sure that the cheapening of the value of life has done more than any trigger.  We are no longer offended by those who offend against the sacredness of life unless they offend our politics.  How odd it is to get all wound up about the cause of the immigrant but casually to dismiss the idea that you can play God with the life in the womb of the mother or with your life or the life of your loved one when it is judged no longer worth living!  Though some complain about the whole idea of a seamless garment when you deal with issues of life, we have to begin stitching together a cohesive connection between all of the life issues in such a way that it is more than political ideology or personal preference to choose what is okay and what is not.  The strange thing is that people are more excited about capital punishment which is rarely carried out than they are the pills that kill in the womb or make for a painless way to end your life.  The solution is not as simple as some suggest.  It is fought not before justices robed in black but in the hearts of every American.  Life is not a commodity for the unborn or the aged or the infirm or the people you vote against.  Until we begin connecting these dots, we may win before the law but watch as the culture of death steals the victory from the overall cause.  Some will immediately argue with me about how these causes are all connected but while we are battling it out over nuance the hearts and minds of young and old have already decided the outcome.  If you do not believe me, why have we lost the cause of marriage and children in city after city across America?

The Church cannot content herself to speak simply about how we stand before a righteous God and we must also address the cause of life, from its natural beginning to its natural end.  We must be uniformly offended by those who would take that life into their own hands and admit that pills are just as effective at killing as our guns.  Abortion depends upon everyone finding it unthinkable that anyone can take the life of another and call it normal.  This is not specifically Christian doctrine as much as it is the restoration of the cause of natural law and ordinary common sense to the senseless way we have come to see death as preferable to life.