One would hope that, as the nation faces tens of thousands of deaths from the coronavirus, there would be an increased reverence for human life. Is this hope in vain?
Not too long ago, New York City, now the epicenter of coronavirus deaths, celebrated a new law that would allow any woman to kill her unborn child through the end of the ninth month of pregnancy. Many of these babies would be capable of feeling pain. Significant buildings were lit pink in celebration, including the 9-11 Memorial with its pool listing the names of those who died, including pregnant victims whose names include “and unborn child.” So, a site that mourned the deaths of unborn children was lit up to celebrate such deaths.
Recently, U.S. Rep. Cindy Axne, R-Iowa, voted against a discharge petition that would have allowed the House of Representatives to consider the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. The bill provided that in the event a child is born alive following an abortion or attempted abortion, the health care practitioner present must (1) exercise the same degree of care as reasonably provided to another child born alive at the same gestational age, and (2) immediately admit the child to a hospital.
When I asked Congresswoman Axne how she could vote against a measure which prevented infanticide, she irrationally responded that she supported, “providing . . . access to safe and legal abortion.”
But, this act did not affect access to safe and legal abortion. It would save the life of a baby surviving an abortion. Wouldn’t only the evil oppose that?
When the time came for a congressional response to the COVID-19 crisis, Nancy Pelosi tried to insert federal funding for abortions into the relief bill. When Governor Reynolds attempted to shut down surgical abortions to preserve personal protective equipment (PPE) for fighting the pandemic, abortion activists filed a lawsuit.
The immorality of abortion reminds me of the evil of slavery. Thomas Jefferson, although a slave owner, wrote that the dilemma of slavery was like “a firebell in the night” and he trembled when he recalled God was just. Do the supporters of abortion tremble when they remember that God is just? Some do. Some become pro-life, but many are like our media, who condemned Mike Lindell because he mentioned praying to God at a White House press conference on the coronavirus. Mr. Lindell is devoting 75% of his production line to making life-saving PPE for medical personnel. Never mind, they say, he must shut up about God!
Abraham Lincoln did not shut up about God. He said, in his Second Inaugural Address:
“The Almighty has his own purposes. ‘Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.’ If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him?… Yet, if God wills that [the war] continue . . . until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'”
Could the coronavirus be the woe due to those by whom the offense of abortion came? I doubt it. First, if every life taken by abortion were to be paid by another taken by the virus, the maximum death toll would not be 2.2 million, but 60 million. And, thankfully, it is now thought the death toll from the coronavirus will be much lower. Second, as Lincoln wrote, all knew that slavery was the cause of the civil war None know that abortion is the cause of the virus.
The lesson? Hopefully, our present fear and suffering will be like Jefferson’s firebell in the night. May it awaken us to the pain caused by abortion. May we, like Jefferson, tremble when we remember that God is just. And may we act to stop that suffering.
God help our beloved country.
