Abortion – The Central Sacrament of the Political Left
by Albert Mohler:
This past Friday, January 22, 2021 marked the forty-eighth anniversary of one of the darkest days in the history of the United States. Forty-eight years ago, the Supreme Court handed down the decision known as Roe v. Wade, and abortion on demand was effectively legalized throughout the nation.
Since that time, it is estimated that more than 62,000,000 unborn babies have died from abortions. When Roe turns fifty in 2023, those numbers will be even higher. It is hard to think of numbers on this scale, especially when we are talking about the loss of human life—62,000,000 missing Americans, most of whom would be alive if they had not been aborted in the womb. That is 62,000,000 children who never played in a little league game, who never experienced friendship and community, who never went to church, who were never afforded the glory of consciously bearing the image of God.
Numbers on this scale lead us to ask: How could abortion ever become thinkable? How did abortion become institutionalized, indeed, celebrated in American culture?
To be clear, abortion has existed for much of human history. Yet, it was also understood as evil, wrong, shameful, and abhorrent. Indeed, even contemporary abortion rights advocates demand that abortion be liberated from its moral stigma. That’s not going to happen, and not just because of some lingering moral prejudice on the part of human beings. Humans have an a priori knowledge within them by their Creator—a knowledge convincing us that life is sacred. When life is destroyed, there is something horrifyingly and unquestionably wrong, especially when the life lost is defenseless and innocent.
How, then, did a shift in American domestic policy lead us to this present moment in the abortion debacle? Even most conservative Christians fail to understand the arguments that established the plausibility of legal abortion on demand. The primary arguments did not begin with legal or constitutional reasoning; rather, abortion advocates started with an ideological contention rooted in two crucial developments. First was a creature of modernity, namely, radical individual autonomy. Anything that disrupts an individual’s pursuit to define his or her life must be eliminated—that includes an unwanted pregnancy.
Read also: US bishops urge Biden to reject abortion rights after ‘deeply disturbing’ statement from CNA
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