Indefensible Roe –The Spiritual Track

The stain of abortion is on us all, pro-choice or not, and it is killing us.

Thank you for reading. Throughout the Indefensible Roe series, we have explored how the infamous Roe v. Wade decision that opened the door to the more than 62 million babies killed in abortion in the U.S. since 1973 has no basis to stand on today as the Supreme Court reexamines its validity in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Supreme Court’s meddling in abortion policy has been a complete failure—a betrayal of the most fundamental principles of liberty. We have discussed how Roe and its supporting cases are indefensible legally, as a matter of policy, scientifically, and today we explore perhaps its most tragic failure: the spiritual one.

Though some may be tempted to dismiss this aspect of the discussion as somehow outside the bounds of the legal/policy discussion, I submit to you that the injustice of abortion strikes at the heart of the legal case. As Aquinas put it, an unjust law is no law at all, but a sort of violence:

Human law is law only by virtue of its accordance with right reason; and thus it is manifest that it flows from the eternal law. And in so far as it deviates from right reason it is called an unjust law; in such case it is no law at all, but rather a species of violence. (Summa Theologiae, Ia-Ilae, q. xciii, art. 3, ad 2m.)

Further, the social consequences of the spiritual atrophy our country has suffered in the last 50 years, following the selfish, deathly path of abortion, have brought our country to the brink of self-destruction.

Look around. We are not a healthy nation.

As the scars and pain of our involvement in the inhumane slave trade have left us suffering the painful consequences of our sin in devaluing our fellow human neighbors because of the color of their skin, so will we undoubtedly continue to feel the effects (well beyond any action that the Supreme Court may take on the Dobbs case) of devaluing our fellow human neighbors because they cannot defend themselves while inside their mother’s womb.

For the type of violence we are promoting in abortion is, in a sense, the worst violation against our Maker. Violence against another human being is violence against the only being created “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27). The Holy Scriptures hold us to account on this basis throughout its text: “Know that the LORD, He is God! It is He who made us, and we are His; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture (Psalm 100:3).

In the violent act of abortion, however, we deny this and declare ourselves gods. We are not sheep but shepherds. We determine when we are ready to have children. We declare God is unequivocally wrong when He determines otherwise.

The Creator may say, as the Psalmist reveals, that He “knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13).  But He did it too soon, we declare. We will unknit His work with our “choice.” He must wait for our approval. His Word declares He sees our “unformed body,” that He knows us “[b]efore [He] formed [us] in the womb,” and can even consecrate us before we are born (Jeremiah 1:5), that He can be our God from our mother’s womb (Psalm 22:10), giving us a purpose (Romans 8:29) and calling us “His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).

But we reject His workmanship if it doesn’t fit our schedule. Why is He sending children to us like that anyway, to suffer? No thank you, “God.”

This is the Roe way. Unfortunately, it is what we have allowed to become the American way. The stain of abortion is on us all, pro-choice or not, and it is killing us. Our consciences are numbed, and the country suffers from a lack of compassion and empathy for our neighbors.

The acceptance of abortion accentuates our failure to abide by the most basic principles of justice. Jesus told us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind …” and “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-40). We emphatically reject His commandment.

The good news is that Jesus came to save us from this hopelessness. In Him, there is forgiveness of sin, “according to the riches of His grace” (Ephesians 1:7). But, wouldn’t you know it, Jesus came to us as a babe. Through abortion, we deny Him too.

Jesus was our Savior even while in His mother’s womb. While still a “fetus” as some of our friends on the pro-choice side would identify Him. Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, also with child, blessed the fruit of Mary’s womb (that “valueless fetus” according to us) and an incredibly revealing moment ensues:

“Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!  And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord’” (Luke 1:41-45).

One “fetus” (John the Baptist) identifies another (Jesus) as Lord.

But don’t say that to some honorable members of our nation’s highest court. Sure, the baby moved, but we can’t prove it is alive. “[T]he literature is filled with episodes of people who are completely and utterly brain dead responding to stimuli,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in the Dobbs oral arguments when presented with the fact that unborn babies feel pain. “There’s about 40 percent of dead people who, if you touch their feet, the foot will recoil. There are spontaneous acts by dead brain people. So, I don’t think that a response to -- by a fetus necessarily proves that there’s a sensation of pain or that there’s consciousness.”

That heartless response shows us how far we have traveled down the humanist valley of spiritual death while on the abortion expressway.

And it can get worse, believe me, much worse.

The good news is that we can still see the light, faint as it may be. It has not gotten completely dark yet. We can still lift up the torch of truth for all Americans to see that there is still hope. We can change course. We can turn around and escape from the spiritual death grip of abortion.

The Supreme Court finally admitting that Roe is indefensible would be a big step towards that freedom.