I sent this in to the Asheville Citizen-Times yesterday.
It should come out on the 21st or 22nd.
Guest Editorial by Meredith Eugene Hunt
40 years represents a mere turning of a clock—the earth
moving around the sun.
Time magazine’s
January 14th cover story proclaimed, “Abortion-rights activists won an epic
victory in Roe v. Wade. They've been losing ever since.” This statement is wrong on the only scale
that matters. 40 years after Roe, prenatal children are still being aborted
“legally” in our country.
While abortion
seems entrenched into our culture, in the realm of reasoned argument, the
abortion-choice movement has lost the game entirely. With the advances in observing the life of
children in the womb, the work to educate university students on the true
nature of abortion, and the logical arguments that demonstrate the humanity and
personhood even of an embryo, abortion-choice rhetoric shows itself to be
empty. It’s strong on absurdities, non
sequiturs, false history, and demonizing characterizations of pro-lifers. If you add to our intellectual victory the network
of non-profit agencies that serve women in a crisis pregnancy and confirm the
compassionate heart of pro-life ideas, the defeat of the abortion choice
“position” is total.
The problems is,
legal abortion isn’t dependent on sound jurisprudence or moral reasoning. It never was.
“Pro-choice” efforts in those directions have been no more than gauze
over the power to kill. They’re an
illusion to make the terrible seem less terrible—to comfort people so they can
do what they want, and to mislead the desperate.
If so, then only
a power in the opposing direction can counteract it. I mean the power to save. Am I talking about violence? No. We are entering an era for artists who
communicate when people become deaf to reason, and martyrs who give themselves
to saving the lives of others.
We saw a shadow
of the power to save in the Rescue Movement in the early 90’s when 34,000
people were arrested for peacefully blocking doors of abortion centers. I see some hope now from young people who are impatient.
They’re behind personhood amendments in various states and they
understand the principles of rescue, of intervening in a way that validates
their belief that each abortion takes the life of a child.
On January 11
this year the Alabama Supreme Court recognized that “unborn children are
persons with rights that should be protected by law.” This ruling sets up yet another conflict
between powers, one that someday will explode when a state refuses to back
down, and instead decides to actually protect all people within its
jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, at a
minimum, we need to maintain a prayerful witness outside the places where
prenatal children are aborted, the same as we should if born children were
being killed under the forceful shelter of government.
