While we all of us agree, that sex trade, gang shootings, or spousal abuse is wrong, most of us do not know anyone who is affected by this. Abortion stands out in that virtually every family has, at some level, been touched by abortion.
At the same time it is much more disputed than other social issues. We do not have to defend that sex trade, gang shootings, or spousal abuse is wrong. Abortion is different: 50% of Americans have a strong opinion on abortion, approximately 25% for and 25% against abortion, while 50% are fence sitters. Here it is important to be equipped to defend your view.
While we agree that investing time in stopping sex trade, gang shootings or spousal abuse are important, we cannot possibly work on all social ills. Fredrick the Great said: He who attacks everywhere attacks nowhere. If we spread ourselves too thin, we accomplish nothing.
Without life you cannot enjoy any other right, or be concerned with any other issue.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, abortion is the most frequently performed surgery performed on women, ⅓ of all pregnancies end in abortion. This adds up to almost 1 million abortions in the United States every year. Every day abortions total more than all the lives lost in the Sep. 11,2001 destruction. This is a mass killing of innocent human beings: Human life is taken without justification.
As in the days of slavery, we once again find ourselves facing a glaring contradiction of the words that are the founding creed of our nation: “…created equal, and endowed by their Creator with the right to life.” We are experiencing a complete erosion of the pro-life ethic. Our mission is the same as during the fight to abolish slavery. We are involved in a battle against the dehumanization of a group of people. Has our culture accepted that there is such a life not worthy to be lived? This would make us equal to the Nazis in the 1920s and ‘30s. Our civil rights are under assault in ways barely imagined even a decade ago. The very definition of humanness is up for grabs. Abortion is a great assault on human dignity.
In America today there is no class of human beings more oppressed, more fatherless, and more orphaned than the unborn, subject to abortion. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
