The United States of America was born with a birth defect: slavery. Contrary to what Tim Kaine (D-VA) asserted in the well of the senate, we did not invent slavery. It’s been around just about as long as humans have, and we did inherit it from our father, the British Empire. Slavery was America’s original national sin, and our founding fathers knew that it was an affront to the fundamental principle upon which our nation was built: that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among them: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It took about eighty years, but eventually a majority of Americans mustered the will to confront this sin and act to eradicate it, even though they knew that doing so would be costly.
A great many Americans were determined to safeguard the institution of slavery because their wealth was built upon it and they could not see any way to maintain their position without it. Despite being fundamentally religious people, because it was valuable to them they managed to convince themselves that it was right, and mankind has always been adept at justifying what we really want to do. As those who opposed slavery came closer to the power to legally ban that abomination, the slave states saw the handwriting on the wall and decided to leave the Union before abolition was imposed on them. The end result, of course, was a “great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated [to the proposition that all men are created equal] could long endure.”*
We are hearing a lot today about the evils of racism and slavery, and some are even demanding reparations for the crimes committed by some of our progenitors more than a hundred years ago–deliberately forgetting that other progenitors fought and died to end that evil. Slavery was a great evil, but if it is wrong to put a man in chains, what is it to rip a living child to pieces inside the womb, suck them out and sell them to laboratories? If it is wrong to make merchandise of a living human being, how can it be permissible to kill an innocent child and then make merchandise of them?
Legalized abortion on demand is not a birth defect, but neither did all Americans choose it. It was imposed upon the nation by a cadre of unelected judges who substituted a perverse and arcane legal calculus for the will of the majority of America’s citizens, inventing a “right” to end the life of an unborn child and creating a multi-billion dollar industry that funnels millions into the pockets of politicians who promise to keep abortion safe, legal and profitable. And just as the antebellum slave owners refused to even consider relinquishing their property, those who have been enriched by legalized abortion will fight to keep the abortion mills in operation.
The passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has ignited a firestorm of rancor and ratcheted up the stakes of this election to eye-bulging intensity. Why? Because as the liberal majority on the Supreme Court to which liberals/progressives/Democrats feel entitled slips away, they have realized that the handwriting is on the wall for abortion. It was never constitutional, it was always bad law and it was always pure evil to declare millions of unborn children non-human so that their lives could be extinguished. America has awakened to this horror, it is trying to right the wrong, and the abomination of abortion on demand must be purged from our national conscience. I sincerely hope and pray that it does not take another “great civil war” to atone for the taking of so many innocent lives. After slavery, our second great national sin was forgetting God and the best chance we have of ending the slaughter of the unborn without a great slaughter of those already here is to remember God, turn from our sin and plead for His mercy.
I’m afraid that ultimately the choice will be up to those who have profited by saturating the earth with the innocent blood of more than sixty million unborn Americans.
I am not optimistic.
*Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address