The Raging Debate

(Note: I've been unable to get around various school things to get on top of the "current events" situation, so this article is not quite current. I apologize for the delay and hope to get even more current in the future.)

Source: Politifact

As many of you know, January 22nd was Sanctity of Life Sunday. On this day in 1973, Roe v. Wade was decided, and abortion was legalized. Many believed that the Supreme Court's decision would end the growing debate over abortion. Instead, it fueled it. Why? In an article posted on CNN's belief section, R. Albert Mohler Jr., President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, explains. Mohler proposes five key reasons that the Abortion debate has only grown since Roe v. Wade. Each reason is an excellent explanation for the current raging debate, but his last three reasons really struck a chord for me, showing in one stroke why the debate rages and why we, as Christians and pro-lifers, ought to continue that debate:

Third, the death spiral of abortion simply defies adequate calculation. Over a million abortions are performed in America each year. Reports last year indicated that over 40% of all pregnancies in New York end in abortion, a rate that increases to almost 60% of pregnancies among African-American women. The sheer scale of the death toll sears the pro-life conscience. Young people can now see that millions are missing from their own generation. Fourth, abortion has proved to be exactly what pro-life activists warned it would be: a deadly threat to human dignity that would target specific populations. Prenatal testing has produced a deadly reality for unborn babies considered less than acceptable by their parents. The vast majority (90%) of unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome are now aborted. Sex-selection abortions are legal in the wide-open “right” to abortion declared by the court. Prenatal testing of other characteristics means that parents can now abort a baby that does not meet their specifications and try again. Fifth, powerful imaging technologies now allow a look inside the womb, a privilege unknown to previous generations. That window has transformed the equation, as millions of parents have seen their unborn children and witnessed the miracle of life. They have seen the little human form and the actions of the unborn child, sucking its thumb as it nestles within its mother. Millions of siblings have seen the images of their unborn brothers and sisters taped to the refrigerator door. Those of us who believe that every single unborn child has a right to be born cannot resign from the effort to protect those lives.

Mohler nails each of these reasons and, in doing so, reminds all of us why we fight against the injustice of abortion. According to the Guttmacher Institute (more on that from Aubry later), nearly 50 million abortions have occurred in the USA between Roe v. Wade and 2008. That's 50 million lives lost, an astonishing 1/6th of the population in 2010, going by stats from the US Census Bureau. If that isn't worth fighting, I don't know what is.