I’m about ten thousand feet over Virginia at the moment, watching Washington D.C. disappear in the distance as my plane ascends to make the trip back home to Dallas. I’m always glad to come to Washington. I’m always glad to leave.

I come to D.C. often due to my role at Human Coalition. Though we rarely engage in the political realm, we’ve realized we have to keep track of political events at the federal and state levels. Our work cooperatively rescuing babies and families from abortion is still influenced by politicians and bureaucrats, and we need to keep our ears to the ground.

Thursday was the annual March for Life, commemorating the worst Supreme Court decision in history, Roe v. Wade, back in 1973. That ill-conceived decision, combined with its equally woeful companion case, Doe v. Bolton, has resulted in the legal killing of over 57 million American unborn children. Genocide by judicial decree.

I came up with a few other HC team members on Tuesday and it was a non-stop, whirlwind trip filled with forums, visits, meetings, media interviews, the march, and private strategy sessions.

The highlight of my trip? Several meals shared with friends of all colors, races, ages, and backgrounds, all committed to seeing the abortion holocaust end in America. And I ran into my college roommate, now a deeply committed pro-life pastor ministering outside of Chicago, whom I hadn’t seen in about 20 years. He came to D.C. with his 14-year-old daughter for their first March for Life, and I got the sense this young lady was going to grow into a pro-life warrior. And I don’t think that day is too far off. Like father, like daughter.

The lowlight of my trip? Watching Congress work.

Or, more accurately, not work. For the weeks leading into the March for Life, we kept hearing about the Pain Capable Unborn Protection Act, a piece of legislation generated in the House designed to make abortion illegal after 20 weeks gestation. Since the United States abortion laws rank among the most permissive in the world (in line with communist China and despotic North Korea), the House courageously prepared a bill that would have protected children in the womb who can feel the horrific pain of their limbs being ripped from their bodies and their heads being decapitated during an abortion.

It most likely would have passed the House and had a chance of passing the new Senate. It would have been vetoed by the most pro-abortion President in history (“God bless Planned Parenthood!”), but it would have made a profound and important statement to our country and very likely led to even more aggressive anti-abortion laws in various states.

The bill was supposed to go to the House on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a clear shot over the bow to pro-abortion politicians. But, as often happens in Congress, late night meetings on Wednesday resulted in the bill being pulled because of internal bickering between pro-life politicians. The bill had rape and incest provisions in it and there was apparently disagreement over details of those exceptions.

So that bill was dropped and a hastily prepared substitute (disallowing taxpayer funding of abortion) was introduced and passed on Thursday. That bill had been passed twice before and doesn’t have near the teeth the Pain Capable bill does.

cruz-speaksI was in the U.S. Capitol on Thursday for an Human Coalition forum. Congressman Andy Harris opened our time and Senator Ted Cruz gave a powerful and moving opening address. I then moderated a frank discussion with Congressman Diane Black and Congressman Mark Meadows. All four of these politicians are pro-life heroes and genuinely committed to ending abortion in America. And they sacrifice their time, energy, and privacy to work in the most difficult of circumstances to protect all American life. Pray for these friends. They take painful arrows on behalf of the rest of us. And we need more friends like them.

The failure of the Pain Capable bill to make it to the floor is certainly not out of the ordinary and we’ve been assured it will be reworked and reintroduced. Things like this happen in Congress every day. But as I left the Capitol building in the cold late last night, I was reminded of an essential fact: abortion is not a political issue.

Though pro-lifers have good reason to be disappointed in the pro-life caucus in Congress for the events of this week, do we really expect abortion to be ended because the government says so? Since when does Congress lead? No, laws follow culture, not the other way around.

I was speaking on the same platform as Sen. Rick Santorum last November and he said something that has stuck with me. “Don’t expect the federal government to fix your problems. Congress doesn’t lead. It follows. Congress is a reflection of our culture. If you want a problem fixed, start with the culture.”

As pro-life warriors, we CANNOT lean on the government to stop abortion in America. As I have argued time and again, abortion is primarily a spiritual issue. It is a decision to kill a human made in the image of a Creator God. Even my pro-life atheist friends agree that killing another human being cannot be categorized as simply “political.” They would argue it is deeper than that; abortion is a moral, deeply personal, deadly, horrific decision.

When we say abortion is political, we give ourselves an out. We can wash our hands of our responsibility to care for mothers in crisis pregnancy situations. That’s the government’s job. We can refuse to talk about it in public or in private, citing the oft-repeated “we don’t talk about religion or politics.” When we say abortion is political, we cheapen it, relegating it into the same dustbin of taxes, foreign policy, and deficit spending. Churches who claim abortion is political have an excuse to avoid it, claiming the obscenely misunderstood so-called “separation of church and state.”

Abortion is the unjust killing an innocent human being. Though abortion has strong political ramifications, it is not a political issue. It is a spiritual decision, a moral decision, a deadly act that kills a child, rips apart a mother, and destroys the family.

I’m halfway home to Dallas now. And I’m more convinced than ever that the work Human Coalition does, specifically reaching out to women in crisis and connecting them with genuine compassion and tangible help, is the tip of the spear. The more babies and families we help rescue from abortion, the more hearts and minds are changed to honor the sacredness of life, the more people who throw off American narcissism and join together to rescue human life from destruction, the more pressure Washington will feel to follow US.

Did you catch that? Washington will follow us. Abortion will be illegal when we, the American people, say enough is enough. Congress will pass laws when the culture finds abortion reprehensible. Ending abortion is not the responsibility of Washington D.C. It’s our responsibility.

Time to land. Time to lead.

(images credit: ROC Studios)

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