Four Points of Proof for Life: Sociological

Has anyone ever told you they are personally against abortion but don’t think it’s the government’s job to limit or prevent women from getting one? I hear it frequently as I travel around the country and talk about human life in the womb. And politicians and social commentators will often use this reasoning as well.

It’s a common and widespread argument. But when you think about it, it is a truly nonsensical position. I’ll explain why.

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In my three previous “Four Points of Proof for Life” articles, I addressed the value of life from a biblical, scientific, and philosophical perspective. But in this piece I now pivot to address the sociological impact of abortion and the reasons why we as a society should condemn this modern-day holocaust.

As we explore the sociological arguments for why life in the womb deserves our protection, we need to ask the question: What does legalized abortion say about our civilization?

If the numbers are any indication, then we are a people who place little to no value on preborn children. In my previous blog pieces, I asserted that, based solely on the number of abortions that are administered annually, preborn children are the most discriminated and most hated people group in our nation. Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union’s General Secretary of the Communist Party, once told Winston Churchill, “When one man dies, it is a tragedy. When thousands die, it’s statistics.” Is it any wonder that it’s difficult to wrap our minds around these staggering statistics?

• Since 1973, when Roe v. Wade made abortion on demand legal in all 50 states, more than 58 million Americans have been killed in the womb—and that number is climbing. Now compare that number to the more than 1.1 million servicemen and women who lost their lives during America’s military conflicts over the past 240 years.
•  According to some studies, abortions worldwide are estimated to exceed 1.7 billion human lives—and we are well on our way to reaching 2 billion.
•  An estimated 3,000 lives are lost every day to abortion in America alone.

Indeed, these overwhelming statistics are symptoms of an American society that continues to devalue human life and has deemed life in the womb to be worthless if the expectant parents believe pregnancy and parenthood would be an inconvenience to them.

Not only do these staggering numbers point to a morally sick society, but they also can make us skeptical that we will ever end legalized abortion in our lifetime. And while we work to pass pro-life laws at the state and federal level, the fact is that our laws follow culture. Abortion will become illegal when our country once again loves life and protects preborn babies. We will not end abortion until we understand and apply the following three principles:

• Laws are a mirror of morals. Relativism has permeated our culture. Look around and take note of how right and wrong are no longer our society’s standard-bearers for moral behavior. “If it feels good, do it,” is the prevailing doctrine of our day. Unfortunately, that is a false doctrine. Morals precede the composition of laws because the knowledge of right and wrong is universal and eternal, written on our hearts by the finger of God. The Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero, as pagan as he was, even understood this. “Law is not a product of human thought,” he wrote, “nor is it any enactment of peoples, but something eternal which rules the whole universe….” And philosopher J. Budziszewski agrees: “Every law reflects some moral idea, every moral idea reflects some fundamental commitment, and every fundamental commitment is religious—it proposes a god. Everything in the universe comes to a point.”^{[the_tooltip text=”1″ tooltip=”J. Budziszewski, The Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the Fall of Man (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010), 112.”]} And that point is God Himself—the Author and Originator of life.
• Law legislates morality. Ever heard someone say, “I don’t want the government to legislate morality?” That’s pretty ironic, as the primary purpose of law is to legislate morality. Since laws are a mirror of a nation’s morals, we should never give ground to the claim that we should not try to legislate morality. Every law reflects someone’s morality. This is the point philosopher Norman Geisler made when he wrote: “All laws declare directly, or by implication, that one behavior is right and its opposite is wrong. In other words, all good laws are just laws, and to legislate justice is to legislate morality. Since securing justice is, in fact, the primary function of government, legislating morality is not only constitutional but unavoidable and necessary. The only question is ‘Whose morality should be legislated?’”^{[the_tooltip text=”2″ tooltip=”Dr. Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, Legislating Morality: Is It Wise? Is It Legal? Is It Possible? (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003), 25.”]}
• The purpose of law is to prevent injustice. Dr. Geisler’s claim that “securing justice is… the primary function of government” is more precisely stated: The purpose of law isn’t so much to promote justice as it is to prevent injustice. Because humanity’s bent is toward injustice—or sinfulness, to use biblical language—then injustice, rather than justice, is the natural state of things. “It is injustice, instead of justice, that has an existence of its own,” French philosopher Frédéric Bastiat wrote. “Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.”

This is why the statement “I’m personally opposed to abortion, but I don’t want to prohibit others from getting one.” is nonsense. What if someone said, “I’m personally opposed to rape, but I don’t want to prohibit anyone else from raping someone?” We’d think that person had lost their mind. We cannot say an action is evil and wrong for us, but it’s okay for someone else to carry it out. Committing murder, cheating on your taxes, shoplifting, etc., are wrong for not just one person. They are wrong for everyone.

One of the great lies behind the abortion industry in America is that abortion isn’t actually wrong because it is legal. However, abortion is morally, terribly, and fatally wrong for one person; and it is wrong for everyone. The Supreme Court made a massive, holocaustic mistake in 1973; and our country has paid the price in the blood of children ever since.

Could anything be more immoral and unjust than the law that allows Americans to kill their own preborn children—and kill them by the hundreds of thousands every year? Abortion is a blight upon our nation. And the beastliness of it is a sure sign that our civilization is in decline.

To celebrate abortion in a country that was established on the idea “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” is to belie the founding of America and to make a devil’s pact that can only lead to a free people’s suicide. Speaking to the young men of Springfield, Illinois, about the dangers of slavery, a young Abraham Lincoln warned: “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Thomas Jefferson summed up the sociological argument like this: “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.”

A supposedly free nation that allows us to kill our own children for any reason is one that is socially unjust—it is twisted and corrupt. And any government who permits the wanton destruction of its own citizens is in danger of collapse. On the contrary, the government should rush to protect innocent humans from harm and death, passing laws that guarantee those protections. Because to not regulate the moral behavior of our citizens is to abdicate the chief duty of government: the care of human life and happiness.