There is a habit of teaching history by hopping from one major event to the other. This focus makes sense, given that while normal events like John getting up to farm another day and Sarah going to the grocery store to buy food for her family are certainly important on an individual, communal, and societal level, they are not what people typically think of as changing the course of history. Now, if John led a movement against farming or Sarah's grocery trip ended with her saving the President from an assassination attempt while he shopped for turnips, that would be a different story. One of the events—or, rather, series of events— the citizens in the United States tend to focus on occurred in 1973 and is known as Roe v. Wade.
The court case ended in the significant decision that the fourteenth amendment secures a right to privacy, which includes a woman's decision to abort her unborn child.
Roe v. Wade is one of the most important decisions made by the U.S. government in the 20th century, with effects that reached into the decades following it. Unfortunately, one of the greatest impacts it had was to contribute to the injustice found in U.S. society.
When the Supreme Court made the decision that abortion was protected by the Constitution, they decided that the Constitution deemed some lives less valuable than others.
To be fair, the original Constitution did that as well. The 3/5 Compromise and legalization of slavery made sure of it. That women were not given the rights to vote evidenced it all the more. For the centuries following, every act of violence, discrimination, prejudice, racism, sexism, and misogyny in the United States could trace roots back to that document.
Yet, by 1973, slavery was ended, women gained the right to vote, and the birth pangs of the Civil Rights Movement were in full swing. Justice was being fought for.
Then, in the middle of this progress, the right to kill unborn infants was established.
I will admit: America is not great. It has not been for some time, if it ever truly was. Of the many crimes the nation as a whole has committed—from land theft, to slavery, to the Native American genocide (and continued injustice being perpetrated now in North Dakota), to the mistreatment of people of various nationalities, to the misogyny it has expressed and continues to express—this law and practice of killing infants in the womb will be another injustice we will not be charged blameless in.
Should future generations look back on ours, they will wonder the same way we now wonder at slave-owners and German citizens during the Holocaust. They will wonder how abortion was ever considered to be legalized in the first place. They will wonder how we did not think it was wrong. They will wonder why those who knew it was wrong did nothing. They will wonder why those who believed it was wrong would not do their all to save those children and make good, supportive decisions for that child and family after he or she is born. They will wonder how we could not care for the mothers, fathers, siblings, and people in need. They will wonder at the Church called to defend life, yet so many of its members did so little. They will wonder at the nation that limited freedom of speech so that a man could not yell, "Fire!" in a movie theater, in order to preserve the life of others, but that same nation would not qualify the right to privacy so that one person could not kill another. They will wonder at those women who experienced oppression, but then fought for the right to oppress others. They will wonder how we could have a world of knowledge in our phones, but the utmost barbarism in our clinics. They will wonder how we could possibly condemn any other people or country when we have killed more than five times as many people as Adolf Hitler was ever responsible for. They will wonder how we could possibly ask God to bless us for that.
And if they don't hold us accountable, God will.
Yet, whatever future generations may think of us, it is the present. And in the present, we do not have the luxury of sitting back or defending the so-called right to abort.
A nation that kills its children and murders its members will not continue to be a nation. It will have to stand and be held accountable for its actions. Not just the individuals perpetrating crime, but every single person who actively did nothing and allowed it to happen. Every single person who fought for the right to discard life. Every single person who boldly claimed they would have stood up to Hitler or white supremacists, or whatever great evil should be brought up. Every single person who cried out against these violations of human rights, but made the situations of those facing them worse.
Every single person who thought they were righteous, but in their generation did nothing.
We will have to face justice for that.
We must stop murdering our children. We must help families that are unable to provide for all their members. We must help scared mothers who are told the only solution is for them to kill their babies.
We must help people, because people matter.
They matter before birth, from their very point that sperm and egg meet to form an organism with a completely unique DNA and cells multiplying to form a beautiful human. They matter after birth, when still in the care of the parents. They matter once they are more independent and make their own decisions, whatever those may be. They matter when they are older and nearing the end.
People matter and we need to stop killing them.
