During the coronavirus lockdowns, most American state governors have allowed abortions to continue even though John and Jane Public can’t go to work, out to dinner, to church, the beach, a concert or a movie, or to some public parks, shopping, to the gym or go on a vacation. Abortion has been declared as somehow a better, more important fundamental right. Functionally, this means abortion is more essential than people’s rights to work, assemble, play, engage in commerce, travel, and worship.
Yet Abortion Clinics Are Open
I have to believe John & Jane see this reduction of their everyday rights as over the top, unjust, offensive, and even idiotic. Mr. and Mrs. Public have seen doctors and nurses, administrative staff, pregnant mothers and their accompanying drivers go into abortion facilities where those horrendous procedures are performed. They are all breathing all over each other. They are touching surfaces and equipment. They are certainly not social distancing. Still, governors and courts expect the people to adopt a painfully illogical point. Somehow, the people at abortion clinics are not creating the same risks of viral transmission as everyone else who must stay home. Letting abortions continue in the lockdown context is very much like the government reciting the Wizard of Oz’s well-known line: “Ignore that man behind the curtain.” People see through it. The Publics might still not revolt out loud but I think these circumstances rankle them to the core.
In short, people are getting sick and tired of abortion. Their moral conscience is waking up. I offer no surveys, statistics, or great treatises of explanation in support of my contention. Rather, my thoughts and observations arise from a common-sense amalgamation of human psychology, history and faith. I am not predicting average citizens will be taking to the streets to advocate for an end to abortion. Still, I suggest, there is a vast change in the public psyche underway. I believe people have reached, or soon will reach the point of enough is enough. Somehow or another now is going to become a watershed moment toward the end of abortion.
Major About-Faces in History
It may sound like a naïve forecast that abortion will end. It’s so incredibly well-established. Abortion has become so prolific that it seems beyond reason that it can ever revert back to the way things used to be.
Let’s consider history and examples of much greater moral reversals. Not only have there been massive backtrackings, often the evil which had prevailed was undercut by surprise. No about-face has impacted the world more than the U-turn the ancient Jews made, hailing palm branches at their Messiah entering Jerusalem and days later, calling for his crucifixion. Shakespeare captured the phenomenon of a crowd dramatically switching sides in his stage play, Julius Caesar. The funeral speeches by the admitted murderer, Brutus followed by Marc Antony illustrate the profound human weakness of being misled. The play demonstrates how a crowd could be wooed to endorse Caesar’s murder, mourn for the honorable victim, and moments later, be moved to kill the murderer. In actual history, the fall of the powerful Roman Empire could hardly have been imagined in the time of Christ.
The abysmal horrors of the Holocaust led directly to the reunification of Israel after nearly two millennia. Slavery flourished in the United States and Christian Southerners supported it wholeheartedly until the Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment stopped it. Most recently, in celebrity culture, fans and movie industry players rendered homage to the monolithic movie kingmaker, Harvey Weinstein. He has been toppled. He is now a convicted sex offender, last seen as a hunched-over old man with a walker. These are merely a few illustrations of the world’s dramatic about-faces involving moral issues.
So, big changes really can happen.
Recent Symptoms of a Sick and Tired People
A number of abortion-related events have come along which have led up to the present enlightening moment. The public suffered a series of reactionary bad stomach aches but they simply continued to pop antacids and kept going. People have been too busy to give these things much thought unless someone they knew became involved in an abortion crisis. In 2013, a court convicted an abortion doctor (Kermit Gosnell) for multiple murders and manslaughter. Gosnell performed gruesome unsanitary abortions. In 2015, a series of undercover videos revealed that a major abortion provider was selling post-abortive baby body parts. I believe that was the first of the one-two punches to turn the public’s indigestion into a real, thinking, feeling rejection of abortion. The baby parts scandal truly sickened the general populace.
Late-term abortions used to be controversial. By February of 2019, eight states had laws on the books protecting ‘post-birth abortion’, essentially legalizing infanticide. In 2019, the movie Unplanned, about a former abortion worker, surprised the motion picture industry with its unexpected success. It continues to be a top-selling DVD. This shows how much how the public wants to find out the unvarnished truth about the abortion story. The year 2019 also saw 42 million abortions performed worldwide, over a million in the U.S. These scandalous facts helped fill in the larger picture of abortion as a political money-laundering scheme. Despite many counterclaims, a 2019 Gallop poll indicated 60% of Americans wanted all or most abortions to be made illegal. The future citizens, the millennials of today, are markedly more pro-life than their parents.
From Guilt to Change
American citizens had settled on a hodgepodge of easy rationales about abortion. These included: abortion is bad; it is killing a baby or something that will grow into a baby; there are women who don’t want to bear children or cannot afford to care for them; women have a right to pursue careers, women have a right to finish schooling; women deserve not to be stuck with all the responsibilities of a child if they are abandoned by the father; even if abortion is a type of murder-light we will allow it; it’s unsavory but a necessary evil to support women in our society. The public did not want to know too many details but the grotesque violations of human decency and the public’s rights are becoming overwhelming.
A major block of the public always believed in the sanctity of life, even if they could not articulate it decades ago. Yet, they came to begrudgingly accept and approve of the killing. Like Pontius Pilate, they ultimately yielded to the crowd. I contend that the public feels guilty now about discovering their own complicity in the lies of abortion.
During the state lockdowns over coronavirus, people are no longer caught up in the hectic commute back and forth to work, getting the kids to school, sports and other activities. Primarily, they now work from home, if at all. They are not allowed to go outside much. They have lost the ordinary excuse of being so busy that they have to put aside thinking about meaty issues. They have plenty of time now to ruminate on the state of abortion. One would almost have to have been living under a rock not to have caught wind of the biggest abortion issue stories. The sale of baby parts and the allowing of abortions during a pandemic, I argue, are the one-two death blows to abortion. The steady stream of shocking negative stories about abortion has been slowly churning stomachs and changing hearts and minds.
The innate morality God wrote on the human heart is stirring and turning around. I think the public is embarrassed and angry at themselves for being suckered. They do not want to live in a secondary status to abortion. They want to throw off the burden of their guilt and walk toward the light of truth. Prayers are being answered. The Church and the faithful have kept life as their preeminent issue. They have run the good race and nearly finished it. So, in spite of the numerous bad things about the stay home orders, I submit there is a silver lining of good is emerging. As I have said, it is only my theory but that lining is a new conviction of public conscience. The beginning of the end of abortion is about to go viral itself.
1 thought on “The Silver-Lining Punch Against Abortion”
The pro life movement have over estimated people’s feelings against abortion. Unfortunately many people still want.