Yesterday evening on the 46th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, the New York State Senate passed the Reproductive Health Act (RHA) in a 38-24 vote that gives a woman a constitutional right to an abortion. The RHA allows a woman to receive an abortion through the third trimester. The RHA decriminalizes abortion by regulating it under the pubic health law, not penal. The RHA allows for non-physicians to commit non-surgical abortions. When the vote was read aloud, and upon seeing the Act passed, the chamber was met with thundering applause. This is the great evil of our day.
Throughout history, there has been many dark days we can look back on. We can flip through the chapters of recoded history, and especially that of Western Civilization and see the great evils committed in the name of progress and universal rights. Manifest Destiny, genocide, and war are all evils that at one time came dressed in the form of progress and individual rights. Ethic superiority led to the Holocaust. The same could be said for the Rwandan genocide. In our own recent history, selfish desire for more led to the relocation and almost extermination of the Native Americans in North America. Each of these gross ethical failures were conducted because one group of people felt that they and their rights were more important than others.
Today’s great moral failure is no different than those of the past with regards to the way we look at individual rights. Today in the argument for women’s rights, nothing has changed. One group of people believe that their rights are more important than others. They believe that woman’s rights are more important than that of an unborn child. They believe that a woman (in this case the state of NY) should have a constitutional right to kill her child because her rights should not be infringed. But what about the rights of the unborn child?
Abortion is the great evil of our day. As I read articles after article and watched videos of women, men, activists, and legislatures applaud the killing of unborn children up to the ninth month of a pregnancy, I wanted to weep for our culture. I thought America was supposed to be the bright light to the world. I thought we were to be the example of goodness and virtue and liberty—yet all the while we select which of our citizens we wish to protect and which to kill.
The great evil of our day was not born in New York, but it has certainly found a home and will soon spread. According to the 2015 CDC Abortion surveillance report, New York City performed 544 abortions for every 1,000 live births. That means roughly one inthreebabies are aborted in New York City. The CDC also reported that in 2015 the city performed 63,646 abortions. The great evil of our day has been growing and now it has been unleased. No doubt the numbers will now climb.
In face of this evil how do we respond? How does the Church respond in light of the great evil that has been growing at a steady pace, killing our children and stomping out entire generations worth of children?
I believe that the Church should do what it has always done in the face of evil. We go to our God. Evil is nothing new to this world and God’s creation. From the very beginning, evil crept into our hearts and now we are responsible. The sin found in the creation account led to exile, which led to the first murder, and now murder is celebrated in New York City and through the world. The church must plead with God to save our children from what we have done and allowed to do. Evil is here, and it isn’t going anywhere unless the One who is more powerful than the evil intervenes.
We live in a day where the Church must stand with conviction and call out abortion for what it really is. It is murder. It is nearly inconceivable that in modern society that the rights of an unborn child through the ninth month of a pregnancy are ignored. An unborn baby in the third trimester, though not fully grown can be born and with medical care can live outside the womb, and go on to live a normal, healthy life. The Church must stand with conviction and call out evil for what it is. The Church must say that loudly, that unborn child is a person and that baby deserves life!
Isaiah says,
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil… —Isaiah 5:20 (ESV)
If not the Church, who will stand up for the lives of the unborn? We are called to protect and defend all the rights of all who are made in God’s image. We must plead with God to hear the prayers of his people. We should pray that God would convict this world of evil and the things we have done. We should call on people to see that God does not allow innocent blood to be shed without consequence and he will repay those who call evil good.
In our prayers, and actions, and pleading, we also look forward to a day that is set. Our God is not idle and he does not forget. Our God is just and righteous. We look forward to when our Christ returns and when he does he will serve justice, he will right all wrongs, and he will wipe away all tears. In the new heaven and the new earth, God will give to our children what has been so tragically denied to them—life.
In these dark days and when we are faced with such evil, we can easily pray for the soon return of Christ. May we keep praying for God’s intervention and if so, use us to save our generation and children from the great evil of our day.
—Bro. Jesse