Part 1: The Death of a Child
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Introduction
: When people ask me what was the happiest time of my life, I answer unhesitatingly: my daughter’s birth. At 18, she one unfolding wonder after another. Although I was too stunned to realize it at the time, as I stood in that hospital delivery room watching my daughter being born, I was in the presence of the sacred, and I witnessed it as a special participant—I was her earthly dad, and that day I was given a sacred commission to care for her. Even as I write this, I feel an upsurge of emotion that brings me almost to the point of tears.
Another set of memories can also bring me to tears. It is the memory of participating in the abortions of 3 children nearly 23 years ago. I was a reckless young man who had little idea of the sacred nature of sexuality and the responsibility God places upon us in its practice. Three women chose to abort the human life I created with them, and I implicitly or actively encouraged them in that decision to kill. At the time, I was so self-absorbed, and so unconnected with God’s word or God’s spirit, that I was numb to the meaning and consequences of my choices. Yet, as I became spiritually alive years later, and God opened both my eyes and my heart, the deep sadness of my actions became real. I sought and received God’s forgiveness, but I will always grieve at the death I helped to bring to those little persons, and the emotional and spiritual harm I brought to the women I supposedly loved.
My experience basically states the case that might be filed in a spiritual court of law: the case of a Culture of Life v. a Culture of Death. This moral, spiritual, medical, and legal confrontation of values is of course also the basis of a literal ongoing series of court battles. I have been a practicing attorney at law for almost 28 years. Roe v. Wade was decided the year before I started law school. With Roe, you might say the Culture of Death had judgment entered in its favor. That decision by nine lawyers sitting as supreme judges by political appointment cannot however be considered the Final Judgment. Only God the Father has that supreme authority. As a Christian, and as a lawyer, I have come to accept that some judgments so offend God that they must at all costs be opposed as morally obnoxious and unjustifiable.
This article will present a short background of three major abortion cases so the reader can identify the underlying values and human thinking that led to constitutional sanctioning of abortion. The reader will see a progression of thought that led to the horrific decision to permit partial birth abortion in 2000. However, I will also outline the basic premises of the dissenting opinions in these three decisions, opinions that give hope that an intellectual foundation exists to support the eventual overturning of the federal constitutional protections accorded abortionists. Finally, I will suggest some immediate small steps people can take together that will have a loving and redemptive impact on the Culture of Death.
