Thoughts on Life as we approach the 4th of July

By Dave Andrusko

I am writing this in advance since my wife and I will be on the road heading to NRLC’s annual convention in Charleston, South Carolina. It is my fervent hope that many of you will join the many other pro-lifers who will assemble July 5-6 for the annual pro-life educational event of the year.

In 2015 just prior to the Fourth of July, NRLC President Carol Tobias wrote a very thoughtful essay headlined, “For unborn babies, the assault on America is very real indeed.” I learned so much from her essay that every year ago this time I make a few additional thoughts on her essay:

She reminded us of two extraordinarily important developments. First, that

“Our nation, formed in such idealism in 1776, today is under assault. Some people might think that word ‘assault’ is just a metaphor. Our values under ‘assault.’ And our religious rights of conscience being ‘attacked.’”

Second, that

“All that is true, of course. But I’m talking about real, literal assault. Unborn babies in today’s America are literally – not figuratively – assaulted. They are physically attacked in the womb, dismembered, often in the most painful ways imaginable. They, even more than our nation itself, are truly ‘under assault.’”

There is much, much more. If you missed it, please take a few minutes to soak in the insights.

But I recall that when I read Carol’s 2015 column, it reminded me of something she’d written in 2014:

“What if our Founding Fathers just said ‘I’m personally opposed, but . . .’”

Rather than paraphrase, let me repost the beginning of her terrific column.

“Of course I care, but it’s not my problem.”

What if the members of the 1776 Continental Congress had said that in response to the struggles of the American colonies under British rule? What if they had just shrugged and returned to their busy lives?

Thankfully, they didn’t.

They declared freedom from the bonds of oppression. They founded a nation 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.”

Think about what those words mean, because in the half-hour you spend watching a fireworks display, about sixty babies will be aborted in the U.S. They will never experience life, let alone liberty or the pursuit of happiness.

[This week] we celebrate the moment our Founding Fathers united to fight injustice perpetuated by their own government. But what about the injustice that continues today? Each year, abortion violently deprives nearly a million human beings of the “unalienable Rights” that our government was founded to protect.

It’s not enough to care about the issue—every American needs to take action!

Let me close with this from C.S. Lewis. Lewis quoted Samuel Johnson who wrote, “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.” Lewis added, “The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see.”

The public needs to reminded—“time after time” —of “simple principles” they would rather avoid than confront: We have an ethical, moral, and (I would add) spiritual obligation to our children, born and unborn.

They also need to be gently prodded to recall that sacred bond in a loving, caring manner, one that helps their heart knowledge migrate northward to make friends with the head knowledge they have managed to keep secret, even from themselves.