On Friday 24 June, history was made when the Supreme Court of the US overturned the landmark decision of Roe v. Wade, which in 1973 had ruled that women had a Constitutional right to abortion, provided by their right to privacy under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Delivering judgment in Dodds v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the Supreme Court has now ruled, 49 years later, that the judgment was wrong and that there is no such Constitutional right.
In his majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote, "Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences."
Let us be absolutely clear, the Supreme Court judgment has not made abortion in the US illegal. It has simply ruled that the Constitution does not provide for such a right and that the issue is not for judges and the courts, but rather to be determined by the legislatures of individual states, and ultimately the people who elect them.
A not unreasonable position, one might think, allowing states the democratic right to decide the rules by which they wish to live for themselves. Yet from the howls of rage at the infringement of 'women's rights', the dire predictions of maternal mortality, and violent protests that have erupted across the entire country, you might be excused for thinking the Supreme Court had officiously announced that women were henceforth to be regarded as chattels, deprived of all property rights, and stripped of the right to vote. The Handmaid's Tale made dystopian reality!
This is astounding. How is it that abortion activists, so quick to assert the 'rights' of women to kill the unborn, can be so cavalier when it comes to upholding the rights of others to express views with which they disagree? Are others not allowed to hold a contrary view? But the self-same reaction hasn't been confined just to the US, of course. Across the world there have been similar expressions of horror, outrage, and condemnation, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau leading the charge when he stated, "The news coming out of the United States is horrific ... My heart goes out to the millions of American women who are now set to lose their legal right to an abortion. I can't imagine the fear and anger you are feeling right now."
A pity Mr Trudeau can't perhaps imagine the fear felt by an unborn child cut to pieces in the womb, prior to its removal by suction. But that apparently doesn't matter.
The mainstream media appears, in the main, to take a similar stance. Though (usually) acknowledging there are two sides to the debate, almost without exception, coverage in the UK has adopted a tone of 'high-minded' condemnation and censure, dismissing pro-life concerns as morally restrictive and harmful to women's health.
Columnists have tended to be even more openly partisan. For example, writing in The Times on the impact of the ruling, journalist Janice Turner, stated baldly, "Reproductive autonomy is the fundamental women's right ... without which all (other rights and achievements) are worthless ... demanding women carry unwanted babies is about patriarchal control."
Patriarchal control! Really?
So, the urge to protect and nurture a child in the womb has nothing to do with our love for other human beings who cannot speak out for, or defend, themselves. Nor does it have anything to do with our veneration for God, who is the Creator of all, and who commands us to respect and care for all life, as made in His image.
For one who is admittedly pro-life, who believes that life begins at conception and that the right to life of the unborn child demands both respect and protection, the response of vitriol and hatred being spewed out by the abortion lobby and evident across the globe appears almost deranged.
There is no quarter given, no thought for the right to life of another. No compassion. Not even any acknowledgment of the fact that democratic lawmakers and those who elect them comprise both women and men. Instead, the rhetoric is all about a woman's right to choose what happens to her own body – and if she doesn't want to play host to a parasite for nine months, nothing and no one should make her!
Let's not collude in the orchestrated delusion that by promoting abortion we're somehow protecting women's health. For all the high-sounding rhetoric about rights, autonomy and personal choice, what it all comes down to at the end of the day is the right to have sex – pure and simple – whenever, wherever and with whomsoever we choose, without commitment and without consequence.
It is 'worship' of immorality and Self, made possible and fed by the blood sacrifice of the unborn – a declaration of war against purity, righteousness and biological truth. It is the hubristic rejection of God.
If evidence were needed that this is at heart a spiritual battle – with evil relentlessly pursuing its quest to destroy life – the extreme anger and violence currently on display is surely it. In the battle of competing rights, those with no voice are being hurled against the wall, their lives mercilessly dispatched by two innocuous looking pills, or suctioned into oblivion following dismemberment. But we do well to remember that God sees; and He cares. More than that, He is a God of righteousness who will not tolerate sin.
We, not God, have written our own judgment. We stand indicted in the courts of Heaven, and the world's headlong spiral into chaos and terror is the first sign of the verdict that has been reached. Only God can save us now, but He will not unless we first repent and renounce the evil we have not just done, but actively condoned.
Rev Lynda Rose is founder of Voice for Justice UK, a group which works to uphold the moral values of the Bible in society.
