Roe -v- Wade Back To The States
A Response From A Christian
Abortion is not a right articulated in the Constitution which results in it being a decision to be made at the state level per 10th Amendment. Biden said Friday that SCOTUS removed a Constitutional right, but he is wrong. If abortion is not a right in the Constitution, it can’t be a “constitutional” right.
I was born in 1979 so I've lived with the reality that abortion has been around my entire life as a topic of conversation and debate. I shared the news with an older person I go to church with about Roe v. Wade being over turned and her reply was, “almost 50 years of prayer answered”.
I stopped and pondered her reply just trying to fathom living with this for 50 years as a cultural norm where our tax dollars help finance it. This isn’t a problem for the non-religious person whose belief supports abortion either in funding or in practice of course, but it has been a problem for those of us on the other side of the issue for the past 5 decades.
As soon as I heard the news break Friday morning it did not take long for me to think about the backlash we could anticipate from the political left as this has proven to be their natural response to things with which they disagree. Recently many crisis pregnancy centers that provide an alternative option to abortion have been vandalized by leftists. Even Justice Kavenaugh’s life was threatened by a leftist because Kavenaugh is known to be on the pro-life side of the issue at hand. Leftists are more violent than any other sect of our society. This is a fact.
While it is a great win for the unalienable right to life in our country, the abortion issue and its ripple effect is far from being concluded. We are entering a new norm to millions of people in this country. Everyone less than 50 years old does not know what it looks or feels like to live in a country where abortion is not the nationwide norm. At least now though we, life conscious persons, can gather a sense of what it can be like, at least within a state.
It is easy to take it for granted that states like the one I live in (Tennessee) which seek to be protective of life both inside and outside the womb I also see how vulnerable similar states are too in becoming states permitting abortion. I say this because in my day job in selling real estate I see and hear about thousands of people moving to states similar to Tennessee away from far left states such as California, Illinois, and New York state just to name a few.
I have sold a lot of properties specifically in the past three years to singles and couples from these states where I am located between Memphis and Nashville. I also have friends who also sell real estate inside Memphis and Nashville and they confirm that many times most of their buyers are specifically from those three states. So those of us, Christians and even non-religious conservatives, who align with the right to life and seek to make states like Tennessee sanctuaries for the right for all people to be born, have to be aware of how our state and ones like it are changing due to out-of-state home buyers.
Ensuring life conscious states remain so can't solely be done politically or legislatively, but must happen individually and genuinely. There is an apathetic philosophy that has influenced those who call themselves Christians that is often articulated as, "it'll work out the way it is supposed", or, "God will work it out in his own timing."
While true in part, this doesn’t mean we are exempt from getting to meet our neighbors and loving our neighbors. This laissez-faire approach doesn’t naturally lead us as Christians to loving our enemies as Jesus directed. We have to be intentional on this point for it to happen. When it does happen though it naturally leads to the advocation of protecting life BOTH inside and outside the womb.
When I grew up on Morris Circle I knew most of the peoples names that lived in that neighborhood. Societies have changed so much since the pre-World Wide Web conception and ubiquitous societal integration that we don't know who lives beside us for those who do live in subdivisions, apartment buildings and neighborhoods. We can’t expect, as Christians, to be ambassadors for Christ and citizens of heaven if we’re not being neighborly to our neighbors, loving of our enemies, and treating the foreigner as a native (Lev. 19:34).
This is a time in U.S. history to celebrate and for those of us who call ourselves Christ followers, to also be intentional, deliberate, and compelled inseeking God's direction in our interactions and opportunities to represent him well both with our neighbor, our enemy, and the foreigner.
