God-fearing, right-thinking, life-loving Christians have prayed for nearly 50 years for God to intervene in the affairs of our nation to overturn the abhorrent Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 that essentially overruled the abortion laws of the individual states. Subsequent to that decision, more than 60 million surgical abortions have occurred in the United States. (We have no accurate record of medical abortion statistics.) Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito stated recently, “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.” A leaked initial draft revealing the majority opinion written by Justice Alito and obtained by Politico indicates that the highest court in the land has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. Of course, this is subject to change, so continue to pray for the high court and for our nation that, in the aftermath, peace will prevail. Many will violently oppose this decision, some already ranting from their bully pulpits.
This decision — which is more of a state’s rights decision than an abortion rights decision — will remand to each state the opportunity to decide for themselves how to legislate abortion law in their individual states. How will South Carolina’s legislature respond? Only time will tell. When they have the will, they can accomplish matters quickly. For example, in 2019 after USC college student Samantha Josephson was killed on Friday, March 29, at the hands of an imposter Uber driver, House Speaker Jay Lucas immediately placed a bill on the House calendar to be debated the following Wednesday. It was passed by the House and Senate and signed by the governor on May 16. Their desire to expeditiously protect female (and born) college students would not be thwarted.
Yet, depending on the year, between 5,000-15,000 unborn children have been murdered by abortion doctors in South Carolina since the mid-1970s. Pro-life folks in South Carolina have been praying to our God and pleading with our legislators to end abortion in South Carolina for 50 years now. It is true that our legislators have passed numerous pro-life bills over the last 20 years that have whittled away at the abortion statistics. The unintended consequence is effectively teaching our legislators and our young people that some baby murder is acceptable, while others are not.
I’m confident saying out loud in the public square that “some child sex trafficking is acceptable, but others are not” would be wholly unacceptable and would be greeted with jeers. What if someone suggested that some forms of slavery were acceptable under certain circumstances, like low-income or handicapped farmers who couldn’t afford to pay workers? Perhaps they had been assaulted or taken advantage of by a large corporation — for them, slave labor is acceptable. I disagree. All slave labor is unacceptable, immoral, unthinkable. So is sex trafficking of children or women. So is the murder of unborn children by abortions. The complete abolition of slavery, the complete abolition of sex trafficking and the complete abolition of abortion are the only acceptable options.
When Roe v. Wade is remanded to the states, we in South Carolina will have a golden opportunity to undo 50 years of child sacrifice. We cannot accept another incremental bill that chips away at the edges of the abortion industry in our fair but blood-stained state. It is high time for justice-loving Christians to demand a complete abolition of abortion in our state without exceptions. There is no circumstance no matter how desperate that justifies the killing of innocent, unborn human beings. All citizens, born and unborn, deserve the full protection of the law.
Pray that God will forgive us for 50 years of negligence. Pray for our legislators. Call your legislator and ask for the complete abolition of abortion in South Carolina. Remind them that the South Carolina Baptist Convention passed a resolution to abolish abortion in November 2021, following in the footsteps of the national Southern Baptist Convention, which passed a similar resolution in June of 2021 (see https://www.sbc.net/resource-library/resolutions/on-abolishing-abortion/).
Remember: Our politicians do not see the light until they feel the heat!
“Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24).
— Robert Jackson is a family physician in Spartanburg.