In Context: Excluding the Indispensable Supports

Senate Majority Leader Schumer has scheduled two items for Monday, 2/28, after its recess for President's Day and Washington's birthday next week.

The first item is the reading of President George Washington's Farewell Address which has been an annual tradition in the Senate since 1896, this year to be read by Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Among Washington's words were these:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity.

Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.

Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

The second item on the Senate agenda for Monday, 2/28, is a demonstration of that “exclusion of religious principle” about which President Washington warned generations not yet born—including us.

Following the reading of the Address, the Senate “resumes consideration of the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 139, H.R. 3755.” Majority Leader Schumer described this action as “the first procedural step for the Senate to consider the Women's Health Protection Act. Across the country, the assault on women's healthcare has intensified to levels not seen in decades. So the Senate is going to vote, when we return on February 28, to take action.”

A more accurate title for this bill would be the Abortion Protection Act as it removes all restrictions in every state for “abortion services before fetal viability or after fetal viability.” The summary makes it clear this bill is all about abortion.

The conclusion that this is any way acceptable, desirable or necessary is only possible if the supports of religion and morality have been subverted and replaced with education that does not appeal and submit to a Higher Authority, which is no pillar for human happiness or firm prop for citizens.

America is less than a year away from 50 years of the shedding of innocent unborn blood being disguised as “women's health” and being legally shielded from any punishment.

“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Galatians 6:7). In all of the New Testament, the Greek word for mocked is only used here. It comes from the word translated “roar” in Revelation 10:3 which compares an angel's loud voice to a lion's roar.

Our enemy may roar and devour (1 Peter 5:8) and have great influence for now—including over the shedding of innocent blood—but the Day is coming when God will fully disarm principalities and powers and make a public spectacle of triumph over them (Colossians 2:15).

God's servants will “will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand” (Romans 14:4), and for the sake of the Nation's private and public happiness they would do well to avert it from excluding religious principle.