In Context: Blinded by a searing hot iron

A United States Senator gave a speech on the Senate floor this week in which he said, “The death of a child is an unspeakable loss. There is no way to calculate it, and if you haven't lived through it, I don't think any of us can understand what some families have lived through. Yet in America, the most powerful Nation on the Earth, in less than [___] years, more than [___] children have been killed by [___], and that number is the reported fatality number. Compounding the grief and loss that these families experience is the fact that these deaths might have been prevented.”

Those of us who have worked on pro-life advocacy for years could use exactly that language to describe the unspeakable loss of children who have died because of abortion.

Politicians across the political spectrum frequently speak about children and the need to protect them, including as recently as this week. This isn't new, which is why almost all news organizations ignored Senator Casey's speech, except for one. Yet, the inconsistency in compassion for children born and unborn persists.

There's a reason for this: blindness.

To be clear, for those who believe human life only begins with a first breath, the shedding of innocent blood in the womb is not God's idea. He hates the shedding of innocent blood, and abortion at any stage by any method sheds innocent blood.

The blindness in the Senate became even more vivid when Senator Hirono spoke on the floor the next legislative day to recognize Abortion Provider Appreciation Day and honor as “compassionate, credentialed, and highly trained professionals” those who take hundreds of dollars from young women and their abusers every week in exchange for the violent destruction of their children they carry.

While Democrats in Washington control both the legislative and executive Branches of government, thankfully they have not been able to expand Federal abortion funding. Pro-life protections were retained in the large spending bill passed this week and the Violence Against Women Act was reauthorized without problematic provisions they had previously attempted to add. This is something to celebrate and for which to thank God. This is also not the end.

We need to pray for our Senators, that their spiritual blindness would be lifted, and that tools the adversary uses to cause that blindness like the searing hot iron of money would be removed.

Father, we ask that you would open the eyes of the blind. May they not perish, but may they see your will for the unborn and Your reason for having every one of the Senators in the United States Senate at this time. Raise up a strong defense of the unborn. Turn our Nation away from choosing a path of destruction for itself. May we no longer be content with the status quo, but may we see Your purposes in no longer allowing America to be on the fence or trying to have things both ways on abortion. May You purge this land of this wickedness.

“We have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.” (2 Corinthians 4:2)