Hopeful Euphamisms Cover a Deadly Reality
Health care. Reproductive rights. These are the euphemisms being shouted everywhere in protest to the Dobb’s decision. People believe it, heart and soul. Many feel they’ve been robbed of their safety and rights.
Euphemisms do that. They provide a hopeful cover for a dark reality. Promises that have nothing but rot inside.
Case in point: The Women’s Health Protection Act of 2022 was a bill that allowed abortions up to the point of birth.
Health Protection Act. The reality of a needle being inserted into a child’s unsuspecting beating heart. Stopping it with poison. The limbs slow their movements, then stop. Then are dismembered limb by limb and the tiny mutilated human is tossed into a trash can. The broken mother excused from the exam table. Over and over and over again. Millions tossed aside. Barbaric.
These are the things we don’t say at dinner parties. At the workplace. On the political platform. It’s too vulgar. Too extreme.
I expect the denial of this from the world. But I did not expect this from many professing Christians in response to the landmark Supreme Court Decision: stunning selective silence.
Even more. Christians condemn those rejoicing as if somehow gratitude and praise are fighting for the wrong side and evidence of being tone-deaf to the real complexities.
Complexities exist as abortion is downstream from massive societal and spiritual dysfunction. However, it is nonsensical to claim to be pro-life yet silent in order to empathize with a neighbor’s grief of their loss of the right to murder.
Anger at the curbing of society’s mass murder of the most vulnerable is not a sentiment to empathize with.
We have heard and seen Planned Parenthood confessing the selling of baby parts. We have seen NY (and many others) embrace the right to murder children up to nine months. We have discovered the research from the University of Pittsburgh of grafting baby skulls onto mice.
These things are hard to write.
Have we become so obsessed with our image of being approved of by the world that we’ve lost sight of basic good and evil?
If so, how can we be salt and light in a dying culture? Are we like salt that has lost its saltiness and therefore has no preservative or healing power in the culture around us?
“A pastor being quiet or not celebrating the Dobbs decision is the equivalent of a 19th century pastor being silent about the abolition of slavery.” Allie B Stuckey
Gatherers of Women, Welcomers of Children
There has never been a group so passionately for the rights of women and children as Christians. Starting with the right for a woman to be born.
Christians have always been the rescuers of women and children - from womb to tomb. From the days of the Hebrews in Egypt to the Roman Empire to today.
No one adopts babies like Christians. No one fosters like Christians. No one donates to charities like Christians. No one funds and staffs pregnancy centers like Christians. No one helps single and scared pregnant women like Christians. No one comforts and counsels women who have had abortions like Christians.
These love workers are in my family, they are in my community. They are across the U.S. in every major city. The gatherers of women, the welcomers of children.
Isaiah warns us:
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,
who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. (Isaiah 5:20)
Don’t be duped by the darkness that is desperate to dampen the glory of God, the restoration available in Christ, and the invitation to life.
And let’s remember: righteousness and justice are never at odds with love. Instead, they are hallmark evidences of it: “The LORD loves righteousness and justice; The earth is full of His unfailing love.” Psalm 33:5
-Kara Dedert
Think Twice is a newsletter of Kara Dedert inviting you to think twice about the popular narratives forming headlines and shaping our homes and hearts.
Kara Dedert’s writing has been called “raw, real, gritty, gracey.” From the desperation of an ICU room to the hilarity of home and growing pains in everyday life, her stories and essays vulnerably share life and learning with a gospel perspective.
Another fantastic commentary! Thank you, Kara, for saying all the things I am thinking. It's a bit stunning how the pastors have been reluctant to rejoice in this obvious victory for life. Our pastor mentioned it, but with a hesitancy and almost a somberness. So sad. Thanks for speaking Truth.