In the final days of 2024, a Baptist minister, a Presbyterian pastor, and a Jewish cantor walked into a rural Maryland abortion clinic. This unlikely gathering was not a joke but a sobering reality—they were there not to protest but to bless its operation. “You all are blessings to those who come to you for care during some of their most vulnerable and sometimes painful moments,” said Baptist Rev. Katey Zeh to the clinic staff in its colorful waiting room.
Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…
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Zeh serves as the CEO of the Religious Community for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) and has been recognized by the Center for American Progress as “one of their top justice-seeking faith leaders to watch for her work on reproductive freedom.” The RCRC champions abortion rights by uniting a diverse group of pro-abortion religious leaders. Additionally, the organization provides spiritual support to individuals navigating decisions about abortion.
A pamphlet provided by the RCRC and presumably found in abortion clinics across the nation offers advice and prayers for those who are considering an abortion,
“Be assured that, no matter what you decide, you are loved and valued by God. Life is a gift. In thinking about an unintended pregnancy consider your own life as well as the new life you might bring forth. Your physical health and emotional well-being are sacred concerns. Only you know if you are prepared for the responsibility of bringing another life into the world…. You may decide to have an abortion. The fact that you have become pregnant does not mean it is God’s will that you become a parent…. Thinking about your own needs does not mean you are selfish. Your God entrusts you with the sacred responsibility to take care of yourself.”
These trite and deceptive statements reveal that dystopia is not some future threat but a present reality—we have lived it for years. According to Worldometer, over 45 million babies were aborted last year, meaning out of 107 million total deaths worldwide,1 abortion accounted for nearly half. The World Health Organization estimates the annual number of abortions even higher—over 73 million—making abortion responsible for more than half of global deaths if true.
3 out of every 10 pregnancies end in abortion. Our institutions—academic, entertainment, governmental, and even religious—have successfully reeducated our doctors into executioners and deceived our mothers into naive killers, leaving them confused and broken. God, have mercy on us! Christ, have mercy on us!
No other major cause of death comes close:
13+ million deaths by communicable diseases
8+ million deaths by cancer
5+ million deaths caused by smoking
2.5+ million deaths caused by alcohol
1.6+ million deaths by HIV/AIDS
1+ million deaths by road accidents
1+ million suicides
We have aborted more babies in the past two years than the total number of lives lost during the six years of World War II.
In reaction, we shrug. Oh well.
St. Cyprian (AD 210-258) writes in a letter to Donatus,
“The world is intoxicated with each other’s blood; and murder, when individuals commit it, is a crime: it is called courage when it is a corporate act. The largeness of one’s ability to be cruel is what protects against punishment for one’s crimes. An argument for innocence secures no freedom from such punishment.”2
National leaders who still champion so-called reproductive freedom now sound the alarm, “Our population is shrinking.” Too late. The same nations that sacrificed their futures on the cold edge of an abortion table now lament birthrates too low to sustain their economies.
But this is not shocking in the least. Princes and judges often destroy the future of their own countries to solidify their own current rule. Such is the insidiousness of sin that it infects even the courts of those who are to uphold morality and protect innocence to line their own pockets and cement their prestige in the eyes of an evil generation. The innocent are condemned as guilty, and the guilty are celebrated as innocent.
Cyprian continues,
“There is no fear of the law, of the president of the court, no anxiety about the judge’s office. When you can buy something you do not fear it. Amongst so many guilty to be innocent is now the crime. Whoever does not imitate the wicked offends them. The statutes have come to allow crimes, and what is generally done begins to become legal. What self-respect is there in the situation, what integrity can there be, when there are none to condemn the unprincipled? You only come across those who should have been condemned and are not.”3
What is the answer for our wicked world? How does the sinner stop sinning? How are the eyes of the deceived opened to their sin and broken souls filled with new life? How can babies be saved from the terrible fate of abortion? How are the religious wicked excised and true religion restored? How shall a righteous prince be installed?
The only way to accomplish holiness is the regeneration of the individual and their union with the Church. To save the unborn, the Church must save souls. Only she, through the power of Christ, can open their eyes and cause stony hearts to feel again. When do murderers begin to value life? When do adulterers become pure? When they meet Christ.
Christians, love the murderer. Love the adulterer. Love the broken-hearted. Weep over their souls. Introduce them to Christ. Bring the sinner to Jesus.
Cyprian, recounting his conversion, writes,
“The things I describe so far often applied to me. I myself was held and ensnared by so many errors of my former life that I did not believe that I could be stripped of them. Thus I was giving my obedience to vices that stuck fast to me, with despair about them becoming any better. I cherished my own evil actions just as if they were so peculiarly my own and inborn in me.
But the light from above shed itself into my heart sacrificially cleansed and its defilement removed, with the stain of my former world wiped clean with the aid of the water of regeneration. The Second Birth from heaven also restored me to a new humanity, when I had drunk in the Spirit. It was then that forthwith, strangely, in measure, things that I doubted were confirmed, what was closed became open, what was in the shadows shone with light. I was granted the means to resolve what previously seemed difficult.
It was possible to practice what I had thought impossible, so that I could now recognize that what had been previously carnally born, and lived subject to sins, and had been of this world, had begun to be of God: the Holy Spirit was now giving life.”4
I arrived at this number by combining the total deaths in 2024 (which do not include abortions) with the total number of abortions in 2024.
Cyprian of Carthage, On the Church: Select Treatises, ed. John Behr, trans. Allen Brent, Popular Patristics Series, Number 32 (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006), 55.
Cyprian, On the Church: Select Treatises, 60.
Cyprian, On the Church: Select Treatises, 52.
Tragic. The unborn are human too.