In 279 BC a warrior king, Pyrrhus, fought the Roman army at the Battle of Asculum, winning a costly victory. Commenting on his victory, Pyrrhus stated, "If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined." It is from reports of this semi-legendary event that the term pyrrhic victory originates.* It is a victory to be sure, but perhaps won at too great a cost to the victor. I wonder if the Roe vs Wade Supreme Court reversal isn't one of those victories for pro-life conservatives.
I write this as a Christian conservative, a pastor-theologian who has worked with and for pro-life groups and defended anti-abortion actions through the years. Yet, the hue and outcry against the Court's decision has made the seeming victory quite hollow and inconsequential, given that many states, including my own (PA), have sought to guarantee a woman's right to abortion on demand. We live in an increasingly fractured society moving toward increasing civil strife. While we pat ourselves on the back for a hard fought 50-year victory in the nation's highest court, we had better watch those same backs for the resounding flak from a decidedly godless society and cultural order. This may prove to be a pyrrhic victory.
Our problem with abortion and other societal ills we blame on progressive leftists is not about a single decision from a single court case. It is deeply rooted in an anti-Christian framework that keeps getting larger and bolder and more encompassing day by day and year by year. We are not, and never have been, a "Christian nation." Sorry that such a historical fact shakes us up. At best, we were founded by, and the Constitution and Bill of Rights, was written by Deists who were far less than biblical Christians following the lordship of Jesus Christ. They were Victorian moralists at best, and that is not Christianity. We applaud their commitment to principles such as the Ten Commandments, school prayer activities and so forth, but that was far from biblical faith and hope.
The problem with our anti-Christian society is a problem of the heart. Our hearts are not aligned with God's truth because they are not infused with God's work of grace and new life. The debate about post-modernism and beyond is quite beside the point. We have chucked God's Word and thus God's truth with our own take on what is proper and not proper. Not only have we become situational ethicists, we have become rebellious overtakers of God's world, imposing our own standards, if there are any, and decrying any attempt to bring society back to submission to what God wants. We have remade God in our image, our likeness, and have defined him to be our projection of him.
We do not want to look at the heart because we assume that at root we are "good" people. A few of us may prove to be bad, but that is due to mental illness or a harsh childhood. The Bible defines us as sinners, rebellious at the core, and seeking our own ways to run from God and his rule in our lives. We can and have debated the essence of the human soul, and one can trace the historical, philosophical, and theological argumentation to show how "clever" we have been to redefine good and evil and dispense with sinful depravity.
Consequently, in all arguments with abortionists, they choose to ignore and refuse to acknowledge the humanity of the unborn child--it's just a mass of tissue, at the control and desire of its carrier. A woman therefore has the inalienable right to terminate this blob of tissue wherever and whenever it is convenient. Every abortionist cites rape, incest and poverty as key ingredients to a woman's right to abortion. Few, if any, address the human child that is being murdered in the abortion procedure. And few talk about the woman who has an abortion simply because the child is "inconvenient" to her life and her career. The discussion is openly biased against a pro-life stance. Where are the protective rights of the unborn child?
At heart is the blatant denial of what true human freedom should cherish. Dumping the strictures of the moral code of the Bible means freedom without responsibility and accountability. We can do whatever we want, and the only guard to that freedom is what the majority of unbiblically minded people propose. We are horrified at mass shootings of children and comfortable with mass abortions of the unborn. Not only is that obviously one sided and unfair, it is criminally negligent.
However, abortion proponents are not only not giving up. They are actively resisting and rebelling against the Court's decision and any state that seeks to enact laws protecting the unborn. And federal and state judges sympathetic to their cause are blocking the High Court's decision.
What can be done now to avoid a Pyrrhic victory of pro-life rights? We need to ramp up pregnancy clinics that treat a woman and her unborn child as children of God, made in the image of God. We need to provide rape and incest and poverty victims with love and alternate solutions to their forced pregnancies. We need to proactively work to fill doctor's offices with pro-life medical caregivers. We need the Church to speak for pro-life against anti-God and anti-biblical sentiment and policies. This is not going to bring America "back to God." That is a failed and false dream. But it will show the resurrection hope that Jesus Christ brought to this world. And that is worth fighting for.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhus_of_Epirus
