As best as I can recall, abortion first became a real issue for me when New York legalized

the practice three years prior to row. That happened in 1970, but my recollection of my anger and

dismay is somehow located during my time in the Navy sometime in 1971 or

1972, so I don't know what the occasion for that was. Perhaps it had something to do with the New York

action being allowed to stand after challenges, I'm not sure. What I vividly recall is my anger

over the fact that we were on the precipice of a terrible apostasy. Then came Roe, and the carnage really

began in earnest. I was opposed to it all from the beginning, meaning that I was pro-life from

the very beginning. But at the same time, there was very little organized resistance,

particularly among evangelicals. Many evangelicals didn't know what to think about it,

and did not have a firmly established worldview that

would enable them to reason their way to a pro-life conclusion. Things were pretty scattered early on.

When Roe was first decided, what should have happened is that multiple governors should have teamed up

together and informed the federal government that abortion would continue to be against the law in their

states and that penalties would continue being

applied. But that did not happen, and all 50 states simply rolled over. A number of them didn't

like it, but they nevertheless acquiesced. In effect, what this meant was that they would rather

have the babies die than to have a constitutional crisis and or showdown. The reality of such stark trade-offs underlies a lot of our debates, down to the present,

actually.

A lot of this inept response was the result of having all our traditional Western values

about human life operating on cruise control.

We valued human life in the womb because that's what we always used to do, meaning it

was largely because of inertia.

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