Today we remember that infamous day of January 22, 1973 when the United States Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade put every conceived child in America at risk of premature death.

Fifty million of them have met that cruel fate in the past thirty-seven years.

They say the currently-debated health care bill will affect one-sixth of our economy. The abortion industry has already done so. In the past four decades we have killed over one sixth of our population. That' the staggering consequence of a very bad law.

Over one hundred thousand people died recently in the Haiti earthquake. We were stunned, wept, donated money and sprang into action to care for the dead and help the living. But fifty million fellow Americans have been slaughtered by abortion on demand at the shrine of convenience and sexual promiscuity during the last four decades--and we've hardly blinked an eye.

Two things we human beings are extremely good at are hypocrisy and short term memory. We say we believe one thing and often do the opposite. We say that life is precious and worth saving--and in the next breath we condone the killing of a human life that we don't care to raise.

As a nation, I believe we find ourselves in the same hypocritical and ambivalent state that characterized the United States between the 1820s and 1860s.  The issue then was slavery and the arguments were the same. Half the nation believed that slavery was justified due to personal choice, economic reasons, and that blacks were "not fully human." We were wrong during those decades, and only a courageous Abraham Lincoln and 500,000 Americans dying during the Civil War put an end to that era of cowardice and injustice.

We're also wrong today about abortion--and for the same reasons. A shrinking portion of our nation says that abortion is about personal choice, can be done for economic reasons, (especially among blacks and Hispanics) and that babies are "not fully human."

Same lies--same vicious results. The only major difference is that two million people might have perished through the evil of slavery in America--but fifty million have been killed due to abortion. Do we need another Civil War to wake up to our hypocrisy? How long will it take for America to once again believe that there is a God-given right to life from the moment it is conceived?

I'd like to remind us all again today that life is a precious and wonderful gift from our Creator. It should never be rationalized, abused, or aborted for any reason. God created each one of us for a purpose--to be contributors to the wonders and privileges of life in this world.

Many years ago I wrote the following description of the awesome gift of life. Please ponder them, use your own life to glorify God, and rise up in this generation to stop the holocaust of abortion:

"God chose a time and place to bring you into his plans for planet earth. He wanted to add someone unique and wonderful to the race of man. His idea was you. For a moment, take yourself back to those precious beginning days in your mother's womb. Let's imagine what God was up to when he decided it was time to create you...

You began when the sperm cell from your father united with the egg cell of your mother. These two particular cells were chosen by God out of millions that participated in the process. God breathed into these chosen cells the gift of life. At this moment of conception, you were smaller than a grain of sand. From two tiny cells, you would explode over some 266 days into a newborn baby weighing approximately seven-and-a-half pounds and containing sixty trillion cells--about the same number of stars that exist in our galaxy!

God linked together 23 chromosomes from the mother with 23 chromosomes from the father, each set carrying fifteen thousand genes from each parent cell. The color of your eyes, hair, and skin; facial features; body type; and certain qualities of personality and intelligence were all determined by His skillful genetic choices.

While causing the cells of your new being to multiply, He gently led you down your mother's fallopian tube to His workshop in the womb. There He gently implanted you in the soft wall of a uterus which had been specially prepared by a hormone called progesterone. Over the coming weeks, God would allow you to "signal" your mother that you were there by causing her to miss a menstrual period.

He then continued His skillful work by creating a bubbly sac in which to protect and insulate you, and creating an engineering marvel in the umbilical cord to feed you food and oxygen. Each day He rapturously created more of you at a dizzying rate of speed. He laughed at three weeks as your tiny heart took its first beat. On your 24th day, you had no arms or legs. Before a month had gone by, He carefully crafted your limbs, backbone, spinal column, and nervous system. By the end of four weeks He had molded you into a marvelous being that was ten thousand times your original size.

During your second and third months of life, the Master Craftsman went to work on your incredibly unique features. He delicately formed your nose, lips, and tongue. He moved muscle cells into position and soon 40 muscle sets began their first exercises. He lengthened your arms to be as long as printed exclamation marks, and carefully formed your fingers and toes, complete with fingerprints that would give you an individual identity for the rest of your life.

As your eyelids closed, as thin as butterfly wings, and as God covered you with a translucent-looking skin, you assumed an ethereal, transcendent beauty. You slept. You awoke. From six weeks on, God gave you the ability to experience the sensation of pain. He shed his first tears over you as He thought about the pains of life you would encounter on the way to your heavenly home.

For the next few months, the Lord God developed and refined your unique characteristics at an astonishing rate of speed. Your umbilical cord was then transporting three hundred quarts of fluid a day at speeds up to four miles an hour. It was as if the Master could not wait for you to burst upon His world. You heard you mother's voice for the first time. You sucked your thumb. Meanwhile, the Lord sent your oil and sweat glands into motion and began to cover you with a white greasy-looking ointment called vernix to protect your skin from the amniotic waters. Your eyes opened. God smiled as the first rays of dim light entered your being.

During the final three months, your loving Creator fastidiously prepared you for entrance into this world. Finishing touches were added to your rapidly growing features. He thickened and polished your skin, preparing it for the 30- to 40-degree drop in temperature that you would encounter at birth. He carefully stored a layer of fat beneath your skin both for insulation and as a food supply. Approximately one week before the two hundred and sixtieth day, He lovingly turned your head downward into the pelvic cavity.

His masterpiece was now ready. Beginning your mother's labor pains (a reminder of the consequence of Eve's original sin), He put away His tools, looked lovingly and hopefully at your waiting face, and gave the signal.Angels gathered at your side. Humans scurried about, readying a room for the experience called delivery. You were now ready for the miracle of birth. God smiled with the breadth of eternal understanding. What He had made was good." 

May we re-commit ourselves this day to rise up and outlaw the evil of abortion--and allow God's precious masterpieces to come forth to bless our families, nation, and the entire world.