Where is the Outrage?

Anyone who knows me knows I am against the heavier COVID restrictions; restrictions on worship, on residences, and on businesses. I am glad to see outrage from many people in my networks. That is great.

Right now, I can’t go see my brother who is isolated in the hospital with a broken femur. I get it. Your frustration, anger and pushback are justified.

In many ways this injustice we face is unprecedented and demands a response. In other ways it is absolutely nothing compared to what many of the most vulnerable in our society face. Every day. Yes, I’m talking about abortion.

We lose 100,000 pre-born children to vacuum aspirators, abortionists’ forceps, and asphyxiation pills every single year. Where is the outrage? This is an ongoing threat these children face! 300 lose their lives to abortion, daily. Where are the protests? Where are the letter campaigns to the government? There are many people mobilizing and sharing information on how to push back on COVID restrictions. Where is that concerted and persistent effort for pre-born children? Where is the outrage?

I hate to be negative, but it is a real hassle to get people to come out to a pro-life presentation where we give people effective conversational tools that actually change minds and save lives. A real hassle. Prior to COVID I’m sure there were more devout pro-life Christians at the average weekday evening junior hockey game in any random city in Manitoba than there were at all the pro-life presentations in the entire country on the same night.

What Francis Schaeffer said was absolutely correct: Every abortion clinic should have a sign in front of it saying, “Open by permission of the Church.” That is how negligent we as a society, and as the Church, have been.

It is unfortunate that in the last 14 months many jobs have been terminated and businesses have been destroyed and freedoms cancelled. But isn’t that what has been happening to little babies for the last 50 years?

It is true that many of us could not go to the funerals, weddings or birthdays of those we care about. But what about the countless children who will never make it to their first birthday, get married, or even be given the dignity of a funeral?

I know that yes, the restrictions are costing real lives, in suicides and drug overdoses and that every life lost is tragic and should be avoided, if possible. However, those are situations where there are often varying degrees of choice the victim has in the matter. Free will. What choice does a pre-born child have who instinctually recoils at the first touch of metal invading her home? And statistically speaking, deaths from lockdown fallout and deaths from abortion don’t even compare.

Like I first said, the lockdowns deserve a concerted and persistent effort to resist. But doesn’t abortion deserve an even deeper response?

I know that these lockdowns impact us personally and it can seem abortion does not. Lockdowns impact our work and our worship, our friendships and social life. But we would be mistaken if we thought abortion doesn’t impact every single person in this country. Everyone knows someone who has had an abortion, whether that fact is known to them or not. That means each of us has lost possibly a cousin, aunt, sibling, or child we never met to abortion and has had someone we know and care about deeply hurt by this injustice. On the other hand, I personally don’t know anyone who has died from lockdowns or from COVID. Abortion impacts us all.

You might say “abortion has been with us 50 years, there is no hope in ending it.” I would say that is far from the truth. Anyone who has talked with Canadians about abortion knows that there is always hope. Anyways, there is at least as much hope of you changing minds on abortion or someone you support in ministry doing so, and thus saving a life, as there is a chance of your efforts to end COVID restrictions being successful. Restrictions, being legal measures, are top down and require a critical mass of public pressure to end. You can save individual lives based on your bottom-up work in educating the culture on abortion.

And lest anyone think that the thrust of my frustration is only aimed at those who are anti-lockdown, I think those who are on the other side of the fence and will do almost anything to slow the spread of COVID but won’t lift a finger for pre-born children have just as much soul searching to do. 100,000 lives every single year, people. Where is the outrage?