by Rod D. Martin
January 22, 1998

Today, Americans “celebrate” twenty-five years of organized, legal mass murder. Roe v. Wade has now seen its shadow cast over the lives of 37 million tiny babies. That’s one quarter of all American children since 1973; or six times the number of Jews slaughtered by Hitler.

The support for this is not what it once was: AP and USA Today polls taken over the last week show that 80 percent of us favor significant restrictions on abortion, and 56 percent of us would never allow a “personal convenience” abortion for any reason, as opposed to just 36 percent who would (the AP headline for this report was, of course, “Poll: Abortion Should Stay Legal”). These are the lowest numbers for the pro-death camp in decades.

Yet despite the rising ground swell of pro-life support, many Americans do celebrate, and for the same old reasons. Like the Supreme Court which handed down Roe, they ignore the absolute unanimity of medical and biochemical testimony that life does begin at conception. They yawn at tales of the high dollar abortion industry, with its clinic owners who spread low efficiency birth control pills and condoms to teenagers and set goals of three to five abortions per girl between ages 13 and 18 at $250+ a pop (even when such is exposed on 60 Minutes). They are pleased when racketeering laws are used to abrogate the First Amendment rights of abortion protesters. They scream that you better keep your laws off “their” body, as if it were their body at stake.

The issue, we are told, is just not black and white. Life, in fact, is not black and white, but many shades of gray, and only narrow minded bigots would fail to see this. Christians, of course, are the bigots-in-chief, because they tend to deny the existence of gray. This denial, we are told, is yet more proof that Christians are (a) radical, dangerous extremists, or (b) weak-minded, easily-led fools (depending on the speaker of the moment), because it should be obvious to any thinking person that life is just too complex for childhood ideas of right and wrong.

There’s just one problem with “shades of gray.” No one — even the relativist — really believes in them.

Oh they say they do; don’t get me wrong: there is a veritable “gray host” out there. At the moment, their leader is a certain Mr. Clinton, looking very embattled this night. But despite protests to the contrary, everyone really does know right from wrong. Not only does Romans 1 tell us this, but the relativists’ own terminology tells us as well: gray.

For what is gray, exactly? Gray is just black pretending to be white, and not hiding itself very well. If a man believes himself right, he doesn’t say “this is a gray area; it’s too complex for a simple answer.” No indeed: he says “I am for abortion,” or “I am for a middle class tax hike,” or “I believe the President has the right to sleep with enough women to account for the gender gap.” A man who believes himself right, no matter how wrong he may be, has the courage of his convictions. Gray is unknown to him.

So why do so many hide in the shadows? It’s obvious: they know they are wrong. They have made a moral decision for selfish interests and now must justify holding a position they fully understand to be black. They mix in a little more white from their palette, and a little more, and still a little more, hoping the black can be erased. But it never is; the gray remains, irredeemable; and unless the black is removed, the purity can never return.

Twenty five years on, it is reckoning time for those Americans still trying to pretend that gray is something more complex than an excuse. How many tens of millions more babies have to die, how many more tens of millions of mothers have to live their lives with the knowledge that they murdered their young, before this vile stench may cease? How many? And as terrible a judgment on this people as the crime itself has been, how much longer before a just God necessarily unleashes the fullness of His wrath? Surely not another twenty five years.

John Crowe said, “the only common ground between good and evil is the battleground.” On the battleground there is no gray. There is only yellow and red.