Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953, shed the blood of those who opposed him with ruthless abandon. He said: “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”

America refuses to see a reflection of itself in a quote from a brutal communist dictator, but nevertheless our eyes are clearly staring back at us. Stalin was a butcher who destroyed millions of his own countrymen in pursuit of ideological goals. How can Uncle Sam possibly have any resemblance to him?

Choice, a woman’s right to choose, is the mantra of an ideology that disfigures our national countenance. What was once an infrequent medical procedure performed in an emergency situation to save a mother’s life has been transformed into something akin to a rite of passage.

The longtime rallying cry is the phraseology that says abortion must remain legal and safe for those rare instances of rape, incest or health of the mother. If only that came close to true, but facts are stubborn: 1% of abortions are the result of rape or incest; 6% occur because of abnormalities in the baby’s development or for the safety of the mother. 93% of abortions performed in the United States are for social reasons such as convenience or as a form of birth control.

We have institutionalized abortion and placed it on center-stage in the public square. With the healthcare reform package currently under scrutiny, there is fresh and quite vociferous debate about abortion rights. Should Federal tax dollars be allocated or made available to fund abortions?

Despite advances in medical technology that can now distinguish a beating heart mere days after conception, the fundamentalist religion of relativism persists; it has systematically fashioned a liturgy steeped in political correctness in an attempt to disguise the barbarity of its values. The deconstruction of the common sense meanings of words has radically increased over the past several decades.

If an unborn human being is not a human being, what is it? Our selfish and indulgent culture has devalued life to the point that now when someone speaks out against infanticide they are branded a right-wing nut-job or worse.

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. If linking Stalin to present-day American mores seems harsh or far-fetched consider the following numbers: Since Roe versus Wade and the advent of on-demand abortion it is estimated that 50 million children have been surgically eliminated. That is more than the total loss of life in every American conflict from the War of Independence through the present battlefronts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2009 alone, approximately 1.6 million babies will never draw a first breath. Those horrific statistics break down to 3700 deaths a day, which means one out of every four pregnancies will be terminated by abortion. And remember 93% will be for birth control or because the child is an inconvenience.

By and large we have grown immune to being shocked by what is an ongoing holocaust of epic proportions. It is figured that approximately 43% of women will have an abortion by the age of forty-five.

The One who formed the building blocks of the universe entered human history via the womb of a peasant woman from Nazareth.  In doing so, our Creator sanctified human life. 

What’s up with abortion is this:  Abortion does not merely jettison a mass of tissue, as activist humanists proclaim.  It silences a beating heart; it snuffs out a priceless life dreamed of by God. Abortion is the pinnacle of arrogance because it is an outgrowth of our perpetual effort to presume the role of the Divine. We habitually elevate our sense of supremacy as we seek to master creation and expand our sphere of dominance. 

God is the sole author of life.  Humans cannot create life, but in controlling its end with chemicals or stainless steel instruments, we cloak ourselves with a measure of self-styled deity.  There should be no on-demand feature for abortion; it ought to be reserved for extreme circumstances and even then the moral ramifications must be central to the decision making process.  

Life is not an accident; it is a gift from God and we are to handle it with the greatest of care.  On Judgment Day, God will hold us responsible for whether or not we honored life.  

According to Jesus of Nazareth, the yardstick to be used on that day will be the principle embodied in these words:  “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”  A helpless child in the womb certainly qualifies to be counted as one of the least of these.   

By that standard, because a million deaths is a statistic, our society will be weighed in the balance and found wanting.