Lift Up Your Hearts!

I watched us lose the abortion war, and it's happening again.

In my late teens it became inevitable that America would broaden the situations in which abortions could be legally performed, and at that critical juncture the pro-life side made a wrong turn. Many Americans wanted the restrictions loosened a bit, but still recognized the terrible consequences of taking an innocent human life.  Even the pro-choice side wanted abortions to be "safe, legal, and rare" (emphasis mine). Many who would have supported laws that eased restrictions on early-term abortions and extreme situations (such as where the baby would die soon after being born) still opposed abortion for sex selection, for the elimination of children with medical challenges, or as backup birth control.  And they were horrified by the idea of late-term abortion.

But we made a fatal mistake: we refused to compromise. Politics is the art of compromise, and we were naïve. To be fair, if you believe that abortion is the deliberate choice to destroy a human life, it's hard to accept it at all. But I'm certain that if we had not been so absolutist at that point, we would ultimately have saved many millions of lives with the restrictions that then could have been put in place. Instead, we facilitated the culture of abortion in which we now live. You can't always get what you want.

I tell this story because I see the same thing happening today. Many people who voted for President Trump are so disappointed by what he has not been able to accomplish that they plan to turn their backs on this election and not vote. This is a serious mistake. America is in a precarious situation and we need to take a larger view. Now is not the time to give up just because we can't get all we'd hoped for. We've slipped into this peril slowly, and hoping to get out of it quickly is like expecting that the pounds we gained over the past 20 years can be lost in a month.

You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes
Well, you just might find
You get what you need

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