Dead Babies In Ukraine And America

The images from Mariupol - the City of Mary, mother of Jesus - are searing and unforgettable. The wreckage of a maternity hospital struck by Russian forces, an obviously pregnant woman being stretchered from the rubble, and now word this morning that both she and her baby have died.

There is only one civilized reaction to this new Pieta: Horror at these war crimes and the yearning for punishment of those who are taking the lives of women and children across the territory of Ukraine. Americans from all walks of life and every political persuasion recoil at what this is – an act of barbarity that will echo forever in the corridors of history.

Moral consensus is so rare in the modern world: This is the epitome of evil.

Scenes like those from Mariupol leave us heartbroken – but they should also leave us conscience-stricken. What have we done, what are we doing today, to allow our own nation to succumb to violence that is both bloody – and routine?

Each day in the United States the lives of some 2,300 unborn children are taken – babies at every stage of development, including just before birth - and newborns, if a bill advancing in Maryland has its way.

If polls are correct, half or more of our fellow Americans are mortified by this unimaginable toll. But another half, and maybe even a larger slice of our national elites in the political and media class, don’t find this repugnant at all.

Worse, they spent the month of February pushing for a bill in the U.S. Senate called the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA). Imagine using the label of “health” to describe a bill that eradicates every law in the United States that protects the life of the most vulnerable human beings in the womb. When abortion “care” succeeds, one human being survives rather than two.

The Russian shelling of the Mariupol mothers’ hospital will live in infamy. How grievous is our own infamy that we have let the assault on mothers continue in the United States for half a century? That we have embraced a methodical destruction that some want to celebrate as the highest manifestation of the Constitution to which our founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor?

Now the speculation rises that the Russian army’s next brutal thrust will be a chemical attack. If Putin does this, the lives of every Ukrainian will be at risk, but especially the young, the disabled, and the frail elderly.

In the United States, we are much more matter of fact. In California and a few other states, chemicals to end pregnancy are coming to vending machines and mailboxes in university dormitories. A night of sexual carelessness will lead to a lack of care for the result, and a cycle – a standard – will be reinforced where the importance and beauty of conjugal bonds are dismissed.

In her book A Distant Mirror, historian Barbara Tuchman explored a time in human history with similar aspects to today. The 14^th century featured the Bubonic Plague, the decline of the Medieval Church, the Hundred Years War and the rise of concentrated wealth and power on the European continent. We can look into that mirror now and see the reflected truth of what Tuchman wrote, “When the gap between the ideal and real becomes too wide, the system breaks down.”

It isn’t too late to avoid another calamitous century, but the hour is late and we can tell the time in the ruins of Mariupol.