Will God punish society for abortion? No, the punishment has already begun.

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 08, 2019

“If the state fails to protect the child in the womb,” said Pope Pius XI, “let them remember that God is the Avenger of innocent blood that cries from earth to heaven.” Pro-lifers often voice the same fear: that our society will suffer severe punishment for allowing abortion to become commonplace.

To which I reply: will suffer? Look around you! We’re suffering the condign punishment already. Look at the broken homes, the dysfunctional families, the lonely latchkey children. Notice the cities where the homeless cluster around heating grates and teenage gangs rule the ghettoes. Or the rural areas, once bastions of Christian morality, where today bastardy and divorce and rampant unemployment go hand in hand with chronic opioid use and alcoholism.

For those of us who live in comfortable communities, these social ills are not so much in evidence. But have you noticed how many of your neighbors are suffering from depression, how many old people are lonely? Don’t you realize that when teenagers pierce their bodies and dye their hair bizarre colors, they are quietly screaming in protest?

There may not be a simple causal link between abortion and these problems. But can there be any doubt that, since America accepted abortion-on-demand, our society has become markedly less congenial, less healthy, more divided, more violent? That the “misery index” has soared?

Nor do I want to suggest that an angry God imposed these penalties on us. No, we brought them on ourselves. In accepting abortion we made a deal with the devil, and all these problems—check the small print!—were part of the deal.